wants a UX Designer
in Amsterdam, Netherlands

As the world's leading accommodation website, Booking.com serves millions of customers, so their online user experiences have to be top notch. If you are a passionate user advocate who gets excited about working in agile and collaborative environments, this might be the perfect job for you!

Imagine living in Amsterdam, the 13th most livable city, and working in a flexible environment where ambitions are encouraged and hard work is rewarded with lots of fun. All you need to do is Apply Now .

I was against this thing from the start, because I cannot stand badly-acted infomercials where someone pretends they cannot manipulate a simple device. But before I say any more, check this thing out:

While I am drawn to things that fold up small and then expand, my kneejerk reaction was: No way is this thing suitable for a workbench. First off there's no shelf (as with a plastic sawhorse) on which to lay your circular saw between cuts, and you cannot do that thing where you raise the blade and rest the circ saw on the floor beneath the material (as with wooden sawhorses), because the crossmembers of this Centipede Sawhorse take up all the space.

Sometimes you want to enjoy the pleasures that come with sky and sun, but you don't want to have to actually go outside to do it. This week's group of designers turned our expectations outside in by inviting structures and materials usually slated for the outdoors into the indoors. The results range from droll to downright strange. But perhaps that just means we need to adjust our established outlook.

When the French designer Grégoire de Lafforest took on an 1,100-square-foot Paris loft renovation, he looked to nature for inspiration, placing a dried maritime pine tree adorned with plastic needles in the center of the space. Then he took the idea even further. Around the kitchen, de Lafforest erected a greenhouse constructed from a do-it-yourself kit. This house-within-a-house nicely divides up the space while leaving food preparation both enclosed and exposed.

Residing somewhere between gardening and composting, the installation Final Bloom by the Australian architect and designer Eugene Soler enlists the lopped-off tops of root vegetables as stars in an installation for the British Institute of Interior Design's 2013 conference. Saved from restaurants and friends' kitchens, the veggie caps are placed in shallow pools of water filled by a series of bathroom fixtures (manufactured by the conference's sponsors), where they sprout new growth. The series of containers and the vegetable off-cuts emerging from them look much more like indoor art than kitchen waste.

I once helped a career criminal move some things out of his basement—long story—and when we got to his golf clubs, he hit me (not literally) with this factoid: A golf club is apparently the ideal implement for casual, everyday interpersonal assault.

"I thought [guys in your line of work] used baseball bats," I said, naively.

"Nah," he said. "Those are too big and heavy. You come at me with a bat and I can take it away from you. But this"—he turned around and swung a golf club back and forth through the air, causing it to make a creepy whistling noise—"you don't see this coming, it's so fast. And you can't get it away from me. Look at the rubber grip on this thing." Ergonomically superior, he said, though in more colorful terms. Lastly he pointed out that if you get pulled over and the cops find a bat in your trunk, you get a second look; but a set of golf clubs never prompts questions.

Other than that story I have nothing revelatory to say about golf club design. Golf ball design, on the other hand, is pretty interesting. The first golf balls from the 14th Century were made out of wood, specifically beech, by carpenters using hand tools. They weren't perfectly round and it's safe to assume that they sucked. The 17th Century saw the slight design improvement of the featherie, a leather ball stuffed with bird feathers and stitched shut. But these things took forever to make, behaved differently when vet versus dry, and were also not perfectly round.

In the mid-1800s, a guy named Robert Adams Paterson made the first molded ball. He discovered that the sap from a sapodilla tree, native to Malaysia, could be heated up, placed into a round mold and would then dry hard. Called the guttie, these were the first golf balls with mass-manufacturability, and with the added bonus that they could be reheated and re-molded if they went out-of-round.

Then an interesting discovery was made. If you owned a guttie for a while, it got nicked and banged-up from regular use. People subsequently observed that when you hit a nicked-up guttie versus a brand-new one, the roughed-up balls actually had a more consistent flight path. Well before the Wright Brothers or any knowledge of aerodynamics, regular folk observed that those little nicks helped stabilize the ball in flight.

Golf ball manufacturers thus began etching, carving and chiseling different textures into guttie surfaces, trying to find the pattern most conducive to stable flight.

