ICON Magazine's "Future 50" for 2013, featured in Issue 122, was a compilation of individuals nominated by experts and practitioners as shaping the future in their respective fields, with a particular focus on pushing boundaries and initiating change. The list aimed to highlight emerging talents and innovative thinkers within architecture and design, even if their names were not yet widely known. 

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LAb[au] uses artistic, scientific and theoretical methods to examine the transformation of architecture and other Spaces in relation to technological progress – a practice they call "MetaDeSIGN". Much of its work is concerned with defining a new beauty that reflects the sensibilities of our time. "The technological developments of the last decades are at the base of the shift from an industrial to an information age," co-founder Manuel Abendroth says "These developments question not only production methods, but involve deep social, political and economic change and, as such, are opening a huge artistic field of exploration for new cultural codes and semantics." Founded in 1997 by Manuel Abendroth and Jérôme Decock, LAb[au]'s work includes interactive artwork, audio-visual performances and scenographies, for which it develops software and interfaces. The group also runs MediaRuimte, a digital design gallery in Brussels. At this year's Venice Art Biennale, LAb[au] showcased PixFlow, an artwork comprising computers that display images generated by calculation errors.

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