I recently stumbled upon Pulchra, and fell head-over-heels in love with the concept.

What is Pulchra, you may ask? Essentially, it is a beauty contest–not for aspiring human Barbies, but for objects. Until the 31st of December 2008, anyone who visits the website may vote for their top 10 objects from a list of 100 items characteristic of this century (such as the Fighter helmet by Momodesign, above) and chosen by a panel of well-known architects At the end of the year, a ranking of the 10 items which acquired the most votes will be compiled, and the person whose personal top 10 list most closely matches this winning list will bag €10,000/US$15,700.

Once the winner has been announced, these 10 items will be stored in an iron capsule and planted in a public garden in Italy, which each year will see this competition being repeated to create a ‘mosaic of…glittering buried treasure destined to future archaeologists.’

For more details on this romantically ingenious idea, click here.