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2016 Trip Idea: Snowboarding on a Copenhagen Waste Plant

TIME : 2016/2/29 18:36:30
Sydhavns Recycling Center

Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, the cool-kid masterbuilder responsible for NYC's floppy residential pyramid and other similarly futuristic projects, has just released renderings for what may be the world's first waste plant worth traveling to: a recycling center that doubles as a snowboarding hill and, in the summer, picnic spot and running track.

The plan (more renderings, this way) is to build a 13,000-square-foot waste management center in Sydhavns, a port in the southern part of the city. Determined to build a utilitarian structure that didn't utterly disrupt the scene, Ingels designed an underground facility that functioned as a public space.

The infrastructure itself serves as an artificial hill to be overlaid with grass, picnic spaces, and designated "fitness areas." As the firm writes, the plan is all "a way to start thinking of our cities as integrated man-made ecosystems, where we don't distinguish between the front and back of house."

If you're lucky enough to be planning a trip to Copenhagen in 2016, when construction on the waste facility is expected to wrap, be sure to add this to the list of amazing places to see—and do report back on the smell.