Finally, a sport that tests your biology, design and photography skills, along with your patience. Aquascaping—competitive aquarium design—is a completely real thing and the finished products are amazing. Hundreds of competitors flock to The International Aquatic Plants Layout Contest year after year to show off their water gardening skills.

The landscapes come off more dream-like than anything else—only when you notice tiny fish and other aquarium dwellers in the nooks and crannies of the photos that you're convinced it's real. I bet many of you, like me, shudder at the thought of how long it takes to clean the tank; an award-winning aquascape can take months to years to complete.

A jellyfish-inspired drone might not garner as much media buzz as the Amazon Delivery Drones or make an Hollywood entrance like the Star Trek promotion featuring a batch of "Hummingbird" drones, but its design is noteworthy for other reasons.

According to a story on National Geographic, researchers at New York University have created a drone design that mimics the movements of a jellyfish in action (click through to view the unembeddable video of the design in flight). Applied Mathematician Leif Ristroph was looking to create a device inspired by insect wings, but ran into a few issues with the idea:

Insects have built-in sensors and feedback that help them stay upright. Drones based on insect wings need the same support. But motors, sensors and batteries add weight, which becomes problematic for people looking to design smaller and smaller drones. I wanted to design something that had stability without the stability-sensor needs.

The team that designed the Nest Thermostat and Nest Protect is looking for a talented Industrial Designer. They are passionate about reinventing unloved but important home products by redefining human interaction and its aesthetic quality with strong attention to detail.

At Nest you will collaborate closely with Engineering, Operations and the User Experience group to fulfill the complex demands of modern industrial production. With a holistic and user oriented approach Industrial Designers at Nest create delightful products that are simple and easy to use as well as having a good quality build. The Designers accompany and influence the product development process from concept till ramp. Check out the requirements on the next page and Apply Now.

Michael DiTullo is the Chief Design Officer at Sound United, Polk's parent company.

There is an old story about Picasso that goes something like this: A young woman recognizes old Pablo on the street and exclaims "OMG! You're Picasso! Would you draw me?" He replies "but of course!" and quickly scribbles something on a piece of scrap paper. Offering the sketch to her he simply states "That will be $25,000 madam." Shocked, she responds "What?! It only took you 30 seconds!" To which Picasso explains, "On the contrary, it took my entire life to make that drawing."

That simple notion—to encompass everything we have learned in over 40 years of making great audio in a single product—is the concept behind the Hampden. Polk got its start in Baltimore by a small group engineering majors from Johns Hopkins who loved music so much they started making speakers by hand. Beautiful, wooden cabinet speakers. The brand spent decades perfecting the art of making great home audio for those who shared their love for music.

This project began like most projects in our studio: as a simple user insight. While people love music just as much as they did in 1972, they now enjoy it very differently. We wanted to create something that brought our sound to the desktop with USB and Bluetooth connectivity and built off of our recently launched Polk Heritage Collection of speakers and headphones. We stated with an open competition amongst our designers. Our studio is set up similar to an auto studio where multiple designers participate in the research, ideation and design phases of a program. As the concepts are winnowed down through the design phase, the creator of the winning design becomes the lead designer of the project. I prefer running things like this because it becomes a very democratic way to assign projects. Designers being naturally a touch competitive typically ensures a relatively even distribution of projects.

Some of the initial concept directions

Cameron Nielsen's selected thumbnail sketch

Editor's note: For our ongoing Getting Hired series, we asked design firms to send us a few images of their recent work—but Smart Design volunteered to instead create a series of illustrations about its hiring process, which you'll find here.

Smart Design is about people. This mantra applies as equally to the end user of a vegetable peeler as to one of the company's 120 employees. Sarah Szeflinski, Smart's "HR team of one," makes sure of that by keeping in touch with everyone who comes through the front door, including the firm's former employees. Since 1980, Smart Design has cultivated a focused, human-centered approach, most evident in its 20-year relationship with OXO, a partnership that has resulted in more than 750 products that exemplify the principles of universal design. Szeflinski divides her time between support and HR for the company's three studios, in New York, San Francisco and Barcelona.

Can you walk us through your process for hiring a new designer?

Logistically, recruiting is centralized through me. I'll write and post job ads to Twitter, LinkedIn, Core77, et cetera. The designers, engineers and researchers then submit their portfolios online. I'll review everything and do a gut check on whether its Smart quality, and make sure they meet all the minimum qualifications. I'll then forward those candidates' materials to the hiring manager to make sure there is interest.

