It seems like everybody's got their own anniversaries to celebrate during this landmark 10th London Design Festival.

The Fritz Hansen Store, smack dab in the centre of town, is inviting festival revelers to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Arne Jacobson's St. Catherine's College design for Oxford University and the bespoke chairs the architect and designer created for the campus.

As well as launching new variants of the chairs for LDF, the store also hopes to attract some design enthusiast with, what they are calling, 'An Educated Exhbition' featuring all sorts of wonderful design geekery, from slides, sketches and scrap books from Arne's personal collection to charming photographs and early prototypes of his furniture.

Digsmed was the name of a tableware manufacturer from Denmark, and lately I've stumbled across a rash of their items manufactured in the 1960s. Sold by secondhanders on Etsy, eBay and elsewhere online, Digsmed seems to have gotten a couple of basic things very right--a rotating wooden circle attached to an unseen base, and a glassblowing operation--and adapted those things into a beautiful line of Lazy Susans and spice racks made from teak.

Here's what must have been their flagship product, an 18-jar number that was for sale on Etsy:

As you can see, the wooden caps to the jars are permanently affixed to their spokes. You rotate the jar you want to the six o'clock position, then unscrew it, leaving the cap where it is.

I like that design because it means you'll never misplace the cap.

Since 2008, A Better World by Design (BWxD) has brought scientists, designers, CEOs and students from around the world to Providence, RI to discuss how design and design thinking can work to make the world a better place. The three-day student-organized conference takes place at Brown and RISD campuses and promises "a year's worth of good feelings" for all in attendance.

This weekend marks the fifth anniversary of the conference, scheduled to run September 28–30. Core77 will be providing daily coverage of the event, from keynote speakers to panel discussions and everything in between.

The lineup of speakers promises not to disappoint, headlining Rocco Landesman, the Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts. Other speakers include Lorna Ross, Creative Lead and Director of the Mayo Clinic, and Cheryl Heller, founder of Heller Communication Design and Board Chair of PopTech.

Panels include: Big Data (featuring Ben Fry), Design Policy, Education for Social Innovation, Failure in Five, Research in Design for Development, Local Food Realities, Persuasive Communication, and Sustainable Business Models.

As with every year, BWxD does an excellent job of organizing hands-on, interactive workshops alongside talks and panel discussions. Design for America: Re-Thinking Political Engagement, Polyhedra by Weaving hosted by RISD STEAM Club, and Rapid Prototyping are just a few of 19 workshops being offered over the course of the next three days.

Photograph by Fritz Goro for LIFE

"Marketing is something you do if your product is no good. Instead, you have to show something to people that they had no idea that they wanted but that is irresistible." -Edwin Land

In 1947, Edwin Land debuted Polaroid's Land Camera, an instant camera that revolutionized the way that people understood and used photography. Since it's introduction, Polaroid has become a cultural touchstone for an entire generation of artists and enthusiasts, with a new generation of photospammers adopting the analog format as their common digital language.

Instant: The Story of Polaroid is an upcoming book tracing the rise and fall of Polaroid. As the author, New York magazine editor Christopher Bonanos, tells it:

INSTANT is a business story, about what happens when a company loses its innovative spark. It is a fine-arts story, showcasing the amazing things people did with Polaroid film. It is a technology story, of a company that created and maintained a niche all its own for 60 years. And it is a pop-culture history, of a friendly product that millions of people absolutely adored. I like to think that it also tells a larger story, about the rise and fall of American invention and manufacturing.

A prolific inventor and restless visionary, Land's unique approach to innovation is intimately bound with the success of Polaroid and his unique leadership style deeply influenced Steve Jobs. Bonanos sees Polaroid as the Apple of its day, an innovation-driven company that disrupted it's industry by inventing and introducing products no one anticipated.

Princeton Architectural Press released this great "Book Trailer" in anticipation of the book's release in October.

Akin to MoMA PS1's Young Architects Program, which awards a young or fledgling architecture firm with modest funding to build a summer pavilion in the courtyard at PS1, Design Museum London's Designers in Residence program provides professional and financial support to young designers or design studios "in the often challenging years following graduation as they try to progress in their careers." Now in its fifth year, the 2012 program chose four designers and asked them to respond to a brief entitled "Thrift," and investigate the notion that "it is more difficult to produce a refined design for £10 than it is to produce the same design for £1,000," a fact that may seem obvious, but it encouraged the designers to explore whether "the limitations of economy require more resourceful, inspired and intelligent use of materials and processes." The four resulting projects and the designers' commitment to seeking out underutilized materials that are either extremely cheap or free and pushing them to their limits resulted in one of the most fascinating exhibitions we've seen all year. Each project is presented in its various stages so that you can see the work in process alongside the finished product. Each display is accompanied by a short, beautifully shot documentary by Alice Masters on each designer and their project for the Residence.

