Category Winner Building outside the box
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Värtan Bioenergy CHP-Plant
About the project
Due to increasing urban expansion, sites for energy production and public infrastructure have become part of our daily urban environment, surrounded by roads, housing estates and offices as well as recreational areas. Therefore, the transformation and extension of these important infrastructures have become an urbanistic and architectural question, the Värtan power plant being an example for an answer.
Located near the port of Stockholm, it is the world’s largest urban biofueled cogeneration plant. The over ground part of the plant has been clad in a curved façade of vertical ceramic elements. The curved shape of the façade unites the various installations that make up the plant into a single gesture, while reducing its acoustic and visual impacts. Its dynamic form proudly expresses the building’s civic function. The façade elements are made from paired ceramic elements placed in a V-shape and on top of each other. The resulting expression connects the new plant to the characteristic brick buildings within the ensemble.
"I hope this building will influence the way we build this type of infrastructure in very central urban locations." – Helena Glantz, Urban Design AB
Above all, the new façade positions this piece of infrastructure as a contemporary building that fits within the tradition of the Northern European city.