If candidates are local, we generally bring them on-site to meet with a small group of people. If they're not local, we'll usually do a Skype interview first. If that first interview goes well, we'll do an on-site follow-up to meet with a more multidisciplinary team, and they'll get a tour of the studio.

For us, even interviewing is a collaborative process. We like to do small group interviews for a couple of reasons. Everyone hears the candidate answer at the same time, which is a similar approach to how we do design research. Everybody in the interview might hear or interpret the candidate's response a little bit differently, and all of those interpretations are helpful in making our final decision. We also want to give the candidates exposure to a lot of different "Smarties," to really give them a taste of the people and the disciplines that they would work with. It also helps us determine their comfort level in group settings with different backgrounds. We need to make sure that designers can speak to non-designers.

At first glance, the Dream Chair looks like a concept, with impossible curves and a seemingly precarious structure that appears as if it could only exist in a 3D rendering. Yet the Danish manufacturer Carl Hansen & Søn took Tadao Ando's dream and made it reality with a chair that stands as a feat of both manufacturing and fantasy.

The project originated with Carl Hansen & Søn (CHS). Looking to create a tribute to the great Danish furniture designer Hans Wegner, CHS approached Ando to develop a design for a lounge chair. "I have been an admirer of Wegner's craftsmanship for many years," the Pritzker Prize–winning Japanese architect said in a press release. "This was new to me, as in the past I have been used to only selecting furniture for the buildings I have created over the years."

During their first meeting in Japan, CHS informed Ando of some of the restrictions of working with wood and veneer, which he wrote in his memo book, and then waited for him to bring back his first concepts. "When we saw the first sketches and drawings, we knew that to make this chair would be one of the biggest challenges that we have ever faced in Carl Hansen & Søn," says Melissa Shelton, CHS's director of marketing and communication. "Not only was the chair large, but the bending of the veneer was designed beyond what had ever been made."

This is the "before" shot, peep the "after" in the video below
Photo by John Pickard

Once upon a time, sawmills were located exclusively on rivers. Being next to water had multiple advantages: Trees felled upstream were simply floated down the river to the mill, easing transport; a backlog (pardon the pun) of logs could be left floating in the water as temporary storage; a waterwheel in the river could power the actual sawblade; and boats could easily access the sawmill to take the finished lumber away.

It's been a long time since lumberjacks routinely floated logs down a river, but waterborne vessels are of course still used to transport lumber. This week an amazing video surfaced of the Seaspan Harvester, a timber barge designed to unload its cargo in a crazy way—by tilting sideways to dump it into the water:

Palette buttons can be re-arranged and customized by the user.

As any artist, designer or technologist will tell you, we rely on a wide variety of software in our day to day lives, from the Adobe Creative Suite to some sort of office bundle, as well as music and movie editing software. Each of these programs has custom controls on the software side, but on the hardware side we have the same set of tools: a keyboard and a mouse.

And while the multiple buttons of a keyboard are endlessly adaptable, that same sort of logic doesn't apply in other interactive environments. Think, for instance, about the vast difference between driving a car and riding a motorcycle, or playing a video game on Playstation vs. operating a remote control for a television. Although the input devices and mechanisms share some obvious, similarities, the hardware experience varies substantially.

Which is why I was excited to learn about Palette, a "freeform controller" made of movable, interchangeable parts. Starting with the building blocks of buttons, dials and sliders, Palette allows users to create custom controllers based on how they want to interact with the computer.

The minimal aesthetic belies the original inspiration behind Palette. "Looking back at old transistor radios and war era type machines," noted CEO Calvin Chu, who observed that these devices were "really robust." "Why not make a way that even with all these different use cases, we could abstract these elements and rearrange them in different ways, just like Lego blocks?"

What's made out of leather, already broken-in, and gathering dust in the closet of most red-blooded American males of a certain age? A baseball glove. And for every one of you that still pulls yours out in the spring, there are probably nine of us that prefer to wear out the leather in our armchairs.

A company called Fielder's Choice Goods has been getting their hands on this worn-leather bonanza and turning ex-mitts into wallets, belts and keychains.

The last thing some of us urbanites might want is someone getting a close-up of our face while we're waiting (most likely impatiently) for a train home in rush hour crowds. But that's exactly what Adam Magyar is doing with his series "Stainless"—and he's making us all (collectively) look artsy and awesome through slow-motion 'portraits' of public transit platforms.

