PIVOT by Ben Smith and Vee Hu.

What he and his partner came up with to meet those ambitions is a striking blueprint for two channel screens made from thin film piezoelectric wire mesh that create a mirrored effect by day to reflect the surrounding landscape and are illuminated at night with stored energy. The screens would be transparent from the inside, and visitors to “Scene-Sensor” would be able to walk within the structure on pedestrian passageways. These visitors would also serve an important function, as their movements would produce energy gathered through piezoelectric transducers. The end result of this invention would be enough energy on a spring day to power 1,200 households and an estimated annual capacity of 5,500 MWh.

While worth appreciating on its own, this first place design was hardly the only one from the competition to impress. In fact, it wasn’t even the only one to incorporate piezoelectrics. The second runner-up, “Pivot,” by the team of Yunxin Hu and Ben Smith calls for a stretch of mesh gangplanks under a billowing orange piezoelectric canopy that captures wind energy according to the same principles as “Scene-Sensor.” Its capacity to adjust to movements makes it suited to withstand sea level rise, which is an obvious benefit in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

The winning entry’s utilization of the landfill’s topography is echoed in the outline for LAGI’s first runner-up, “Fresh Hills,” by Matthew Rosenberg, a young Canadian architect in the process of establishing his own Los Angeles-based studio.