Slide Energy

Is that Christina?  ©BIG

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) have recently updated their proposal for the Amager Bakke Waste-to-Energy plant, the ground breaking having been March 4th.  I'll admit to being partial to these guys...they are very smart and disciplined about how they go about their work, and i love the consistency in their presentation diagrams.  I have yet to work for a firm that could produce a single coherent diagram, much less one for every project ever worked on.

The project is for an energy plant near Copenhagen to generate electricity from municipal waste.  The idea was to taper the volume of the plant to conceal to some extent the waste stack, and use the resulting sloped volume as a cross training facility of sorts, with skiing proposed for the slope, rock climbing for the walls, nearby sailing and water sports, etc.  The single stack, visible above, would signal to the world that 1 ton of CO2 had been produced by producing a single smoke ring.

What's so clever about this is the symbolism of human physical activity used to embody the building's function as a power plant.  To look at the building, once it's finished, and see people skiing or doing whatever activity might take place on its surface, is to understand the meaning of expending energy in a way not otherwise possible.  That people enjoying themselves in leisure activities can become synonymous with a power plant is completely unexpected, and brilliant.

Aerial view  ©BIG

Smoke ring ©BIG

Little Mermaid ©BIG