Side-by-side is a trip (apologies to Magyar for the cheap thrill)

Those are excerpts of Magyar's footage of Alexanderplatz in Berlin and 42nd St/Grand Central Station in New York City. The films were created with a backpack-concealed camera that shoots footage of train platforms from inside approaching cars. It's pretty eerie the way quick gestures are still movements in a mostly frozen frame, but with a small fraction of the speed. Hair flips, hands grabbing for bags, children chasing each other—they're all turned into scenes straight out of Kirsten Dunst's semi-smashing (and super depressing) apocalypse film, Melancholia:

The Thursday night of Cologne's Interior Design Week traditionally sees everyone heading to Design Parcours Ehrenfeld, grabbing one of the many drinks on offer, and promenading the city's most diverse and creative neighborhood. Ehrenfeld is home to a variety of converted warehouses, owner-run shops, bars, clubs, and creative businesses—and, during this time of the year, draws in even more of the latter. True to its alternative vibe, a lot of the work on show blurs the lines between art, design and fashion; sustainable design and local manufacturing are also recurring themes.

Designers Fair at DQE is one of the busiest shows every year. Amongst the crowds, Vase & Leuchte by Miriam Aust caught our eye because of the clever integration of the plant as part of the design. The object is distributed by Dua Shop, who specialize in realizing small batch series together with designers and small factories.

Another lamp on show by Dua Shop was Like Paper, designed by Aust & Amelung. The delicate appearance juxtaposes the fact that these lamps are actually made from slewed concrete, which displays the properties of the paper cast it is made in.

The Urchin, a pebble-shaped "ready for anything" Bluetooth speaker designed by frog and home audio manufacturer Sound United

This is the sixth post in our Getting Hired series. Last week we talked to key HR personnel at LUNAR, IDEO, Philips, BMW Group Designworks USA and Smart Design.

In a twist on the more famous dictum, frog design's founder, Harmut Esslinger, once stated that "form follows emotion." With an emphasis on designing products and experiences that connect beyond mere functionality, frog has stayed true to this ethos over its 44 years in business. The company's 600 employees are loosely divided into three informal categories: designers, technologists and strategists. Kerstin Felix, who has been frog's Global Head of Human Resources for eight years, oversees the HR team in the company's 15 offices. James Cortese, frog's Director of Marketing, also contributed to this interview.

Can you walk us through your process for hiring a new industrial designer?

Kerstin Felix: For every discipline we have a special process. Every job opening is always on the website—but it makes sense to apply even if there's not a job opening. As a consultancy, it's important that we maintain a pipeline of candidates.

It's most important for us to see your portfolio. We prefer either a PDF or a link to your website. I would say it's less about your school degree and more about your skill set, your personality and your past experience. In the best case scenario, you know somebody within frog, because referrals get handled with extra care.

If we think the portfolio is strong enough, we invite the candidate to an initial screening call handled by the recruiter. After that, we invite candidates into our studio, and we start the interview process with a portfolio presentation. Here they have a chance to meet different levels of employees, not only managers but designers as well. They also get a look and feel—who are the people that they might work with in the future? The portfolio presentations gives candidates a chance to tell a story, to showcase their own personal experience and to convince the people in the room that they are the right fit.

What makes good candidates stand out?

KF: When you look at the portfolio, ideally it blows you away. That's basic. At frog it's the culture fit that's so important, because we know that even if a candidate has the perfect technical skill-set, they can create much more damage than benefit if they're not a cultural match. It's important for the morale and the team in general to find people who fit.

James Cortese: I'm trying to qualify what makes a frog. It's a combination of someone who has an original point of view, but they're also very democratic and open to new ideas. There's a willingness to challenge their own assumptions based on what they've learned from the people around them and the people that they work with. A sense of irreverence tempered by a sense of professionalism.

KF: I sometimes even used the word rebel. You need to be a rebel in your heart, which means that you like to challenge and question things—but you are also able to play on a team. We work in a consultancy, so it's important to understand that we are passionate about changing the world, but we're also a business.

Kerstin Felix, frog's global head of human resources, and James Cortese, the director of marketing

"This One Weird Trick" and "[Number] [Superlative] You Must See!" notwithstanding, "Technology Is Making Us [negative attribute]er" is among those sign-of-the-times headlines that reliably attracts fingertips and the eyeballs connected to them, and it remains an ever-relevant (and at times evergreen) topic du siècle. (Here's where I recommend Luke O'Neil's recent polemic on this disturbing trend in clickbaiting before diving right in.) Even as the pendulum—more a katamari than a wrecking ball—continues to swing between the poles of pro- and anti-technology, so too have new developments in mobile, the Internet of Things and overarching privacy concerns added a proverbial Z-axis to the playing field.

