Landscape Architecture Magazine
The Art of Infrastructure
March 2, 2017
By Timothy A. Schuler
"For the past six years, Godfrey has had her students participate in the biennial competition held by the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI). This year, two of her graduate landscape architecture students, Keegan Oneal, Student Affiliate ASLA, and Colin Poranski, took second place. LAGI was founded by Robert Ferry and Elizabeth Monoian in 2008 to inspire new forms for alternative energy generation. Competition sites have included Copenhagen, Denmark; New York City; and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. This year, the competition site was 2,000 feet off the shore of Santa Monica, California. It was the first time LAGI had selected an offshore site, and it raised the bar for aesthetic considerations considerably. Despite the absence of any literal backyards, there is little more fraught territory than nearshore environments, especially in affluent areas like Santa Monica. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans have long served as unique magnets for contemplation and artistic interpretation within American culture, and coastal areas are, statistically speaking, scarce: While the United States has 3.8 million square miles of land, it has just 95,471 miles of shoreline."