Core77 and Hand-Eye Supply are launching a "Pop-up Shop and Educational Happening" in Los Angeles on August 16th, kicking off a whole month of pop-up shopping, learning, making and hanging-out. We are throwing this multi-faceted extravaganza of design, D.I.Y. and craft in collaboration with Space 15 Twenty, a unique retail setting run by Urban Outfitters in Hollywood. We are super excited to be able to work with Space 15 Twenty and the talented U.O. creative team, and proud to occupy a venue that has played host to so much cool stuff in the past few years.

We are still locking-down our program of inspirational and informative sessions but you can see some of the awesome contributors who are going to put on events on the Pop-Up's Schedule - including Design east of La Brea (de LaB), Craft in America and the Offerman Woodshop! If *you* have a workshop or demo you'd like to run, or know someone who does, ping us here, we still have a couple of spots to fill.

Join us and kick it all off on Friday, August 16 @ 6pm for our Grand Opening Party - Music by DJ Neil Schield from Origami Vinyl, live demo by Tabletop Made and drinks by Pabst Blue Ribbon.

The Pop-up Institute for Craft and Ingenuity
A Pop-up Shop and Educational Happening
August 16th - September 15th, 2013
Open everyday 12 - 8pm
@ Space 15 Twenty
1520 N. Cahuenga Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028

Last Friday, we unfurled a brief history of golf ball design, but this post is gonna be all eye candy. Did you ever wonder what that crunchy urethane coating and creamy synthetic resin looks like from the inside? Well, so did photographer James Friedman, who found the inspiration for his latest photo series, "Interior Design," in an unusual place:

Curiosity led me to cut my collection of golf balls in half to see what the cores looked like. To my surprise, what I found inside inspired me to consider that I could discover, in the unlikeliest of places, elegant formal qualities and surprising metaphorical possibilities. Interior Design has moved me to be enthusiastic about abstraction, an exciting corollary to my work as a documentary photographer.

Apparently in an effort to tweak the performance of golf balls, manufacturers have different "recipes" for the resin ingredients, leading to these wonderfully colorful blends:

wants a Sourcing Manager
in New York, New York

Fab's mission is to help people better their lives with design and their Designed By You (DBY) team is looking for an energetic and highly motivated Sourcing Manager in New York City.

Currently, Fab DBY is producing and selling all its customized furniture in Europe only, but is planning to enter the US market in the near future. The New York based Sourcing team is going to play an important role in that by building a manufacturer base in North America.

Help Fab bring their customized and innovative furniture to the US by Apply Now

Our friends at frog design recently released a short documentary on Industrial Design in the Modern World, a kind of iterative manifesto (the consultancy's first but certainly not their last), featuring several key players of the design team. We had a chance to catch up with Creative Director Jonas Damon on the broader message of the piece, as well as his thoughts on user experience and a possible revision to Dieter Rams' canonical principles of design.

Core77: Can you elaborate on the points you touch on in the opening monologue? Specifically, to what degree do 'traditional' (or outdated) forms and materials embody value or character? For example, I recently came across an iPod speaker in which the dock opens like a cassette tape deck, which evoked a certain nostalgic charm despite being rather impractical (it was difficult to see the screen behind the plastic).

Jonas Damon: The opening monologue is about the physical constraints that have guided forms in the past vs. forms today, and the opportunities that arise from the absence of these constraints. 'Honesty' in design is a widely admired quality, and in the past that honesty was expressed by skillfully sculpting with and around a given product's physical conditions, rather than just hiding or disguising these. So when products were more mechanical, they had a more imposing DNA that informed their character; their mechanics largely defined their identities. Many product types came preconditioned with an iconic, unmistakable silhouette.

Today, most products in the consumer electronics space can be made with a rectangular circuit board, a rectangular screen, and a rectangular housing. Therefore, the natural expression of these products today is limited to a rectangle—not really a unique identity. Expression of character becomes more nuanced and malleable. With that newfound freedom, we have to be more sensitive, judicious and inventive. These days, 'honesty' is more complex and difficult to design for, as it's about the intangible aspects of the brand the product embodies.

Traditional forms and materials have cultural value because of their iconic, built-in character. The starting point for many contemporary consumer electronics forms is generic and sterile, so historical forms are often tapped to artificially trigger our memory-based emotions. It's been a popular fallback that we may be a little tired of these days, but on occasion its been well executed, and even that can have merit.

Of course, the 'flat black rectangle' effect also implies a shift from traditional form-follows-function I.D. to a broader, UX-centric approach to design (i.e. some argue that Apple's focus on iOS7 is simply a sign that they've shifted from hardware innovation to the UX/software experience). What is the relationship between hardware and UX?