Professor Keith Hampton of Rutgers is, by the New York Times' account, "neither a reactionary about technology, innately skeptical of the new, nor a utopian, eager to trumpet every invention as revolutionary. He is instead a sanguine optimist—a position he says is backed up by his research." Along with a cadre of grad students, he's spent the past several years working on what might be described as a shot-for-shot remake of an urban investigation from nearly half a century prior. Hampton is revisiting William Whyte's seminal Street Life Project, in which he filmed public spaces in a first-of-its-kind study of urban planning by observing user behavior.

Thus, he's taking up the cause—gathering empirical data in the interest of a more human-centric approach to urbanism—with a specific focus on mobile technology. As its title suggests, the Magazine feature—a worthwhile read for design researchers and city-dwellers alike—presents Hampton's finding that "Technology Is Not Driving Us Apart After All."

Fellow armchair sociologists who are pressed for time at the moment—I, too, have feeds to scroll through and e-mails to delete—might be interested in a brief post by Columbia's Tim Wu, his first contribution to the New Yorker's tech blog. He proposes, in so many words, a kind of Turing test for a time traveller as a means of determining whether technology is making us smarter or dumber. He concludes that "how you answer the question of whether we are getting smarter depends on how you classify 'we'"—whether you regard technology as an extension of the mind or as an external factor of purely incidental import.

Yet the most fascinating thing that Hampton found (spoiler alert, sort of) is the fact that more women are out and about in these spaces in New York, Boston and Philadelphia. "Who would've thought that, in America, 30 years ago, women were not in public the same way they are now? We don't think about that."

In this series, Matthew Sullivan (AQQ Design) highlights some designers that you should know, but might not. Previously, he looked at the work of Ugo La Pietra.

Luigi Caccia Dominioni: Born in Milan, Italy, 1913

The beauty of form is either a digression or a clarification. In the latter case—clarification—time or collective use is the shaper of form, as in the way a spoon or any quotidian object is morphed by broad utility through generations. The former case, the digressive, is when an individual journeys into an exclusive focus on the shape of a particular thing; this is the singular task of designers, generally speaking. This is true for the deceptive simplicity of Dieter Rams as well as the material arabesques of Ettore Sottsass. To be clear, contrary to popular opinion, a designer doesn't clarify, she/he explores. An individual can't possibly control the unforeseen and logistical, like the cosmic economy of collectivity, so it is giving shape to the mystery of memory and preference that really informs a designer's quarry.

In light of the above lines, the work of Luigi Caccia Dominioni is an impeccable example of what a single designer can achieve. His 70-plus years of work have yielded buildings and objects of a deep sensitivity.

Above: Dominioni's 1953 Monachella floor lamp for Azucena. Top image: the Ambrosianeum Chair from 1955 (left) and the Luis Chair from 2003

Dominioni is an architect and a designer. At university he studied under Luigi Moretti (a first-wave Italian modernist), which seems to have been a fairly influential tutelage, as Dominioni's architectural work has consistently been in close dialogue with this first phase of modernism. His professional life started successfully, designing objects and interiors with the Castiglioni brothers (Achille, Livio and Pier Giacomo). He is often quoted as saying that a good building is designed from the inside out, and this idea was surely the catalyst for Dominioni's 1947 opening of Azucena, a design firm focusing on furniture and objects. From then on, Dominioni was a cornerstone of the post-war generation of Italian architects, alongside Franco Albini, Ico Parisi, Ignacio Gardella, Osvaldo Borsani, Angelo Mangiarotti and Carlo Mollino.

When looking at Dominioni's designs, it is important to keep in mind that European homes, unlike those in the U.S., are often older, having ornamental notes in the keys of different eras (at times classical, sometimes even ancient). And, even if a particular building is totally new, the street on which it rests typically presents an array of historical perspectives. American designers working in parallel with Dominioni (George Nelson, Charles Eames, etc.) were less confined and were often designing toward unbuilt, forward-looking vistas. The shapes of much midcentury modernist Italian furniture, due to said architectural constraints, have a modern feel, but with accents more inclusive of a multitude of situations; whereas much American furniture can feel of the time. Dominioni's Monachella floor lamp (1953), Ambrosianeum chair (1955), Boccia sconce (1967) and Pipistrello desk (1998) speak to this versatility amazingly well.