Freyja Sewell, who graduated from Brighton University in 3D Design in 2011, decided to work with wool for its naturally renewable, durable, biodegradable, flame retardant and insulating properties. Taking thriftiness into account, she sourced a wool by-product of the British carpet manufacturing industry available in mass quantities for next to nothing. To make something from the mixed bag of wool fibers and random bits of thread, Sewell tried wet felting, an ancient technique in which the wool is soaked in hot water and agitated until the fibers are worked together into a single piece.

How is design research the new frontier to the adjacent possible? DRC 2012 will look beyond the scope of modern design research to consider the emerging impact of diverse disciplines on the practice. Keynote speakers from fields such as behavioral economics, storytelling, and network science will push us to broaden how we engage and apply research.

We are excited to hear from Core77 columnist Don Norman, Doblin's Larry Keeley and IIT's Christena Nippert-Eng and our friends from frog will be moderating interactive sessions over the course of the conference.

Don't miss out on this year's Design Research Conference hosted by IIT Institute of Design. As a BONUS thank you to Core77 reader's, DRC is offering a special discount. Buy your tickets here today!

Design Research Conference 2012
Venue SIX10 at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Studies
610 South Michigan Ave
Chicago, IL 60605
October 9–10, 2012

Photography courtesy of Rebecca Blissett

Tobias Wong was a star in New York City, but he always remained close to his family, friends and his roots in Canada and especially Vancouver, where I had moved to several months before he died. In January of 2010, I had shown some of his work and curated a lecture of his in Toronto and was shocked and saddened at the loss of him; a colleague I had great fondness and respect for.

The idea for a show in Vancouver manifested in the months that followed. I felt strongly that attention was better directed toward his ideas and influence instead of his too early end. It seemed fitting that I was living out west at the time, and had the resources to make an exhibit happen. The city where he was born and raised, his family and friends and Tobi himself deserved a celebratory homecoming for his work that had made an indelible impression on the worlds of art and design. I set out to accomplish this with the utmost respect for Tobi's tight-knit community and am so grateful for their support (which in the end, was not only a buoying source of energy, but also integral to the exhibition itself).

I came at the show from a perspective of curatorial lightness, meaning the vision was already there (the work speaks strongly for itself), all I had to do was to make space for the community to relay the context; each piece on exhibit is accompanied by a short blurb of commentary from a friend, collaborator or curator. My intention with this show was to create the ultimate Tobias Wong project: an inspiration machine that would take his ideas up and out, inspiring others to see their surroundings as ingredients for making art... that art is everywhere and we can all use it to say something.

Todd Falkowsky is the curator of Object(ing): The Art/Design of Tobias Wong on view now through February 24, 2013 at the Museum of Vancouver.

With a mission to "deliver a more complete picture of the Earth," as William Van Lancker put it back in January, Google Maps has turned to mapping what's below sea level. This week they pulled the wraps off of their "underwater Street View" shots of barrier reefs in Australia, the Philippines and Hawaii, with more to come.

You can mess around with some of the panoramas here. As someone barred from scuba diving due to an inner ear injury, I found these shots, which I will never get to see in person, just breathtaking.

While Google's made progress with driverless cars, obviously they haven't constructed amphibious versions of their mapping cars just yet; to acquire the imagery they've partnered with The Catlin Seaview Survey, the collective name for a series of oceangoing scientific expeditions that send divers into the deep with underwater camera rigs.

The SVI, an earlier version of the camera

A non-Kickstarter-friendly product rendering of the SVII

Racing towards a greener future?

Forest product company Weyerhaeuser is one of the largest in the world, managing over 20 million acres of woodlands with sustainable practices (like planting more than they're harvesting). In a promising trend, Ford has been collaborating with Weyerhaeuser to "prove out" a cellulose-based material that can replace plastic in their interiors. The idea is to use Weyerhaeuser's sustainability know-how to responsibily harvest wood—or waste byproducts, like chips—to create materials without the need for petroleum. "Specifically," says a Ford rep, "replacing fiberglass, minerals and/or petroleum with a natural, plant-based material can sequester CO2 and ultimately lead to a smaller carbon footprint, among other benefits."

