I came across Modernlink today via a Treehugger post. Modernlink make beautiful, multi-functional furniture primarily from bamboo. I feel like I am going overboard by posting so many of their pieces, but I am a sucker for their smart remakes of every day household furniture.

I love that the drawer is seamless so that it masquerades as a floating cube to lean and pile magazines and other pieces of junk on.

My favorite part of this desk is its integrated filing tray. Sadly, none of these are at all affordable, so I won’t be owning any in the near future.

OMA + Rem Koolhaas (love that wiki photo), the 3rd office to undertake the $40mil Milstein Hall at Cornell University, recently unveiled his design for the new building for the School of Architecture. I think it’s a bad idea for the climate there, it’s not easy-breezy California. Ithaca is a barren wasteland of snow and rain, so the sunken plaza is going to quickly fill with dead leaves, water, and slush. When Ithaca is nice out, it’s pretty nice, so who would want to spend their time sitting on top of a building when you can sit out on the beautiful Arts Quad, only about 75 feet away?

This is a nice little birdhouse from Perch!. If I didn’t live in Manhattan, I would be more inclined to get one, but I just can’t get excited about attracting pigeons to my fire escape. I also like the vessel line with the bird-footprint/flower decals. Amy Adams seems to have a thing for birds.

The Instant Winner is a skate company started by Craig Metzger. They pull a lot of guest illustrators and artists in to design the board graphics. Nathan Fox did the above series for their current 2006 series. Please support your local skateshop!

Gorgeous jewelry from Cosa Fina Jewelry. I recently have made a few pathetic attempts at jewelry making and I find myself very attracted to raw, uncut gemstones. I like Cosa Fina’s very fine metalsmithing in contrast with the uncut stones they have chosen. Their other jewelry lines are nice as well, but this really caught my eye. Cosa Fina is run by sisters Karina Kuhary and Ninette Gambler.

MOMA design store has two very nice keychains. First is Sven Wingquist’s Self-Aligning Ball Bearing (left), an icon of the museum. They might not be Powell Ceramics, but they are just fine. Second is the Frank Lloyd Wright Thomas House keychain, no explanation needed.

Lamy is a German company that makes great modern pens. The pen shown is the new Lamy Smile, designed by German design firm Phoenix Design.

Lamy has always made very clean and modern writing instruments. The Smile is a more playful take on the fountain pen and uses a series of emoticon rings to relay personal codes and messages.

Timbuk2 has been making original messenger bags since 1989. I’ve owned the same one since 1998 and I still use it every single day. I’ve tried out other bags thinking it was time to try something new, but I always come back to the timbuk2 messenger because it really does function far better than any other bag I have owned, especially for city living.

They recently introduced the ‘single speed’ collection which are softer, crunchier versions of the bags. I checked it out at Paragon Sports and found that the single speed versions are much heavier than their cordura/nylon cousins. The big difference is that the single speed versions don’t have the waterproof tarp layer!! One of the major pluses for the bags is that even without an umbrella, you can wear them out in the rain. I never worry that my lumix, psp, or sketchbook will ever see a drop of water.

I always think it’s time to order a new custom messenger, but I don’t know if it’s time to retire my first Timbuk2 bag because it probably has another 10 years of life left in it.

The best place to pick up a stock version of the timbuk2 bags is eBags.com, keep an eye out for their 20% promotions and pickup a bag you’ll feel weird without.

I came across Sesame Letterpress at IIKH this weekend. Beautiful stationary. Nice coasters, too, if I actually used them. Sesame Letterpress is a Brooklyn based design team – Breck Hostetter and Matt Heindl. From the Flickr stream I came across while doing a google search for Sesame Letterpress, it seems that Breck and Matt just had a baby. Congratulations!

Black Diamond design and fabricate ‘camalots’, a type of active protection for rock climbing. The spring-loaded cams retract and expand into large cracks in the rock and serve as temporary anchors in the rock for lead climbing. they are an exceptional example of a beautifully designed object that serves a very specific and very important purpose.