Shining Stars

By RICHARD CLAYTON Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2006

GLOBE

Forget concealment and switch on to sculptural forms, futuristic shapes and sumptuous craftsmanship — the latest examples of lighting design are better suited to center stage instead of just bathing other products in glory. You can design your decor around any of these five.

Globe Snow glistening under a Swedish moon inspired Torbjörn Lundell to come up with GloFab, a light-radiating "fabric" made

from slender fiber-optic cables. Here, the material is draped around a transparent acrylic sphere to create a squiggly glitter ball. Other applications include curtains and wall hangings, yet Lundell's ambition is to get the yarn to change color in response to music. That man should run a disco. www.glofab.se

Delirium Yum Bizarre product names only enhance the 74-year-old German Ingo Maurer's status as the world's most outlandish lighting designer. Co-created with his colleague Sebastian Hepting, this 80-cm-tall version is the little sister of an installation at Maastricht's Kruisherenhotel, a renovated ex-monastery. The lava lamp pales in comparison with this motorized whirlwind in a water cooler, available in October. www.ingo-maurer.com

Vortexx Chandelier Want to jazz up your dinner parties? With a Möbius-strip-like structure and recessed LED, the Vortexx chandelier by Zaha Hadid Architects for Sawaya & Moroni casts "an endless ribbon of light," according to its designers. Sci-fi fans might think it resembles something out of the movie Tron. And you can check out more of the Iraqi-born, London-based Hadid's work at her Guggenheim retrospective, in New York City until Oct. 25. www.sawayamoroni.it

Light as Air There are bright young things, and then there's Paul Cocksedge, 28, who was shortlisted for the U.K.'s Designer of the Year award in 2004. Light as Air, the result of the Londoner's experiments with glass blowing, is his most beguiling work yet. As organic in appearance as an undersea tube worm, it can be used on your desk or as a freestanding objet d'art. www.paulcocksedge.co.uk

Leaf Light Resembling Uri Geller's toothbrush more than anything arboreal, Swiss-born Yves Béhar's Leaf Light pairs Silicon Valley technology with candlelike simplicity. An iPod-style scrolling dimmer controls the LED's range, from cozy glow to clear white, and heat is dissipated by tiny holes, or "chimneys." www.hermanmiller.com