2017

The Arte Laguna Prize is an international art competition aimed at promoting and enhancing contemporary art. The contest stands out in the global art scene for the variety of its partnerships and opportunities offered to artists and designers, and is recognized worldwide as a real springboard for the artists’ career.

INHABITING NATURE

"The idea of using development as an engine to protect open space, strengthen communities, reduce auto-mobile use and even restore damaged ecosystems is an exciting one.... It will require a paradigm shift to move society 'from thinking the best it can do is to minimize negative impact, toward a view in which development is seen as both contributing to the growth of healthy human communities while simultaneously restoring (not merely sustaining) the natural environment. '"
- Alex Wilson, Green Development, 1998

INTRODUCTION
Phoenix, the fifth largest city in the United States by population and area, is very much a function of the 20th century technologies that enabled its rapid post WWII growth and inhabitation of an arid desert environment. While frequently cited for seemingly endless suburban sprawl, the metro area is in a state of transformation and is beginning to densify in line with other emergent urban centers. For decades, vacant land has made up a sizable portion of Phoenix’s land mass — up to 43 percent in the year 2000, according to a study by the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. This is especially true of the Phoenix downtown area, a location which has enjoyed positive, if not game-changing, developments over the past decade including light rail, a new university campus, thousands of new housing units, and an increasingly attractive business environment. The area also features a celebrated and long-standing arts and culture core with an emerging live music scene.

Making Places is a new initiative by Waltham Forest Council, which aims to deliver twenty new site-specific artworks across the borough during 2018. These projects are being commissioned at sites within the borough which residents have identified as needing transformation – and these parks, street corners, forest schools, library gardens and other public spaces are looking for long-term artworks, design interventions, and other creative approaches that will help support the local community’s positive engagement with the landscape of the borough.