LAGI 2025 FIJI: Land Art for a Changing Climate

As an artist or designer, you have a deep understanding of the solutions and technologies that can create a more sustainable world. You also possess the storytelling and visualization abilities needed to showcase compelling and impactful applications of these solutions. 

LAGI 2025 Fiji offers a chance to contribute to a project with significant implications for the future — an opportunity to present your vision for how existing solutions can be applied creatively and in harmony with natural systems.

Developed in collaboration with the residents of Marou Village, the LAGI 2025 Fiji design brief calls for a landscape-integrated artwork that incorporates cutting-edge sustainable technologies to provide the village with clean, reliable electricity and drinking water, support tourism, and help establish a sustainable future for generations to come. 

This project aligns with the urgent realization that global temperatures have already exceeded the 1.5-degree warming threshold set by climate scientists just a decade ago in the Paris Agreement. The consequences of this alarming milestone for low-lying coastal communities are profound. 

Now more than ever, there is a need for a new paradigm of resilient and regenerative systems. These systems must be locally maintainable and thoughtfully designed to align with the diverse cultural and ecological contexts in which they function.

The Land Art Generator Initiative’s partnership with the residents of Marou presents an opportunity to advance this new paradigm while delivering dependable electricity and water to a remote community at the forefront of climate change. 

Prizes
Two winning teams will each be provided with a stipend of $100,000 USD to advance their design proposal and build a functioning prototype of their idea for Fiji. 

A publication, exhibitions held in partnership with the Fiji Arts Council, and a program of community engagement events will communicate the innovative outcomes throughout.

Fiji and around the world, inspiring the public about the beauty and wealth of possibilities of a world beyond carbon while demonstrating creative adaptations to a rapidly shifting climate. 

Energy and Climate in Fiji
Having contributed insignificantly to global greenhouse gas emissions, island nations such as Fiji nevertheless find themselves today on the front lines of climate change. Meanwhile, a reliance on expensive imported fuel oil offers an economic opportunity for rapid decarbonization through renewable deployment and electrification. Once complete, this transition has the potential to free up more than half of the export earnings of the country, which are currently spent on the importation of fuel. 

While access to the sun’s energy in Fiji is strong, the implementation of solar power generation presents significant challenges, including aesthetics and land use. 

For a nation where land is a precious (and vanishing) resource, practical design solutions for renewable energy installations that share land with other uses such as cultural destinations, farms, public spaces, and habitats can be designed to increase the potential for a 100% renewable island economy. These new energy system designs can also consider how their aesthetic manifestation can support and enhance the beautiful landscapes that bring millions of people to visit each year from around the world. 

While electricity is a pressing need in Marou Village, also of critical importance is ensuring reliable access to freshwater. As global temperatures rise there is increasing variability and volatility in precipitation patterns. Rainy seasons bring severe flooding while dry seasons are even drier. LAGI 2025 Fiji is therefore seeking innovative solutions that can integrate regenerative energy and water systems. 

Design Site and Supplementary Materials
In collaboration with our project partners — the University of Fiji, Arizona State University, and the Fiji Arts Council — we have provided a suite of supplementary materials that are intended to provide you with everything you will need to arrive at the most creative and practical design solution to meet the needs of the village and Fiji’s national 21st century development goals.

We have put together a new Field Guide to Regenerative Water Technologies, a companion to the LAGI Field Guide to Renewable Energy Technologies. 

The word lagi has a special meaning in the Pacific Islands. It means sky or universe — and when combined as vakalomalagi means heaven — evoking feelings of hope and harmony. LAGI 2025 Fiji has been co-created with Marou Village, a community on the southeast coast of Naviti Island in the Yasawa Group archipelago in the Western Ba Region of Fiji to secure a thriving future in harmony with nature. 

We welcome you to be a part of this exciting project! 

More about the Land Art Generator Initiative and details for how to participate: https://lagi2025fiji.org

Jurors 

Ilisari Naqau Nasau: Sau Turaga (Chief Maker) of the Village of Marou, of the Mataqali Koro (Koro Clan), Representing Marou Village

Oliver Broughton: Energy Portfolio Management, Renewables and Efficiency, Elemental Group

Deb Guenther: Landscape Architect and Partner at Mithun, FASLA, LEED AP, SITES AP

Elena van Hove: Director of Global Energy Access, Laboratory for Energy and Power Solutions, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, Arizona State University

Fenton Lutunatabua: Storyteller and Climate Change Activist

Dr. Ramendra Prasad: Senior Lecturer, Department of Science, The University of Fiji

Jale Samuwai: Manager, Global South CFAN Program, RMI

Paula Schaafhausen: Artist

Setoki Tuiteci: Architect, Ethos Edge Design Studio, Fiji

Residents of Marou: Local Community

Awards: $ 200,000.00 USD