People traveled from around the world to attend the Arizona Challenge awards ceremony that was held Friday at the ASU Phoenix Urban Research Laboratory at the Security Building downtown.
The Arizona Challenge is an international design competition that features multidisciplinary teams of students who have designed projects that promote a more sustainable and healthy way of life.
The projects featured in the competition mainly focus on changes to land use patterns, methods of transportation, technology, and water and energy usage and generation.
The competition had entries from all over the world, including Harvard University, the University of Toronto and the Qingdao Technological University in China.
Among those present at the ceremony was Tempe mayor Hugh Hallman.
“I’ve long spoken about a city that is sustainable,” Hallman said. “Not only environmentally, but economically sustainable.”
The winning teams were those that were the most innovative in envisioning and creating a self-sustaining society. Instead of awarding a first, second and third place, a bronze, silver and platinum award was given instead - platinum being the highest award.
The Bronze award went to Dana Decuzzi and Aaron Liggett from UA. Their project, “Harvest Arizona,” relies on the landscape and seasons of Arizona, particularly the monsoon season, for their community to be successful. They believe that with the monsoon season bringing in almost 13.6 inches of rainfall annually, water can be more successfully stored and harvested.
“The city of the future is one that does not depend on imported natural resources,” Decuzzi said.
The duo informed the audience that the average person uses 54,000 gallons of water a year, and they expect to reduce water usage by 50 percent by educating the community.
The Silver Award was presented to Zhang Anxiao, Zhang Zhaosong and Dao Fang of Qingdao Technological University in China. Their project, “Smart Green City,” focused on ecology, information theory, quantum electrodynamics, and futurology.
They came to the conclusion that architecture of the future will not be based on the structure of a building, but how space is utilized in a society.
They also believe that in order for a community to become more sustainable, the people of the community must develop a deeper love for their community and their own life experience.
The winner of the Platinum Award and $10,000 was Fadi Masoud, Daniel Ibañez and Drew Adams from Harvard University and the University of Toronto.
“We’ve entered about 16 competitions between the three of us, and this has been the most forward thinking,” Masoud said.
Their project, Autonomous City, is envisioned as being compact and self-contained; it would be established in response to the physiology, hydrology and ecology of its environment.
It would also be entirely self-reliant with a closed-loop system. At the ceremony, it was explained that the reason the awards weren’t ranked was because all of the contestants would go on to become a critical part of the future and saving our planet by creating a more sustainable way of life. The youth of today, it was explained, are the architects and redeemers of our future.
Reach the reporter at jasmine.barta@asu.edu
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