Bjarke Ingels Group
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Would you go skiing off a rooftop if you could? How about in the middle of a major city?
Both are exactly the vision that a new project from the Bjarke Ingels Group will carry out—not surprisingly—in Copenhagen. A waste management plant is in the works for the city that will not only generate heat and electricity for 140,000 homes, but it will be covered by a ski park.
Yep, the building, which will incinerate the waste produced by five municipalities, will contain an elevator that people can ride to the top and then ski down any of three slopes—one green level, one blue, and one black.
The plant, to be finished by 1016, will replace a 40-year-old incinerator.
The New York Times describes a little more about the plan:
Alongside the ski slope, the plant’s smokestack will blow smoke rings each time it fills with 440 pounds of carbon dioxide from flue gas. In a recent interview with National Public Radio, Bjarke Ingels, the founder of the design firm, said the smoke rings would turn “the symbol of pollution into something playful,” while reminding residents of the impact of their consumption.
The same firm has a reputation for coming up with green and wildly unique design projects, like 8-Tallet, a green-roofed eco-village also in the Copenhagen area, and its current New York City project. But a project that combines waste-to-energy, a technology the U.S. is slow to adopt to start with, with a sport that is usually much less than sustainable is, at least for now, sadly, only in Copenhagen.
More on waste to energy
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Europe Embraces Waste-to-Energy; Why Won't the U.S.?
Dubious Waste-to-Energy Incinerator Project to Put Delhi Waste Pickers Out of Business
Beer Waste to Energy: Anheuser-Busch's BERS System