Hardware is an integral part of UX. A true "user experience" is multi-sensory: when you engage with something, don't you see, feel, hear, maybe even smell that which you are engaging with? (I'm not sure why anybody refers to solely screen-based interactions as "UX"; that notion is outdated) As an Industrial Designer, I am a designer of User Experience. ID has gotten richer since we've started considering "living technology" as a material. By "living technology," I mean those elements that bring objects to life, that make them animate and tie them to other parts of the world around us: sensors, screens, haptics, connectivity, software, etc. By claiming these elements as part of our domain (or by tightly embedding their respective expert designers/engineers in our teams), we are able to create holistic designs that are greater than the sums of their parts.

This is the eighth profile in our series on American design entrepreneurs, looking at how they got where they are, what they do all day, and what advice they have for other designers running their own businesses. Read last week's profile here.

In 2004, when Kevin Williams co-founded OgoSport with a friend from the Pratt Institute, Rick Goodwin, they had a simple philosophy: design toys to get people moving and thinking, toys that wouldn't silence kids with distraction but encourage active play and creativity. (The "Ogo" part of the name stands for Oh, Go Outside.)

Soon, products like the Super SportsDisk—which can be slung like a Frisbee or used to catch and throw balls, among other possibilities—were winning awards and getting airtime from the likes of Regis & Kelly and Stephen Colbert. Today, the company has an extensive portfolio of clever toys that embrace the same spirit of creative play, like the OGOBILD Pod, a lightweight construction set you can kick, spin and throw.

Getting established in the saturated toy market was not an easy road, however. "The toy business has a low barrier to entry," says partner Jenie Fu, who joined OgoSport in 2008. "Anyone can get into it."

As a result, making a name—and a profit—can be challenging. "Some people hope for a get-rich-quick path, which isn't attainable in hard products," Williams says. "Maybe it is in technology, but in this case we know that we will have to grow organically."

Left: Kevin Williams and Jenie Fu. Right: VOLO Darts

In fact, Williams initially continued to run his (now defunct) product design consultancy, Make, while launching the toy company. "That business was paying the bills for the first three or four years after I started OgoSport," he says.

It wasn't always clear that Williams, who grew up in New Orleans and had an early affinity for making things, would go on to launch several industrial design businesses. "As a kid, I always had these projects at home, like Frankenstein-ing bikes together," he says. "Since I could make stuff, I thought that I should make buildings, so I went to school for architecture. In my third year, an ID firm came and presented to us. And I remember going, 'Oh, crap! I'm in the wrong program.'"

Williams later graduated with Goodwin from Pratt's industrial design master's program. They both went on to do other things, but would get together every few months to brainstorm. "After a few years of this, Rick says: 'Lets go make toys together!'" Williams remembers. Goodwin later brought in Fu, who was one of his students at Pratt.

OgoSport now sustains a total of seven employees (including Williams and Fu), plus two consultants—but, Fu says, each year is still an unknown. "Major events have happened every year where we've thought: This could be it," she says. "We didn't freak out and we dealt with it the best we could, and we came through."

Core77 is pleased to partner with Windows Phone to bring you a series of photo diaries this summer. Based on the theme of Reinvention, we're looking to capture the fleeting moments and highlight the often-overlooked facets of the world around us through the lens of the Nokia Lumia 928, especially in the low-light settings in which its camera excels. (All photos were taken with the Nokia Lumia 928 smartphone and are published without postproduction unless otherwise noted.)

Reporting & photos by Ray Hu & Teshia Treuhaft

Now in its 16th year, MoMA PS1's summer concert series Warm Up brings contemporary art, architecture and design together with food and live music for a weekly outdoor festival in the unique setting of a former school courtyard. The series kicked off in late June with a powerhouse line-up the first weekend featuring the artists from the Berlin-based experimental and electronica label PAN_ACT. As the sun set on the first Warm Up of the season, Detroit techno legend Juan Atkins took the stage to the delight of the thousands of day-drinking revelers in the hippest corner of Queens.

The Martinez Brothers closed out the second edition, on July 6, with a solid two-hour set of four-on-the-floor house music, and the momentum had only grown by the following week, which saw record attendance of 5,000+ partygoers. Tickets sold out within the first couple hours of the show (the event is from 3–9pm), as fans filled the expansive courtyard for a lineup including self-proclaimed "Canadian Prince" (and Pitchfork darling) Ryan Hemsworth, Brooklyn-based noise-techno artist Pete Swanson and Detroit legend Marc Kinchen (pictured above and at bottom).

