Amager Bakke

Brief Information

A ski slope has been built on the roof of the Amager Bakke waste-to-energy plant: an industrial building in Copenhagen also functions as the CopenHill recreation area. The plant opened in 2017, and the rooftop slope in 2019. The project by Bjarke Ingels Group is important precisely for this combination: the place does not hide its engineering function, but makes it part of the visible urban space.

Amager Bakke was built as a replacement for the old Amagerværket plant, located a few hundred meters away. The new plant processes waste, supplies heat to the city network, and extracts more energy than its predecessor. Therefore, the building should be read not as a shell around production, but as an attempt to combine a plant, a park, and a sports surface in a single volume.

What to Notice First

The main focus is how a technical building has been turned into a landform. The roof has a 45% gradient and rises to 85 meters; it contains a 450-meter artificial slope with a 180-degree turn. The surface is made of Neveplast, a synthetic material for year-round training, which is lubricated with silicone to create the feeling of packed snow.

It is worth comparing the building’s three “external” functions. Pedestrian paths with shrubs and coniferous trees run across the roof, cable and conveyor lifts provide access to the top, and a glass elevator reveals the plant from the inside. The facade is clad in large aluminum bricks and carries an artificial climbing wall. One separate detail is the smokestack: it was moved from the center to the outside, which meant the 67-meter structure had to be installed on the seventh floor.