We came across Nori Morimoto’s light sculptures and were floored by their beauty and simplicity. Beyond their raw aesthetic value, Nori's creation of wood sculptures from sustainable sources adds a couple extra gold stars to his name. It is nice to see some progressive design getting back to its roots– literally. Now if he could only strike a deal with IKEA to get these out of the wild and into my living room!

Via Inhabitat

On the odd occasion we find ourselves perusing our personal library via candlelight, we usually have the misfortune of spilling hot wax all over our hands (and our leatherbound books). If you face a similar situation — or you just like the old fashioned idea of touring your darkened home like Uncle Scrooge — perhaps you’d enjoy the Goodnight Eileen lamp from Chilean designer Christine Birkhoven. The energy-efficient candle-shaped LED employs magnetic induction to deliver electricity to the lamp, using its ceramic base to recharge. We’ve also found romantic candlelit dinners are much more enjoyable without the fear of accidentally singeing your arm hair.

We love a good light show as much as anyone, but Elliot Golden has taken it to a sci-fi level. The fantastic lighting effects in the above image leave us terrified to ask what is dripping from that man's hands. Elliot comes from an illustration background, depicting the surreal world of bland working environments. His new work explores the possibilities of injecting that same feeling into human extremities. Whatever’s happening, it makes us want to watch old space monster movies with a black light on. Elliot has a new show that just opened in Williamsburg at the Heart and Soul Gallery.

In the past few years we’ve mentioned the Dutch design super-humans at Droog Design a number of times and we’re absolutely delighted to have their name roll off the tip of our tongue yet again. This time around these heroes of in-home artistry who specialize in creating products based on innovative concepts that change perspective and connect with the individual, have teamed up with our friends at 2modern to make their latest line of quality wares available at the design blog’s online shop. The collection features everything from a parasol to a variety of lamps and even a doorbell that utilizes wine glasses to create a musical welcome. If you’re looking for something unique, beautiful and functional…we recommend looking no further than these Droog goodies.

Just what we need right now — someone to shed some light on the situation. Art director Kleber Matheus, whose graphic designs have found their way onto apparel from kingpin Brazilian labels Ellus and Neon, is getting props for his Neo Ornamental solo exhibit in Sao Paulo at Galeria Polinesia all done with neon tubes. Rather than be twisted into words that tell us whether a place is open or if it serves beer and pizza, he’s arranged them into geometrical forms and placed them in different settings like against a garden backdrop to offer up the discussion between organic versus the posed/manmade and how they can be used together in harmony to give off good vibes. Nevertheless, is it just me or do you feel like eating a hot dog all of a sudden?

We’re not sure what your relationship with lighting is like, but we’ve had a long love/hate thing with lamps. There was the Banned-In-College-Halogen-Torch-Lamp phase in college, the First-New-York-Apartment-Track-Lighting phase, and currently the Take-Me-Seriously-I’m-A-Professional-Writer-Goose-Neck-Lamp phase. What London artist Georgiosi Ignatiou does isn’t just about screwing in a 100-watt bulb and calling it a day. It’s also not mood lighting, because God knows there are enough lava lamps in the world. Let’s call it a provocative, artistic lighting solution. The pieces are clever and use everyday elements like marbles, sponges, colanders and saw blades to throw crazy shadows around the room. It’s just a bonus that they also look hot when they turned off. Ignatiou is also a poet at heart, writing little stanza’s like this about his work: Slinky walking down the stairs / Here I split one into pairs / To give it flight and make it bright / I hung one pair around the light. You just can’t get that kind of rhyme-scheme at Pottery Barn.

Germans aren't typically known for their sense of humor or whimsy. While we'd like to imagine them standing around making funny faces and taking things lightly all day, we take greater pleasure in knowing that Nik Back and Alex Stamminger, the two industrial designers behind the 2008 Blickfang Design Prize-winning brand Maigrau, utilize their quality time efficiently churning out home design innovation. The Stuttgart based brand's ‘Split' presentation bowl is a laser cut aluminum work of art that's capable of showing off favorite smallish things or being filled with fruit even with it's “reduced geometrical form.” The rest of their pieces are none too shabby either. Each Maigrau product, lends an air of simplicity and sleekness to common household items, whether it be a lamp, wall installation, hanging hook, or bowl. Needless to say, we love it.

If we know anything about you, it's that you're probably the type who's forever sworn off the notion of purchasing a tube top. What if we told you you're about to reconsider that notion? Would you think we're just plain crazy? Well call us whatever you want because you're about to see the light...and that light is emanating not from a skimpy club going outfit, but from our old friend, San Francisco-based lighting designer Pablo's new tube top color lamps. The minimalist light fixture's whose shades bear a resemblance to the popular going out gear were previously only available in glossy white and frosted shades, but now have been made available in an array of flashy new hues such as Green, Yellow, Dark Blue, Sky Blue, Ruby Red, and Hot Pink. If you should feel so compelled to brighten up your night with one of these gorgeous glowers, maybe you should get an outfit to match.

