This time around, LAGI also plans to take advantage of some younger bright minds. It has expanded the competition to include high school students in a supplementary arm that the organizers hope will reach out to students everywhere, encouraging them to pursue interdisciplinary projects based in science and art, two subjects not normally paired together. Advancements in science and technology, as we have seen repeatedly in this era of pioneering innovations, often require the kind of creativity often associated with artistic endeavors, so merging the two fields at an early age seems to make a lot of sense for the next would-be groundbreaker. There’s also a $1,000 prize for extra incentive.
     As for the ground chosen for the intended groundbreaking in the coming year’s competition, LAGI’s leaders, the husband and wife team of Robert Ferry and Elizabeth Monoian, tell PLANET that among the reasons for choosing Fresh Kills: “It is the largest expanse of land inside the city limits that is not forested.” And if it occurs to you that the location also carries symbolic weight, they also describe the more poetic implications presented by it: “You get a very powerful feeling when standing on the top of the hills, knowing that beneath your feet lies decades of human memories and treasures of the past. Looking out to the Manhattan skyline in the distance, framed by the rolling wildflower meadows and winding waterways in the foreground, you get a vast sense of space and time.”