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Tuesday, October 2, 2007
The call for entries for the next Next Generation design competition is out, and this time the theme is on something very dear to Pruned's heart: WATER!
Water, glorious water! Magical water, wonderful water, marvelous water, fabulous water, beautiful water, glorious water!
Water is everywhere—in nature, industry, home, our bodies, products, interiors, buildings, landscapes, systems (just to name a few).
With up to one third of the global population living without reliable access to clean water, we need better design solutions that account for potable water, gray water, black water—its uses, re-uses, controls, management, efficiency, and conservation.
We call on your innovative design solutions at all scales and sizes—products, interiors, buildings, landscapes, communication systems, or anything else you’ve dreamed up—for handling this most precious and most threatened natural resource. The time for new thinking on water is now.
What's your solution?
Indeed, what will be your marvelous ideas?
Will you turn a city, say, Beijing (why not!), into the largest ecological wastewater treatment machine in the world?
How about a huge, thinly surfaced floating island that's both a post-oil power station and a park?
Or perhaps you'll summon the not-so-ancient spirit of Isamu Noguchi to help you design the greatest hydrological playground ever?
Will your design involve Grasscrete® or super absorbent polymers instead?
Could it be that you want to design an awesome set of cocktail glasses? And that in your poetically beautiful project statement, you will mention how water has always been considered the epitome of purity, a fundamental attribute of Paradise, and used to cleanse the soul of its sins, but it, too, can flood entire villages, terrify us with its abyss, and turn children cancerous with its impurities? You'll even say how very Treehuggable it is, because recycled hypodermic needles are used. No more shall they litter our beaches.
Will you ask yourself: What if Greenland was Africa's water fountain?
Do you have an exceptional talent for programing and so will create a computer game to rival SimCity?
I can already tell that all the winners and runners-up will be phenomenally great. But in case yours isn't one of the projects chosen, send it to me and I'll post it here on Pruned. Sometimes the best aren't chosen.