Driver's license, credit cards, keys. These are objects all of us carry, yet ironically they are all unique, personalized to us. They all link to our identity. You enter your apartment via a mechanism that prevents others from entering when you're not there. You are allowed to walk out of a supermarket laden with food because a card reader subtracted the value from your bank account. You are allowed through the security checkpoint because your license proves that that is your airplane ticket. But if a Finland-based company called Uniqul has their way, these identity-proving intermediaries could become obsolete.

Uniqul's facial recognition technology is apparently good enough—and safe enough, employing "military grade algorithms"—that their system would enable you to conduct transactions with nothing more than your face. We've all lost or forgotten wallets and keys, but it's tough to leave your grill on the dresser or have it removed from your person (outside of a John Woo movie, anyway). Here's how they envision it working:

You've probably heard American actors or models—people who earn their living by having pretty mugs—jokingly and slangily referring to their face as "the cash register." Perhaps that phrase will make its way into Finnish, as Uniqul will shortly be deploying the system in Helsinki.

This is the fifth installment of our Core77 Questionnaire. We'll be posting a new interview every other Tuesday.

Name:Paul Cocksedge

Occupation: Designer

Location: East London

Current projects: It's very varied. We're doing furniture and sculptural lamps and a very interesting architectural project in London. We're doing bicycle accessories and a mass-produced, self-initiated electronics project. We have an exhibition opening at Friedman Benda in New York in September. So the scales vary a lot, and the projects vary a lot as well.

Mission: I think it's what all designers want to do, really. Designers want to work on original projects that move us forward a little bit, that make people see the world in different ways, and that bring some joy and wonder and enlightenment somehow. That's what I do.

During last year's London Design Festival, Cocksedge created Auditorium, a temporary installation hand-woven from nylon wire. Photos by Mark Cocksedge.

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? I was about 17 or 18. It was when I realized that I couldn't become an airline pilot—because I realized that I was actually scared of flying. Honestly. I had studied mathematics and physics; I was prepping for that world. And then I started bringing the arts into my world, and it slowly became design.

Education: I went to university and studied industrial design innovation. And then I went to the Royal College of Art, and it was almost about unlearning all of that and figuring out your own process. The Royal College was a beautiful moment in my career. It was under Ron Arad and these fantastic tutors, really beautiful minds and free thinkers. It changed my life.

First design job: I've never had a design job apart from the one that I created for myself.

Who is your design hero? You know, it's interesting. You see work by designers, and that's one side of the story. But then when you meet that person, that's the other side of the story. For me, I need to like the work and like the person, because the work that I really admire comes from within people's souls. They're not designing because they're told they have to design something; they're designing because they have this burning desire to create something, and that comes from a completely different place than the everyday-job idea of being a designer. So people like Ron Arad, Ingo Maurer—these kinds of people guide me.

Above: Cocksedge in his London studio. Below: Change the Record, a smartphone loudspeaker made from recycled vinyl LPs.

As an individual with the good fortune of being born and raised in the United States of America, I can't say that I've ever witnessed a bombing or any other kind of terror-related attack, much less lived with the potential threat of such as a facet of day-to-day existence. Politics aside, many major conurbations in Israel are hotbeds of guerilla activity, and civilians are trained to heed air raid sirens with Pavlovian efficacy. Yet simply taking cover doesn't guarantee one's safety, an issue that designer Hila Raam tackled with her recent graduation project, the Rhinoskin.

Raam won the Best Final Project award for the backpack, which incorporates kevlar panels—discreetly integrated into an otherwise unassuming bag design—to protect one's head and torso in dangerous situations. Thus, it is an unobtrusive solution for residents of "countries or areas that are under daily attacks, protecting against debris and impact created from missile and rocket attacks."

Everything in the built world has been designed and crafted by someone. This is not news to most of us, but I'm amazed that even as engineering and design have taken more visible roles in shaping how we experience the world, there are still so many who see themselves as consumers, not makers.

We Are Makers is a new short film that explores the workshops and institutions shaping a new generation of makers and designers. It's the first documentary on the Maker Movement—a global cultural shift aimed at empowering more people to create. Most of the film was shot on location in New York last spring in places like the School of Visual Arts, NYC Resistor and the New York Hall of Science. But it wasn't at all clear from the beginning that the film would take the shape it eventually did.

