LAGI Competition 2012: NYC Powered by Art

The Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) is hosting its's bi-annual design competition again in 2012 calling for a landscape art piece deeply embedded in it's genius lokus, which is stimulating people's imagination and is able to produce renewable energy.
The site for the 2012 LAGI competition is Freshkills Park at Staten Island, NYC which offers an amazing site for inspirational design ideas as the competition website describes:
"The expansiveness of the design site at Freshkills Park presents the opportunity to power the equivalent of thousands of homes with the artwork. The stunning beauty of the reclaimed landscape and the dramatic backdrop of the Manhattan skyline will provide an opportune setting from which to be inspired, and it offers the perfect environment for a showcase example of the immense potential of aesthetically interesting renewable energy installations for sustainable urban planning."

To support networked and international design teams LAGI also hosts a social networking site, the town square, which connects individuals and teams of designers, scientists, consultants etc to form teams competing in the 2012 LAGI competition.

So all factors, wonderful site, exciting brief as well as supportive work environment are set to produce interesting proposals for the 2012 LAGI competition. The jury, also staffed with prominent designers like Bjarke Ingels or James Corner will for sure have a great time choosing the best proposals. I am curious to see how entries differ this time from the results of the 2010 LAGI competition which was located in a very different site, Dubai UAE.

Pissed-Off Christmas Tree

This year's wastemas investigation has been rather limited but I nevertheless kept my selective perception for discarded Christmas trees. This one was a nice observation reflecting the often brutal fate of Christmas trees after they have enriched our homey celebrations.
It is interesting to see that others are also concerned with discarded Christmas trees, such as Brooklyn based artist Michael Neff with his installation of hanging orphaned Christmas trees under the BQE.