Global Design Competition Seeks Innovative Solutions for Energy and Water Systems in Island Coastal Communities

    MAROU, FIJI, January 06, 2025 /24-7PressRelease/ -- The residents of Marou and the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) are pleased to announce LAGI 2025 Fiji — a global design competition seeking creative solutions for sustainable and regenerative energy and water systems for island communities.

Coastal island communities are especially vulnerable to climate change. Stronger cyclones, rising sea levels, warming waters, biodiversity loss, prolonged droughts, and major flood events threaten their existence. Marou Village in the Yasawa archipelago of Fiji is one such community.

These ever-increasing threats are the result of atmospheric greenhouse gas pollution to which island coastal communities have hardly contributed and yet from which they now face the most extreme consequences.

What does it mean to design sustainable energy and water infrastructure within this context?

LAGI 2025 Fiji calls for the design of a work of art in the landscape that will supply clean and reliable electricity and water, support sustainable tourism, and help to build a resilient future for generations to come.

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 in Fiji.

Based on the success of these prototypes, and in coordination with local authorities and funding partners, the goal is for one project to be chosen for implementation at full-scale as a pilot project with Marou Village.

The outcomes will set a replicable model for designing, implementing, and operating renewable energy and water systems with island communities and for exquisite destinations around the world.

Ilisari Naqau Nasau, the Sauturaga and Acting Chief of Marou Village, addressing participating LAGI 2025 Fiji design teams offered his thanks and encouragement:

"Thank you to all the LAGI 2025 Fiji designers from around the world who will be participating in this competition and for the ideas you will be bringing to us. We feel very blessed to be the host of this project, which will bring forward proposals for energy and water systems that we could never have imagined. Your design ideas will be helpful for many generations — bringing electricity and water infrastructure to Marou and Yasawa School. On behalf of myself and all the elders of the village, please accept our sincere gratitude for the very big task you are undertaking with us here. Vinaka vakalevu."

According to LAGI co-founders Elizabeth Monoian and Robert Ferry:

"Working with Marou Village, LAGI 2025 Fiji will help establish a new model for co-creation, implementation, and operation of renewable energy and freshwater storage systems.

Once constructed with the community and operational, the pilot project will give back in many ways — with clean electricity and freshwater, with economic development from the tourists who visit to experience the beauty of the installation in the landscape, and with the other creative uses the project offers Marou Village (education, recreation, or community gathering)."

LAGI 2025 Fiji will help shift the paradigm of the energy-water nexus for island communities by creating innovative and aesthetic design solutions — with people and place at the center of the process.

Whether you are a professional designer, university professor, student, artist, or anyone passionate about designing for a better world, your participation in LAGI 2025 Fiji will help to advance the evolution of climate adaptation design and destination land art.

LAGI 2025 Fiji
opens January 6, 2025, and closes May 5, 2025. The global design competition is free to enter and open to all.

A publication, exhibition, 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.

Marou Village is an iTaukei community on the southeast coast of Naviti Island in the Yasawa Group archipelago in the Western Ba Region of Fiji. Ilisari Naqau Nasau, the Sauturaga and Acting Chief of Marou Village, invited LAGI to bring the global design competition to Naviti Island and led the coordination of the co-design process of the design brief.

Learn more at https://lagi2025fiji.org

About the Land Art Generator Initiative
With a mission to advance a just and equitable energy transition in response to the climate crisis, the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) helps design places for people that share land use with distributed renewable energy generation and other sustainable infrastructures. The Land Art Generator works with public and private organizations to help them meet their greatest potential as they plan, design, and implement new clean energy projects and regenerative communities. LAGI design competitions bring forward innovations in sustainable design that capture the imagination of the world. Co-design projects and Solar Mural installations demonstrate the benefit of applying best practices of creative placemaking, urban design, and civic art to renewable energy projects.

Contacts and Links:
Elizabeth Monoian and Robert Ferry, co-Directors of the Land Art Generator Initiative, [email protected], +1 (412) 996-4906

Project Website: https://lagi2025fiji.org

More about the Land Art Generator Initiative: https://landartgenerator.org

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