Downtown Los Angeles could soon be home to greener spaces thanks to the designers of Project Umbrella, the winning entry in the Los Angeles Cleantech Corridor and Green District Competition.

The competition was designed to provide an open ideas forum for “provocative, even revolutionary, new visions of LA’s urban fabric and infrastructure,” and the giant mushroom-shaped structures imagined by Constantin Boincean, Ralph Bertram, and Aleksandra Danielak from Oslo, Norway, definitely fits the bill on all accounts.

While recycling gray water has become popular amongst off-the-grid types, most people are content to let the black water disappear down the drain. This isn't good enough for Project Umbrella, however.

The winning design would employ a series of umbrella-like structures designed to clarify black water from city sewage which would then be used to encourage the growth of surrounding trees and plants.

How It Would Work: Black water from city sewage would be cleaned in the mushroom's dome through a process of solar evaporation. The clarified water would then be distributed and released into the streets through a process of evaporation and condensation to transform the surrounding areas into greener public spaces.

The concept earned the designers a $5,000 prize for the Professional Category of the competition which attracted 70 entries.