Image courtesy of BIG

Uppsala Power Plant | BIG Architects

The city of Uppsala invited BIG to design a biomass cogeneration plant to supplement Uppsala‘s existing energy infrastructure during the peak loads in the dark and cold fall, winter, and spring. With its beautiful old town, home to the oldest university in Scandinavia and the impressive Uppsala cathedral, it required careful consideration to integrate a vast structure into the historical skyline.

Image courtesy of BIG

With only seasonal use the new power plant would be vacant in the summer months during peak season of tourism and festivals. BIG decided to radically transform the public perception of a power plant visually and functionally. BIG‘s design proposal fuses two conventional industrial archetypes into an unconventional hybrid: the plant and the greenhouse. Both have been developed to provide a rational and efficient form of enclosure to massive industrial facilities: for manufacturing and agriculture respectively.

Image courtesy of BIG

By harnessing the economies of scale associated with greenhouse structures it is possible to provide a 100% transparent enclosure to provide the future massive silhouette on Uppsala’s skyline with a unprecedented lightness while allowing the citizens to enjoy educational glimpses of what happens within. Rather than the conventional, alienating hermetic envelope of traditional power plants the crystalline volume serves as an invitation for exploration and education. The next generation of creative energy.

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