Ramsey, designer and co-founder, had an idea for the project back in 2008 and teamed up with an engineer in South Korea to create new solar collection technology. They built a system that uses heliostats — or mirrors that track the sun — to collect sunlight from the exterior, drive it into a concentrating mechanism and then redistribute it to plants underground.

“We had to build this stuff — it’s never been done. So we had to learn from it, and learn how to deploy light in a way that keeps stuff alive,” he said. “The math all works. Now we have to couple that to horticulture.”

They did the math! Underground garden for the win!

Heliostats sound very useful.