It's likely that there's never been as much garbage in Chicago's Daley Plaza as there was on Friday, August 19th, but that was OK, because it was almost all within one of the 25 prototypes that were finalists in a competition for the design of recycling receptacles, co-sponsored by the city and the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architect's Young Architects Forum. Can better designed recycling bins boost Chicago's flagging recycling rates? Read all about it, and see a lot more pictures, here.
I'm curious if you know the breakdown of the original 125 entries in terms of city, state, and/or country. I'm curious because of the 25 finalists, 19 are from Chicago -- that's 76%. Was this percentage of the 25 finalists representative of the submission rate from Chicago compared to the rest of the world for the original 125 entries?
ReplyDeleteHere's some more info, courtesy of Amy Brierly of Creative Consortium:
ReplyDeleteThere were 126 initial registrations, 86 (or 68%) were from Illinois. The first group of 25 finalists was selected from among 82 boards submitted. (There were a number of people who completed the initial registration but didn’t follow through and submit an actual design board.) Of the 82 designs received, 57 (or 70%) were from Illinois. The percentage of finalists who are local very closely mirrored the overall percentages of local vs. non-local designs.
I was wondering how the designs were being judged. Many of the designs that were there, especially the winners, seemed to be either to large in scale or could have some mechanical malfunction as the design is abused. For example, to include a pedal to open the lid of the trash compartment of the winning design, EcoTrio, would leave it unapproachable once the pedal mechanism broke. No one will lift the lid and would probably throw their trash into one of the other compartments. A design that I saw present that day, Orbi, seemed to be the most realistic approach to anything that would be easily incorparated into the city's recycling infrastructure. The overall aesthestics of the steel frame and plastic recycling bin really worked well with the existing trash receptacles present throughout the city. In my opinion, any design that did not incorprate an existing trash receptacle in their concept is not valid. This was a competition to help raise the awareness of recycling in the city and propsing that all existing trash receptacles be replaced with the winning concept or even the peoples choice winner would mean that materials would be used to create brand new receptacles and the existing receptacles would need to be disposed of or used elsewhere. To me that seems wasteful!
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