I was walking about town on Saturday and ended up at the Cooper Hewitt, where there were a couple of interesting exhibits.

One was on Giovanni Piresi; I wasn't too interested at first - until they started showing a few plates from his "Carceri" series.  It seems that he did a series of speculations on what a future prison might look like and his results continue to influence today - the Cubists of the early 20th century and numerous architects today.  Here's one of the plates:

The other exhibit was on the work of Ingo Maurer (apparently one of only 10 exhibits the CH has had, featuring the work of a living designer).

For those who didn't already guess, he's a light designer.  Check out some of his work:

This one's called Holonzki.  It's actually a hologram of a bulb, but it is perfectly situated above an empty socket, creating the illusion of a bulb.

A few of his pieces explore "Lucellinis" - winged light bulbs.  The resulting chandeliers bring a dynamic feeling to the room and genuinely feel like they are about to take flight:

I was floored by this piece.  His LED Bench consists of LEDs supported between two plates of glass. There's some sort of charged surface between the two plates, so there are no wires.  The effect is as if you're sitting on stars in the sky:

Finally, the image at the top of this page is a lamp called L'Eclat Joyeux.  Beautiful light from a very unexpected source.