Ford has been dipping their foot in the alternative materials pool for some time; earlier we told you about their soybean, denim and bottle-based materials, and the collaboration with Weyerhaeuser is three years old. An announcement today reveals some of the results of that research:

[We've] found that Weyerhaeuser's cellulose-based plastic composite materials meet [our] stringent requirements for stiffness, durability and temperature resistance. Further, components weigh about 10 percent less and can be produced 20 to 40 percent faster and with less energy when made with cellulose-based materials compared with fiberglass-based materials. These weight and process savings can enable equivalent or reduced component costs.

...Several prototype vehicle components were created from the cellulose-based material and put through a battery of tests by a team led by Dr. Ellen Lee, Ford's plastic research technical expert. "We found that working collaboratively at an early stage has accelerated the development of a material that has a high thermal stability, doesn't discolor and doesn't have an odor," said Lee. "That's important because it opens the door for use of the material in a wide range of applications that could eventually add up to significant environmental benefits across our product line."

...Prototype armrests were tested as potential components that could feature the cellulose-based material. Not only can the cellulose material be used in interior applications, but the high level of performance provided by the cellulose fibers also makes it a good candidate for exterior and under-the-hood applications as well.

"Cellulose fiber is a great renewable resource that already has established infrastructure around the world, making it an ideal material for Ford's global products," said Lee.

Ford has already demonstrated their commitment to greener materials by switching over to soybean-based cushions in all of their North American vehicles, which has resulted in an estimated savings of five million pounds of petroleum. In terms of global consumption that's just a drop in the bucket, but imagine if every carmaker worldwide were to follow suit.

As industrial designers, we're probably pickier than most about the objects we own. We become conscious of badly-placed buttons, poor ergonomics and shoddy construction in ways the average consumer may not. In this series I'll look at the specific objects I choose to use most often, and examine them as if they were the subject of a design research project.

First up, my not-a-wallet wallet, which is actually a Japanese train pass holder.

Purpose of Object: Carry credit cards and driver's license only. Cash and receipts go in my pockets, which get emptied every night to file the latter.

Price paid: I think it was 95 Yen--about a buck--in 1998.

Why did you choose this object over competing objects?
1) It's thin. It had to be not bulky, yet carry my five EDC cards (Driver's license, banking card, two credit cards and my ZipCar pass). I hate that back pocket wallet bulge and don't know how people comfortably drive cars and sit on the subway like that.

2) It's fast to use. It had to allow me to quickly remove and re-insert a card. As an impatient New Yorker I can't stand being that guy that holds up the line.

Story behind this object:
I bought my first while living in Japan in 1998 to hold my train pass. Everyone I knew in Tokyo used them. The trains in Japan are as efficient as the passengers; the design of the pass holder allows you to quickly slide your monthly train pass out to insert into the turnstile, which opens to admit you while spitting your pass back out at the top, where you retrieve it and slide it back into the holder. Everyone did this smoothly.

Tokyo train stations are unbelievably crowded—it's one of the most population-dense cities in the world—but the crowds flow well and efficiently. I truly believe that if everyone in Tokyo carried their train pass in a flip-out wallet, the citywide transit times would slow down.

I didn't carry my U.S. driver's license or credit cards while living in Japan, as I had no use for the former and believe it or not, it wasn't common to use credit cards in 1990s Japan. Everyone used cash. But upon returning to the 'States, I found the train pass holder would perfectly fit the few credit cards I needed to carry, and was a lot less bulky than a wallet. I've been using it ever since, occasionally replacing them as they wear out. On return trips to Japan I've bought a stack of the cheap things.

Stateside, Muji sells something similar (more on that below).

Graphic Designer
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco, California

The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is seeking a Graphic Designer who will play a key role in communicating YBCA's mission, vision and programs to a diverse audience. The ideal candidate will be a leader in shaping the visual identity of both our brand and of individual programs, solving visual problems and collaborating with colleagues across all departments to promote YBCA's visual art, performance, film and community engagement programs.

For one of the Passionswege projects of Vienna Design Week, London-based designer Mathias Hahn was assigned to work with Staud's, a Viennese producer of fine vegetable and fruit preserves.

In order to enforce the exchange of expertise, the preservation and further development of knowledge and the virtuosity in craftsmanship and manufacturing, the Passionswege ("pilgrimage ways") program is an integral part of Vienna Design Week. Six months before the festival, the organizers invite nine different designers to collaborate with local Viennese producers and businesses.

The Passionswege involve the use of workshops, experimentation in situ, and interventions in local businesses and shops. Meanwhile, the partnerships are completely free of the pressure to generate commercially viable products (although we don't exclude this as an option).

Hahn created an intriguing installation in which he approached the world of Staud's by poetically addressing color, material and the meaning of preserving for winter time. Each of the various vessels on display seemed to capture all the good stuff that summer has to offer; almost like a time capsule, recallable during a long, cold winter.

Within the broad range of professions that an industrial design education can lead to, automotive design is something like neurosurgery is to med students: Prestigious, aspirational, even glamorous. Is there any chance that will decline within our lifetime?

In the last entry we looked at how personal poverty in Italy is leading to declining car sales. But according to The Economist, wealthy countries do not have the opposite situation. "In the rich world," they write, "the car's previously inexorable rise is stalling." While there are still millions of Brazilians, Chinese and Indians keen to get their first set of wheels, other nations, say academics, may be reaching an automotive saturation point.

While that point can be debated, there is another fact that cannot: Right now rich economies are filled with older drivers, and in order to sustain that car-buying population, those economies need to keep producing younger drivers. And the past 24 months have seen a rash of articles from seemingly every major paper on how that younger-driver factory may be grinding down. Here's the buzz:

Bell & Ross Diving Bell Watch Concept Sketch

Smartphones have settled into a permanent residence in our hands and our pockets. Watches similarly, have historically held a well-established place on our wrists in part to their continual development. One designer contributing to this is Baptiste Mathieu, who interned for world-renowned Bell & Ross Watch Company. Mathieu's shows us an edited and streamlined version of the design process. We are shown everything from the initial sketches, to wax and metal prototypes. We were sad to see Apple didn't produce their much anticipated Nano Watch but to fill that void take an analog approach and look through the rest of Mathieus' portfolio

The design process can at times look gritty and rough until a final clean product is produced. Throughout all these photos there is an ever present consistency to each shot. The sketches are clean and the prototypes edge onto reality, or it could be the beauty of the Bell & Ross watches. Having received a degree in Industrial Design from the International School of Design of France, Mathieu's design process is clearly indicative of his thorough schooling.

1:1 Scale wax model: case ideation

Portrait by Mark Wallheiser

This is pretty freaking amazing, and gives new meaning to the term "sacrifical casting." Retiree Walter R. Tschinkel is an entomologist and former professor of Biological Science at Florida State University. He recognizes ants as "some of nature's grand architects" and, curious to understand their self-created habitats, devised a clever (if cruel) way to do it: By pouring molten aluminum down into the hole.

Unsurprisingly, the ants die in the process. But after the aluminum cools and Tschinkel has completed a meticulous excavation, he unearths these wondrous, chandelier-esque shapes revealing the alien architectures of the colony.

Tschinkel has discovered that colonies can be up to twelve feet deep and house between 9,000 and 10,000 workers.

If you're wondering how he can tell how many ants were in there, he started doing this in the '80s by making plaster casts, which did not vaporize the ants. By breaking apart the plaster, he could count the little buggers. (BONUS: Watch the Video of the Process after the jump)

So why the switch from plaster to aluminum? For the same reason manufacturers will make car parts out of one but not the other. "The disadvantage of plaster casts is that they break easily so after you dig them up, you have to glue the pieces back together again," Tschinkel said in a 2008 interview. The aluminum has proven more robust.

Reporting by Richard Eisermann, Co-Founder of Prospect

The inaugural Global Design Forum, held on 18 September in London, was billed as "one day to set the global agenda for design." It fell well short of this lofty ambition. It was about design, yes, but it wasn't particularly global and it certainly wasn't a forum. The agenda setting was hampered by the too tight agenda of the conference itself. Not enough time was dedicated to discussion or debate. The stars were trotted out, but they failed to shine. Not for any shortcomings in their presentations, (although we'll forgive one audience member that had to be roused from a wall-rattling snore in the afternoon session) but due to poor briefing and curation. The potential for provocative conversation was there—but nobody was allowed or even encouraged to enter the ring. The audience was presented with a string of talks that contained nuggets of good content, but were disconnected from one another and the wider programme. Overall, this rendered the GDF no better than the average design conference. Inspiring? A bit. Thought provoking? Somewhat. Missed opportunities? Numerous.

Imagine if we'd been able to have Anders Byriel square off against Charles Leadbeater. The CEO of Kvadrat, with his assertion that business should be entrusted with the creation of culture because it is not hampered by democracy, would have provided a good counterargument to ol' Crowdsource Charlie's claim that people must not allow the geeks of Silicon Valley to dictate their futures. Imagine if Astro Teller, Google's galactic thinker, who urged that making things 10 times better is easier than making them 10 percent better, had had the opportunity to directly debate Mat Hunter, CDO of the Design Council, the champion of incremental innovation. Imagine the intellectual bust-up we'd have witnessed if "we are only limited by our imaginations" Richard Seymour had met "a milligram here and a milligram there really adds up" John Thackera face-to-face in a well-lit alley. These, and others, would have been the conversations to launch a real debate about the future of design.

Instead, we got personalities instead of issues. Certainly, I was inspired by the boundary blurring of Anab Jain of Superflux who illuminated the growing world of hackerspaces. And also by Thomas Heatherwick, whose energy and intensity was counterbalanced by his deep belief and humility. Kudos as well to Yves Behar, who prefaced his piece by saying he was not going to talk about his work. But we were a long way from Alberto Alessi's citation of Oswald Spengler, urging us "to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us; to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves; to act in such a way that some part of us lives on." That kind of action takes the collective courage to engage with one another and test our beliefs in an open forum that nurtures, but doesn't overwhelm us with, debate. Perhaps next year's GDF can consciously create the necessary conditions for meaningful dialogue. It certainly must do so to if it wishes to remain relevant and not just run-of-the-mill.

About Richard Eisermann
Richard Eisermann has worked as a strategic designer for 20 years. Trained as an industrial designer, he has had a range of professional experiences in which he has used his multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural approach to tackle the tough problems. As Prospect's Strategic Director, he works from all sides to deliver meaningful solutions that provide business benefit for clients.

Prior to co-founding Prospect, Richard was Director of Design and Innovation at the Design Council, responsible for leading design campaigns in the areas of manufacturing, technology, learning environments, and design skills. He has led design groups while with Whirlpool in Italy, IDEO in Boston and Sottsass Associati in Milan, and has lectured at design and business schools worldwide. He and his teams have been recipients of numerous awards, including The Smithsonian National Design Award. Richard is a frequent writer and speaker on design and is currently working on the Big Potatoes Manifesto for Design. www.manifestofordesign.com

Tverrfjellhytta - Norwegian Wild Reindeer Centre Pavilion, by Snohetta in Hjerkinn, Norway, 2011

Urbanism—the omnipresent buzz word that encompasses every aspect of our lives affected by the space crunch that grows along with the global population—is on the tip of everyone's tongues these days, from developers and city officials to architects and designers. And as we've heard a hundred times before, the need for undeveloped, natural outdoor space will only increase with the number of people streaming into cities. This has resulted in frustrations for cramped city dwellers, but it's also pushed cities to become more creative with their use of public space. In Going Public, Gestalten's latest publication, editors Robert Klante, Sven Ehmann, Sofia Borges, Mathias Huber, and Lukas Feireiss selected the most innovative and exciting uses of public space from around the world, from dense city centers to forgotten freeway underpasses to distant forests and fjords.

In the last five years, urban planners have moved well beyond traditional notions of public space. New outdoor environments are less focused on plopping a nice piece of sculpture in a plaza and more about creating "flexible frameworks for social, political, and cultural change...[with] a common thread in their affirmative endeavor to transform abstract spaces to concrete place." This involves "activating" spaces to "add value of experience and meaning." In his preface, Feireiss notes that this have become a much more collaborative effort than in the past, and signs off with a quotes from activist Jane Jacobs' seminal 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities that still resonates today. "Cities," she said, "have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when they are created by everybody."

The book is divided into six chapters, Gimme Shelter: Public Architecture As Place-Maker, Constant Gardener: Green Space In the City, Walk With Me: Modes of Spatial Mobilization, Benchmarks: Accommodating the Cityscape, Between A Rock and A Hard Place: Architectures of Intermediate Status, and Why Don't We Do It In The Road?: New Forms of Engagement In the City. Here's a look at some of the best projects from each chapter.

Gimme Shelter
This is the meatiest chapter and includes everything from Luminous Field's ten day-long digital light show projected on Anish Kapoor's famous Cloud Gate sculpture (aka the giant mirrored bean) in Millennium Park, Chicago, earlier this year. It's shown alongside several other installations with swooping, globular forms, but whether they're smooth and bean-like or rigid and made from wood, built in city plazas or in remote locations, these structures either provide visitors with shelter or a new vantage point from which to experience the landscape, or both.

Envolver - Entree Alpine Panoramic Structure, by Alice (Atelier de la Conception De L'Espace) in Zermatt, Switzerland, 2009

Winnipeg Skating Shelters, by Patkau Architects in Winnipeg, Canada, 2010-2011

Prototype Shop Supervisor
Umbra
Toronto, Canada

Umbra is seeking a Prototype Shop Supervisor to work with Industrial Designers in preparation of models and prototypes of 3D objects. He or she will prepare finish and paint models, maintain shop cleanliness and safety, and organize and replenish model making materials. The Supervisor is also responsible for building Trade show display panels and preparing short run production of assembled goods.

As the yellow XR-21 Bluebird school bus traverses across the desert terrain slowly reaching our final destination at Black Rock City in Nevada I catch up as best I can with my fellow passengers. A multidisciplinary group of international research students, architects and writers including a comic illustrator, a futurist and an animator chosen by the talented leaders of our extraordinary mission, Liam Young and Kate Davies of the Unknown Fields Division.

Serving as a platform for speculative inquiry, Liam and Kate along with fellow architect, Merlin Eayrs, curate their journeys as a cross-disciplinary practice seeking to experience first-hand the complex and contradictory nature of changing climates and emerging infrastructural landscapes. Often working with diverse practitioners alongside students from the Architectural Association, UFD will catalogue and document their experiences as a framework to create new narratives and construct potential new futures exploring alternative realities and cultures these extraordinary landscapes may afford.

On journey's such as this summer's road trip from Roswell to Burning Man, participants are each given a mission packet containing information on the aims of the trip, and most importantly how and what to prepare for.

This event in particular chronicled:

A series of extraterrestrial encounters from the borderlands, black sites, military outposts and folkloric landscapes, you will be both visionaries and reporters, part documentarian and part science-fiction soothsayers as the otherworldly sites we encounter will afford us a distanced viewpoint from which to survey the consequences of emerging environmental and technological scenarios.

The Unknown Fields Division Itinerary

One such collaborator on this trip is Mark O. Pilkington, author of Mirage Men, and a key influence to the Unknown Fields Division itinerary which took the group to covert military test sites, the alien technologies of the aeronautics industry and the experimental communities and towns found across the Great West. Beginning their road trip at the Roswell Crash Site and the VLA (Very Large Array) in New Mexico, Mark was able to share his fascinating Mirage Men account of his previous travels around Nevada and the history of "UFOria and its origins in the murky worlds of espionage, psychological warfare and advanced military technology."

Their journey into disinformation, paranoia and military technologies continued across New Mexico and Arizona with visits to the white sands missile range to explore the Hollowman Airforce base, home to the United States' drone program, the Virgin Galactic Spaceport and the Titan Missile silo.

From top: White Sands Missile Range, Virgin Galactic Spaceport, Very Large Array and Titan Missile Silo. Photos courtesy of Anouk Ahlborn

As seen below, the shape of your average, basic, stationary table lamp hews closely to the "form follows function" ID maxim. Ideally you'd want the light bulb floating in space at a certain height above the table, shielded by a shade. Because bulbs cannot float and need to be wired in, you put in a stalk to support the bulb and house the wiring. Because the narrow stalk cannot balance itself while supporting the bulb and shade, you attach it to a wider, flat base for stability. A designer can make cosmetic adjustments to the form, but most of us rushing to draw a "table lamp" in Pictionary would come up with the same thing.

Now a Las-Vegas-based company called Radast Design is taking the classic form factor but injecting it with new technology. One of the problems with LED lighting, which has been so often hailed as the lighting of the future, is its need for heat sinks; manufacturers that don't want to deal with the added expense and hassle of heat sinks opt instead for weaker bulbs, which is why I find many consumer versions of LEDs so lame—the small LED add-on lamps you can buy for a sewing machine, for instance, are disappointingly wan. With their LightDrive lamp design, Radast has a different solution:

Most integrated LED lamp designs deliberately use low brightness LEDs to avoid dealing with heat. The LightDrive table lamp offers a completely novel approach to light output and thermal management.... By isolating the heat to the base of the lamp, we have engineered a more efficient thermal management solution without the contraints of working around the classic bulb-socket design. The result is a unique looking lamp which operates at only 13 Watts and has no exposed hot surfaces.

What Radast has done is essentially turn the lamp's innards upside-down. The light-producing, heat-generating element is in the base, and fires light upwards through the transparent stalk into a diffuser, up top, residing where the traditional bulb would be. Have a look: