The Land Art Generator Initiative: Exploring the Fusion of Public Artwork and Clean Power Generation
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Imagine a new permanent work of iconic public art for New York City on a grand scale. And now imagine this work of art contributing clean electricity to the city grid equivalent to the energy consumed by hundreds or even thousands of homes, while educating hundreds of visitors every day about emerging green technologies.
The Land Art Generator Initiative invited interdisciplinary teams to submit their design ideas for public artwork that can generate hundreds of megawatt-hours of electricity from wind, solar, or other renewable sources. The design site is within Freshkills Park (the former Fresh Kills Landfill) in Staten Island, and the competition is a partnership with New York City's Department of Parks & Recreation, Staten Island Arts (COAHSI), and the Institute for Urban Design.
250 entries came in from interdisciplinary teams around the world and now the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) is pleased to announce the first exhibition and award ceremony event, which will open at 7pm on October 25 at the Soho Gallery for Digital Art (138 Sullivan Street, NYC).
LAGINYC 2012 is an ideas competition to design a site-specific public artwork for Freshkills Park that, in addition to its conceptual beauty, has the ability to harness energy cleanly from nature and convert it to electricity for the utility grid.
Eloise Hirsh, the Freshkills Park Administrator summed up the results:
“We were excited to see the diversity of submissions to the 2012 LAGI ideas competition. Entrants clearly took the scale and natural beauty of Freshkills as sources of inspiration. This competition is a testament to the important roles creativity, public art, and renewable energy will play at Freshkills Park.”
The expansiveness of the design site at Freshkills Park presents the opportunity to power the equivalent of hundreds or even thousands of homes with a large work of public infrastructure art. The stunning beauty of the reclaimed landscape provides 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.
The detailed design brief was released on January 1, 2012 and can be seen in full detail at the design competition portfolio website at landartgenerator.org/LAGI-2012 , where visitors can also browse through the full portfolio of submissions.
The monetary prize awards to the winners of the 2012 LAGI design competition will not guarantee a commission for construction; however, LAGI will work with stakeholders both locally (NYC) and internationally to pursue possibilities for implementation of the most pragmatic and aesthetic designs that come from the biennial LAGI competitions.