I work with a team of media producers and storytellers at Abilene Christian University, and when we were approached to produce a film on making in education, the goal was purely local, something focused on our immediate community. Faculty and staff at ACU were planning a large digital fabrication space to support engineers, designers and makers on campus, and the film we produced would essentially make the case for this new idea. Over the course of several interviews in just a couple of weeks, we realized we were tapping into a broader story about the full spectrum of makers in museums, hacker clubs, design schools, creative businesses and communities everywhere.

It's clear today there's a growing emphasis on craftsmanship and a return to making with the hand, that we can and should reclaim this somehow-forgotten part of our human identity. But I've noticed there's a certain complexity to this new movement that distinguishes it from past eras of DIY and craft. This is an open movement. It blurs the lines between disciplines, it encourages the generalist, and it seeks to bring together makers of all kinds. Today, the focus is on increasing access. It's about fostering a universal sense of creativity, and it's about making sure the tools are within reach for everyone.

In our visits with Dale Dougherty of Make Magazine, Allan Chochinov of SVA and Core77, Liz Arum of MakerBot and the others we've captured in the film, it quickly became clear this was not really a story about tools or places; the human element took center stage. It's not hard to imagine how this struck us. As makers ourselves, immersed daily in the creative process, this project felt deeply personal and intimate in an uncanny way: this was also a story about us.

Everything in the built world has been designed and crafted by someone. This is not news to most of us, but I'm amazed that even as engineering and design have taken more visible roles in shaping how we experience the world, there are still so many who see themselves as consumers, not makers.

We Are Makers is a new short film that explores the workshops and institutions shaping a new generation of makers and designers. It's the first documentary on the Maker Movement—a global cultural shift aimed at empowering more people to create. Most of the film was shot on location in New York last spring in places like the School of Visual Arts, NYC Resistor and the New York Hall of Science. But it wasn't at all clear from the beginning that the film would take the shape it eventually did.

I work with a team of media producers and storytellers at Abilene Christian University, and when we were approached to produce a film on making in education, the goal was purely local, something focused on our immediate community. Faculty and staff at ACU were planning a large digital fabrication space to support engineers, designers and makers on campus, and the film we produced would essentially make the case for this new idea. Over the course of several interviews in just a couple of weeks, we realized we were tapping into a broader story about the full spectrum of makers in museums, hacker clubs, design schools, creative businesses and communities everywhere.

It's clear today there's a growing emphasis on craftsmanship and a return to making with the hand, that we can and should reclaim this somehow-forgotten part of our human identity. But I've noticed there's a certain complexity to this new movement that distinguishes it from past eras of DIY and craft. This is an open movement. It blurs the lines between disciplines, it encourages the generalist, and it seeks to bring together makers of all kinds. Today, the focus is on increasing access. It's about fostering a universal sense of creativity, and it's about making sure the tools are within reach for everyone.

In our visits with Dale Dougherty of Make Magazine, Allan Chochinov of SVA and Core77, Liz Arum of MakerBot and the others we've captured in the film, it quickly became clear this was not really a story about tools or places; the human element took center stage. It's not hard to imagine how this struck us. As makers ourselves, immersed daily in the creative process, this project felt deeply personal and intimate in an uncanny way: this was also a story about us.

Now that you've checked out our series on wood movement, you'll understand why Steinway & Sons air-dry their wood for a year, then kiln-dry it. You'll also understand why they select quartersawn lumber for their soundboards. And whether you're an industrial designer familiar with factories or just a civilian, you're bound to be fascinated by how this massive machine—one that is 85% wood—all comes together. The bentwood laminating alone is pretty nuts, requiring six guys to lift the layers of hard rock maple that will become the piano's sides. Check it out:

wants a Men's Activewear Designer
in Portland, Oregon

Do you see fine fabric textures and patterns in every day environments around you? Do you constantly crave exposure to global fashion trends and sparks of apparel inspiration from unexpected places? Most importantly, do you have 5+ years of men's or activewear design experience?

If so, Perry Ellis International wants you to take on their entire design process from market research, to seasonal design strategy, to creative concepting, inspiration boards, print & color direction, designing styles and developing appropriate fit and execution of designs.

