Fresh Hills by Matthew Rosenberg

One of the reasons for the abundance of innovation may have been the ample supply of youthful energy present in the competition this time. The first place winners, James Murray and Shota Vashakmadze, met as architecture students at Georgia Tech and worked together on a proposal for the contest under the guidance of their professor Frederick M. Pearsall. “It was as much a school project we were doing as it was an outside project,” Vashakmadze explained to PLANET. Though their collaboration served as part of a studio assignment to earn college credit, the two young men also reportedly ended up earning $15,000 in prize winnings. (Every student should be so lucky as to cover tuition costs with the completion of the average term paper.)

The winning design, named “Scene-Sensor,” is a prime illustration of how a confluence between natural systems and human ingenuity can be achieved with regard to energy and aesthetics. Capitalizing on the wind flow strengthened by the existence of two large mounds of capped landfill mass, it employs an emerging piezoelectric technology still in the prototype phase. Physical pressure is converted into an electrical signal through a system of wires embedded within a latticework of reflective metal that would constantly flutter when installed at the site. It’s a different method of wind energy harvesting than we typically see, and that’s exactly what its creators were striving for.

“We were interested in wind collection from the beginning but wanted to break the stereotype of wind turbines,” said Murray. “We spent a semester looking at other wind gathering technologies, and to add on another factor, making it beautiful was a constant struggle in our studio.”