2016 LAGI Santa Monica winners artfully rethink clean-energy infrastructure

The Land Art Generator Initiative have announced the winners of their 2016 ideas competition! Following successful runs in Copenhagen, Dubai, New York, and a special edition in Glasgow, the main 2016 LAGI competition was set in sunny Santa Monica Bay in California. Participants worldwide had to envision a public art installation that can cleanly harvest energy from nature and will produce electricity or clean water for Santa Monica — a timely objective as California's drought presses on.

LAGI organizers described this year's submissions as the most innovative by far, and that they'll contribute to the city of Santa Monica's investigative efforts for solutions in sustainable water harvesting and consumption. In the end, three winners were selected. If all works out smoothly, LAGI might be able to make some of the most feasible design submissions a reality.

Scroll down to see the winning entries.

1st place: Regatta H2O: Familiar Form, Chameleon Infrastructure by Christopher Sjoberg, Ryo Saito
Team Location: Tokyo, Japan
Energy Technology: Aerostatic Flutter Wind Harvesting (WindBelt™)
Water Technology: Fog Harvesting
Annual Capacity: 70 MWh (used on site) and 112 million liters of drinking water

Full project info

2nd place: Cetacea by Keegan Oneal, Sean Link, Caitlin Vanhauer, Colin Poranski
Team Location: Eugene, OR USA
Energy Technology: wave energy converter with linear alternator, Windbelt™, photovoltaic panels
Water Harvesting Technology: high efficiency reverse osmosis (HERO™ by Aquatech) for stormwater runoff treatment
Annual Capacity: 4,300 MWh (80% used to offset the energy demand of existing SMURRF facility and power HERO™ system 650 million liters of drinking water

Full project info

3rd place: Paper Boats by Christopher Makrinos, Stephen Makrinos, Alexander Bishop
Team Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Energy Technology: concentrated photovoltaic (CPV), reflectors, Holographic Planar Concentrator™ (HPC) technology developed by Prism Solar Technologies
Annual Capacity: 2,400 MWh

Full project info

Don't forget to check out more of the competition entries in the gallery below. All submissions can be found here.