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PollutinG
BeautifullyA Danish recreational waste-plant designed to blow CO2 smoke rings into the sky
Rendering © BIG, 2010
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Founded in Berlin in 2000 by the brothers Jan and Tim Edler, realities:united have built a reputation for their spectacular art and media extensions to buildings all across the globe. Working together with some of the most prominent figures of contemporary architecture – including Peter Cook, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Foster & Partners, Will Alsop, Nieto Sobejano, Bjarke Ingels, Minsuk Cho and WOHA – they have established a particular form of collaboration. Usually invited by architects to cooperate on a project, realities:united seek out the idiosyncratic strength of a design and amplify its qualities by techniques and procedures that exceed the realms in which architects usually work.
Carbon emissions are the root cause of that environmental bogeyman stalking our dreams of the future: global warming. This project materializes this silent, and ultimately deadly, process of carbon emissions in a simple and beautiful form.
This project arose out of a 2010 competition to design the exterior wrapping for a state-of-the-art waste-to-energy plant at Amagerforbraending on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark. The winning proposal by Copenhagen-based Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), collaborating with Berlin-based realities:united, went much further than the original brief. Turning the usual hiding of waste-management (out of sight; out of mind) on its head, BIG proposed the plant should be “a destination in itself…reflecting the progressive vision to create a new type of waste management facility”. The structure’s roof is designed as a publically accessible hillside made of recycled synthetic granulate. The roof is for walking in the summer and skiing in the winter, with a 100-metre-high viewing platform at its top that reflects BIG’s ethos of “hedonistic sustainability” – turning the perceived burden of sustainability into an asset.
However, though the plant utilises the most efficient green technology available, it’s still basically an incinerator, with its by-products of water vapour and carbon dioxide emitted from a smoke stack. This is where the element designed by realities:united comes in. Called “Big Vortex”, it consists of a chamber wrapped around the end of the flue, into which emission gases are collected. Periodically, when this fills up, the gases are released, creating torus-shaped “smoke rings” made visible due to condensing water vapour. The rings are formed due to the Bernoulli effect, similar to when smoking a cigarette – though here they are 30 metres in diameter and each contain half a ton of CO2.
“We felt the project needed this scenario of puffing ‘smoke rings’ to ground it. It puts into an aesthetic form something that is ultimately evil, acting as a measuring stick of consumption; after all, avoiding or recycling waste before it gets sent to the plant would of course be preferable”, says Jan Edler of realities:united. “The distinct effect will only be visible around 20 percent of the time, but like geysers in Iceland, the expectation of it happening is part of the plan”.
Political delay has meant construction of the plant only went on-site in January 2013, but the ‘Big Vortex’ installation, which gives a critical edge to the surreal ski slope design, has unfortunately not as yet been commissioned as part of it.
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Video: “Big Vortex” © realities:united, 2012
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