The Pipistrello desk for Azucena (1998)

Inspired by the hoverboard Michael J. Fox cruises around on in Back to the Future Part II, ex-IDEO'er Kyle Doerksen created the Onewheel. A self-balancing electric monowheel skateboard, the Onewheel seemingly replicates the feeling of riding around on a hoverboard (if not the form factor), and even a novice can purportedly pick up how to ride one in less than a minute; in addition to the self-balancing feature, riders can accelerate by leaning forward and slow down by leaning back, as with a Segway.

The 25-pound device will do 12 m.p.h., with a range of four to six miles. Charging the lithium battery takes from 20 minutes to two hours, depending on what type of charger you use. And the monowheel design means that maintenance is a lot simpler than it would be for a bicycle: "There's literally only one moving part—the wheel," writes Doerksen. "No gears, belts or chains to maintain."

And yes, the Onewheel is real, not just a concept; Doerksen and his team have it up on Kickstarter, where it's already tripled its $100,000 goal. Check out the video:

Situated in the Messe Koeln along the bank of the Rhine, the IMM Cologne is the business hub for everything furniture and interior related. More than 1,100 companies show their work, from small brands to large scale international manufacturers. To bring you the highlights, we have strolled the southern parts of the vast venue, where the focus is set on design and innovation. Our favorites include Scandinavian interior design, unique materials, and exciting applications for new manufacturing processes.

IMM Cologne nominates a different designer each year to envision their ideal future home, Das Haus. This year, the guest of honor is danish-english furniture and interior designer Louise Campbell. She turned the 240 square meter stage into an open-plan house made out of two timber-framed halves that are visually separated by different color schemes. Amongst the highlights inside were a massive wall in the kitchen featuring 573 tools (at top) and a 16 meter long bed/lounger that was well enjoyed by tired fairgoers.

The Stage hosted lectures and panel discussions with a broad variety of topics ranging from the psychology of color and Bauhaus furniture to leather production and organic hotel interiors.

The German Design Council organized the 11th edition of the annual D3 Contest at IMM, and showed the works of design students and young designers. We liked Jin Il Park's Drawing Chair, which made us feel like we had stepped into a sketch on a napkin. He achieved the scribble effect by hammering, irregularly bending and then welding thin wires.

Left: A community map with measured dimensions. Right: Iso-metric illustrated version of the community based on reference photos. This was developed to make the map more engaging and fun. Righthand illustration by Boyeon Choi.

In the field of design and technology today, deeply understanding users in their local context is an essential part to the design process. A holistic understanding of users generates empathy and a specificity of experience that enables designers to create valuable solutions for markets, communities and individuals.

In our field work in Uganda's rural north and Kampala, its capital and largest city, we took the unique opportunity to conduct research, as designers, into informal technology usage from a more complex and discovery-based perspective. Jeff focused on informal electricity bypassing in an urban community in Kampala, and An looked at how youth transfer media files via Bluetooth in northern Uganda. These are the stories that emerged after a hybrid approach of design, ethnography and other research methods to understand the systems and structures in place and build relationships with individuals working and living in these contexts.

In an increasingly globalized world, local contexts matter more than ever before. Rich, deep ethnographic stories can communicate the complex conditions under which communities and individuals make decisions regarding technology use in their everyday lives. These stories in turn inform design decisions around technology development and practical use. As Jessica Weber and John Cheng recently argued in UX Magazine, "Ethnography reveals how digital and physical processes work together to help businesses address gaps and focus on the entire customer experience."

We present two examples of user stories from our research into informal systems, as well as the visual forms we developed to communicate it. It was essential to use visualization to engage the designers and researchers in a developed, U.S. context to translate the unique characteristics of the informal systems for those who couldn't experience them firsthand. Visualizing the conditions and the systematic influences at work through user-generated drawings, maps, videos and photographic documentation placed them in context, helping to reframe these stories in a manner that permitted audiences in the United States to make judgments based on local values and their emergent informal usage of technology.

Project Loon's consumer-side antenna. Photos by Talia Herman.

This is the seventh post in our Getting Hired series. Yesterday, we talked to recruiters at frog design.