Sound like the perfect opportunity? Apply Now before it's gone!

In what might be considered as the predecessor to greenwashing, the long-standing directive to buy products that are made from recycled materials is perhaps not necessarily the most eco-conscious option. For the latest issue of the eQ Journal, Sappi's sustainability brand takes a deep dive into the pros and cons of post-consumer waste to impart a more nuanced understanding of recycled fiber and its unique constraints.

Some consumers focus on purchasing paper with a high percentage of recycled fiber. This drive for recycled content is often based on the false assumption that more recycled fiber in every product and paper grade is always better for the environment.

In reality, there are many other factors involved in the life cycle of paper, and these factors can only be fully understood and quantified by taking a comprehensive Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) approach. LCA accounts for the environmental impact of every step involved in the life of paper—this includes everything from material acquisition and processing to end use and disposal.

Sappi uses LCA to determine what applications of recycled fiber (and at which levels) can yield the most benefit. As it turns out, many Sappi papers that do not contain recycled fiber have a significantly lower carbon footprint than other papers on the market that do contain recycled fiber.

The 30+ page document is full of interesting facts: "The U.S. EPA encourages use of the term 'recovered fiber' over 'waste' to acknowledge that this material is a valuable resource"; "It is possible to recycle fiber an estiamted 4–7 times, but in reality... as much as 80% of the fiber can be lost after two rounds of collection and processing."

The logos are available for download

» See the short intro video and download the PDF here.

Core77's Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club is thrilled for tonight's presentation from Brett Binford and Chris Lyon of Mudshark Studios, as they share their journey from the basement to their current location in a 17,000 sq. ft. warehouse!

Tonight's talk starts at 6pm at the Hand-Eye Supply store in Portland, OR. Come early and check out our space or check in with us online for the live broadcast!

Brett Binford and Chris Lyon
Mudshark Studios: "Navigating Uncharted Waters"
Hand-Eye Supply
23 NW 4th Ave
Portland, OR 97209
Tuesday, July 23rd, 6pm PST

Mudshark is a private label ceramic manufacturing company that was founded in 2006 by Brett Binford and Chris Lyon and started in the basement of a rental house. In two short years the company grew to need more space but lacked the financial liquidity to afford both studio and house rent, so they purchased a home with 5,000 sq feet of garages in NE Portland. After operating out of the three garages for three years, they found themselves yet again over capacity and looked to expand to a more industrial setting. In the winter of 2011, Mudshark began moving its operation from the garages to a 17000 sq. foot warehouse. in the following year Mudshark grew from eight employees to 24. Brett and Chris currently operate at Mudshark's Production studio, co-own and operate the Portland Growler Company, maintain a private studio rental facility for eight ceramic professionals, and have opened an all ceramic gallery called Eutectic Gallery. They will be touching on both the business and the artist side of growth as well as showing many client examples and process images.

Mudshark Studios LLC. is dedicated to the development and success of our client's ideas. We strive to manufacture the highest quality product in a timely fashion. By informing our clients of the various processes used, we can assess and implement the most effective methods to fit their production needs.

Our primary goal at Mudshark Studios LLC. is to meet and exceed our clients expectations. We aspire to promote the creative process in the local community and beyond. We take pride in working with a wide variety of artists ranging from newly established designers as well as accomplished producers and designers.

During several wintertime visits I've made to the Scandinavia, I found the nearly 24 hours of darkness novel; but living there, I'd find it depressing. It's natural to crave sunlight, and now the Norwegian municipality of Rjukan is enacting a nearly 100-year-old plan to bring some Sol into their town square. Three huge mirrors (totaling 100 square meters) known as heliostats will be placed atop a nearby mountain. Sensors and motors will adjust the mirrors to reflect sunlight directly onto the combination town square/skating rink, providing a sunny spot where people will naturally want to gather.

The concept isn't new; the long-since-passed town founder and engineer Sam Eyde reportedly first had the idea in the 1920s, but lacked the technology to make it work. And at least two other sun-starved municipalities developed similar plans: Austria's Rattenberg looked into installing 30 heliostatic mirrors in 2005, though their US $2.4 million plan was ultimately scuttled. The tiny Italian village of Viganella, however, successfully installed their own 8-meter by 5-meter mirror the very next year.

Viganella's story in particular was unusual and interesting enough that filmmaker David Christensen made a documentary about it. Called Lo Specchio ("The Mirror"), the trailer is below: