Rolled lighting system.
Metro starts out as a roll of foil and film. Simply unroll it, add some LEDs(?), plug it in and presto, you've got a lamp you can hang on the wall. Per the designer, Francisco Gomez Paz, "Metro is not only a lamp but a system, a way to structure bidimensional elements creating a strong an efficient self-structured object.". Other designs by Gomez Paz include the Apero chaise longue and Airflow (un)fan.

+ gomezpaz.com

Picture frames from Umbra.
Your photos appear to float in ether, become part of a city skyline or locked in a block of Ice with Umbra's new picture frames. Ether has several layered glass elements that hold photos in position, Cityscape has a slotted wood base that holds two-sided acrylic holders and Ice holds three photos in an acrylic cube that reflects from different angles. WARNING: Flash crashed my Firefox, use IE or Safari.

Designers: Tom Vincent, Chantal Trudel
+ umbra.com

Royal College of Art show.
Birdland, a cityscape of birdhouses, Tattoo jewellery, a newspaper sculpture made of clay; just three of dozens of items featured in this online catalog of student work. Nice. Each piece is accompanied by a short statement about the student's inspiration and themes. Move over Eindhoven. Via Dezain.

Designers: Roger Arquer, So-I Moon, Jessie Flood-Paddock
+ rca.ac.uk

The Royal Institute of British Architects have chosen 71 new buildings across the UK and the EU and rewarded them with RIBA Awards for their "high architectural standards and their contribution to their local environment.". 15 of the projects are residential, the three above are; Extension to private town house London, a tiny MoCo extension to house some new bathrooms, Private farmhouse Gloucestershire, featuring a glass structure which bridges two original structures, and Wheatfield Courtyard co. Dublin, an update of an abandoned farmhouse. Via Archinect.

Architects: Henning Stummel Architect Limited, Jamieson Associates Architects, David McDowell
+ RIBA Awards 2005 - Residential schemes

No cabins here, unless you can call the million dollar arts & crafts monster house on the cover "a cabin". Not that there aren't some highly desirable small country homes in this book, including one by BCJ(!), but to my mind cabin = small. To be fair, The Cabin is a mix of 25 traditional, contemporary arts & crafts / modern, large and small. In fact, one of the better collections of country homes that truly underscores the importance of location and siting. From the blurb, among the cabins included "is a little-known Wisconsin cabin designed by Frank Lloyd Wright; an upstate Michigan log cabin designed by renowned architect Anthony Belluschi; and a one-room "urban" cabin in Portland, Oregon.". Hardcover, 224 pages, well illustrated, $26.37 at Amazon.

+ The Cabin Book at Amazon

This week's MoCo picks + submissions.

+ Swopit swap-it table, where any flat object becomes an integral design element. <Cool Hunting>

+ Hatbox, Nest, Acenti, and LED-LENSER Lily Marleen win gold and silver at IDEA 2005. <Dezain>

+ Microwave-halogen oven and Philips Odyssey ambient phone, two of many grad projects at Umeå Institute of Design. <Core77>

+ Strijdom van der Merwe's Sculpting the Land - "The land is not a setting for the work but a part of the work.". <Design Indaba>

+ Rebecca Campbell, Pars, Mark Newport and Henrik Drescher & Wu Wing Lee at Art MoCo this week.