2019 · Bjarke Ingels Group · Europe
The chamber score
Helios Overture
Carl Nielsen · Denmark, 1903
A mountain of waste that learned to make light. Nielsen already wrote the sunrise.
An original chamber arrangement in the climate of the work. The recording is not a copy. It is the room answering.
You already feel this
You want the ugly work of a city to also be a place you would take a guest. Trash, smoke, heat — hidden or exported. CopenHill put a slope on the furnace and let the public climb. If you have ever wanted honesty about what it takes to keep a city clean, this is that honesty, with a view.
The original
Opened in 2019 in Copenhagen's industrial Amager. BIG's waste-to-energy plant supports a ski run, a hiking path, and a climbing wall. The stack was designed to ring like a cathedral when it releases, a reminder of what is being burned.
The rebuild · A mountain made of what you threw away
We rebuilt it as a green slope rising from an industrial hall, smoke as weather. Sustainability here is not purity. It is making the necessary thing also a civic one.
01
Ski on the furnace
The delight is real and slightly obscene. That is useful. A culture that can play on its own waste is at least looking at the waste. The rebuild keeps the grass, the steam, the joke.
02
The ring in the sky
When the plant releases, a ring of steam. A designed confession. Most infrastructure lies by being invisible. This one sends a signal.
03
Not a cathedral, still a rite
You go up. You come down. The city is warmer. Sustainability, at its least naive, is a loop you agree to live inside.
Shift the feeling
What if CopenHill was rebuilt as something else?
Ask the architect