There are plenty of ways to turn a work of architecture into a canvas. You can illegally spray paint your tag on the Arc De Triomphe or draw a mural on Big Ben, but none of those are recommended because they're undoubtedly illegal. We recommend going the route of video artist Robert Seidel, who was commissioned to turn the Phylectic Museum in Jena, Germany into an architectural canvas for the museum's 100th Anniversary in early February as well as for the “Jena Illuminated” event, which served as part of the opening ceremony for "Science City 2008.” The resulting work was titled Processes: A Living Painting. The project consisted of 35 by 16 meter full faade projection that employed three projectors and consisted of five “living paintings” with corresponding light choreography, ambient music and synced sound effects. The display aided in “breathing life into the museum on that one and only winter night. Its multi-layered complexity freed the audience of around 20,000 to create their personal narrative flow and filled the museums square with a dense cloud of spellbound whisper.' All we can say is whoa.

For anyone that thinks a house really isn’t a home until it has chairs with intertwining wooden tentacles, Toronto-based designer Rob Southcott is a like-minded individual. His Werkstate studio seems to find clever ways to coax nature from some standard interior design objects, whether it’s giving flowing, floral curves to a wall treatment, or using scalloped birch shells for chandelier cups. The site manifesto is, “enrich the mind, feed the soul.” We think his philosophy is more, “You can’t spell functional without fun.” (Also, it would just be “ctional.”). Check out his Memory Cube, a perfect bit of functional fun. You can personalize all the phrases on all six-sides of this sitting block. Just a hint: Sir Mix-A-Lot lyrics work well.

Unless you’re from Alaska, brilliant light shows probably aren’t a nightly occurrence in your backyard. British company Firewinder has remedied this, by taking a typical outdoor mobile and putting tiny LEDs all over it. The result: a trippy, spiraling strobe that looks like Close Encounters of the Third Kind left a prop in our garden. And because Firewinder are environmentally-considerate Brits, their product is battery-free and recyclable…which is more than we can say about our lawn gnome.

For a while now we've had an extra padded envelope lying around the office that we wish we had a purpose for. If only we could find the perfect lighting fixture or something that could fit inside. Hold on a sec...we've found it! The Eureka lamp by Dutch Designer Sander Mulder is comprised of a laser-cut sheet of aluminum with an embedded LED illumination source and powered by a single button battery, making for a slim, sleek, source of illumination for your study or bedroom (because seriously who has a study?) or wherever you choose to let it hang. Unfortunately, it may be a while before this beacon of brightness can light up your life, as it is only currently a prototype. Maybe you should go to Mulder's website and let him know how much you love lamp so that he may be so inclined to produce them for the masses.

Via Technabob

Whenever I turn on the lamp in my room, it's natural that for my rapacious consumption of the earth's energy to remind me that I am in some way shape or form engaging in gluttonous behavior; seeing as gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins, I am sure to be damned to the netherworld. It's a good thing then that Dutch Architect Luc Merx has designed the Damned MGX, a lampshade composed of algorithmically writhing nudes recalling the classical motif of the Fall of The Damned. That way I can get a full on visual of the place where my conspicuous consumption is taking me every time I pop on my lamp to read Dante's Inferno.

Via Veer: The Skinny

COCO&Co is the design firm of three Frenchman. French is not my strong point, so for me to delve too deep into exactly what they’re doing is risky. However, it is safe to say that how they’re doing it appears to be working for them, because their product designs and personal projects are beautiful. Case in point: The Akita and the Cubical (shown), two lighting/furniture objects that are for once as pretty turned off as they are turned on. Also worth lusting over (if you’re the type who likes children’s toys) is the Smoby, a kid’s kitchen whose modern design makes me as jealous for the actual stove top as it does for playtime. Look at more pictures (and learn more, if you speak French) here.

David Wykes and Benoit Collette of Teague designed this sharp Paperclip Lamp after picking up an ordinary paperclip and giving into the same inevitable compulsion that causes us to twist the flexible metal and distort its form when one lands between our fingers. At some point, they thought it’d make a great idea for a lamp, and what a breakthrough it was; the lamp has its lights positioned on the underside and can be bent into different shapes depending on your lighting needs, from a stretched-out “Z” form hooked into the side of a desk to a lower-profile figure with only one part raised. It’s a lustrous thing, and in a pinch, it just might work to hold together the largest TPS report in the world.