Bjarke Ingels CopenHill

Bjarke Ingels designed CopenHill in Copenhagen, a waste-to-energy power plant with a ski slope and a hiking trail on the roof. Interesting to me because it takes a building type that cities usually hide in industrial zones and turns it into a public amenity that people visit by choice. Ski slope runs 450 meters down the slanted roof and the climbing wall on the facade is the tallest artificial climbing wall in the world. Absurdity of skiing on a power plant is exactly the kind of provocation that makes architecture memorable. I want to visit it because the building argues that infrastructure and recreation can share the same structure. That argument, if it holds up, changes how we think about what a city should do with its least attractive buildings. Green facade on the south side filters some of the emissions while creating a visual buffer. Architectural photography of the building shows skiers against a backdrop of smokestacks, which is deliberately strange and I think that strangeness is the point.