Earlier this month, Core77 ran an exclusive look at the design team behind Google X, the semi-secret lab responsible for Glass, self-driving cars, stratospheric Internet balloons and other projects they won't tell anyone about. As we described in that story, X is actively looking for new design talent—so as part of our ongoing Getting Hired series, we wanted to provide some job-seeking advice for readers who think they have what it takes to work in Google's "moonshot factory." For that, we turned to Ricardo Prada, who leads X's central user-experience team, which essentially incubates new projects. Prada and his researchers crystallize concepts, design early prototypes and test products with real users as soon as possible. As a hiring manager, Prada also negotiates resources, sets hiring priorities and interviews everyone who comes onto the team.

Can you walk us through your process for hiring a new designer?

We're looking for designers, user researchers and hybrids of the two. The strength of our team is in the diversity of backgrounds and perspectives that come to the table to tackle big problems. When we're considering a candidate, there are a few key components: resume, portfolio and interviews. First, the resume. We want to see a well-written and carefully designed resume that shows you're an expert in your specific area, but that you can apply your knowledge and thinking across diverse areas. Your resume should tell a "T-shaped" story that goes deep in one core area, but branches out into other areas where you've been able to apply your thinking and expertise. For example, one of our researchers, Dhvani, holds a PhD in developmental psychology, went into public policy around children, did usability testing at a tech company and went on to work with hardware in Google X. Her deep, deep understanding of how people think and learn makes her extremely adaptable.

Then, the portfolio. If we think after reviewing your resume that you might be a good fit, we'll have you come in to present your portfolio. This will give you the opportunity to tell us your story more fully. Here we want to see a breadth of ideas, but also the lens through which you see the world. The next step is in-person interviews. This part is really important because we want to get to know you. We want to know how you think about design, and how you tackle problems. We're also looking for the optimism, expertise and niceness we call "being Googley."

During the interviews, we'll give you design exercises where we ask you to spend a short amount of time trying to tackle big problems that are similar in scale to the stuff we do in Google X. For example, we've asked candidates to show us how they might design a jetpack to replace cars. Good candidates are able to break the James Bond stereotype. They might think about the ergonomics of accommodating elderly grandmothers, how to communicate flight paths, how to position and price the product in the market, or how reaction times might impact safety—and then create viable plans to get to the product launch efficiently. We also will spend a lot of time trying to understand how you think about design and the design process. What does the future of your field look like? Why should it be that way?

Ricardo Prada leads the user-experience team at Google X, which incubates new projects.

This is the latest installment of our Core77 Questionnaire. Previously, we talked to the Belgian designer Sylvain Willenz.

Name:Moritz Waldemeyer

Occupation: Designer

Location: London

Current projects: We've just delivered two really big ones. We've done a big chandelier in a new hotel in Davos, Switzerland. And then in Milan, there's a department store called La Rinascente; it's a beautiful historic building right next to the Dome, and we did the whole front of that for Christmas.

Mission: To create a new aesthetic with and for technology. It's bringing together these two different disciplines—the arts and technology—that in the past didn't really match up. They used to be very separate, but now it's interesting to see how they're merging in the world. And I'm trying to help with this merger.

For Milan's La Rinascente, Waldemeyer created a WinterWonder installation with 1,300 laser-cut snowflakes

Waldemeyer's Wave Chandelier for the Intercontinental Davos

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? It's almost as if it chose me rather than the other way around—as if there was a gravitational pull in that direction. There was never one moment when I decided, "Oh, I'm going to be a designer." It was a gradual trajectory.

Education: First I went to study international business. Then I changed to engineering. I did mechatronics—mechanical and electronic engineering—at Kings College, in London. After I graduated from engineering, that's when this design path started, which pulled me into the more creative disciplines. But I'm very happy about this engineering base, because it's just such a good foundation to build on.

First design job: I started out working as a research scientist—at least, that was my job title—at Philips. I was working in a very forward-looking area where they brought together a lot of different disciplines. That was the first time that I worked in this intersection between technology and design.

Who is your design hero? Maybe Leonardo Da Vinci, because he was one of those first multi-curious people who really can't be labeled. He would just look at anything that was out there, and it was all like one big art to him. I think he must be the ultimate hero in that respect.

Above and below: Revolution, a lighting installation for the Wallpaper* Handmade exhibition in London last October

This shot might be of Coach, but this guy's modelmaking skillz are first-class

Get this man a job as a modelmaker.

Luca Iaconi-Stewart learned to make architectural models from paper in a high school class, and found he enjoyed it. Rather than pursuing a career in architecture, Iaconi-Stewart subsequently embarked on a crazy project to build a detailed scale model of a Boeing 777, entirely out of paper.

The man has spent five years on the yet-to-be-completed project, and even sacrificed college to continue on it.