Copenhill, also known as Amager Bakke, the waste-to-energy plant topped with a ski slope in Copenhagen, was judged the top prize at the annual World Architecture Festival that was held virtually this year. Here we present some images of the design by BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group and other winners at WAF.

World Building of The Year at World Architecture Festival 2021

Held annually since 2008 in Barcelona, Singapore, Berlin, Amsterdam, and other world cities, this year’s WAF, like last year’s cancelled event, was planned to be held in Lisbon but was bumped into the virtual realm due to travel restrictions arising from the coronavirus pandemic. Covering both 2020 and 2021, nearly 500 projects were in the running across more than 30 categories in the festival’s best-in-show format, in which architects gave digital presentations to juries in each category and the winners moved on to the super juries. BIG’s Copenhill won in the Production, Energy & Recycling category and then was crowned World Building of The Year on Friday, December 3, by the super jury that included WAF’s Paul Finch, FRAC’s Abdelkader Damani, Mecanoo’s Nuno Gonçalves Fontarra, 3XN Architects’ Kim Herforth Nielsen, and Christina Seilern of Studio Seilern Architects.

What did the jury have to say about Copenhill, the fourteenth World Building of the Year winner? Speaking on their behalf in a statement, Finch praised the way the building “addresses the role of architecture in the new world of recycling and zero carbon. It treats infrastructure projects in a way which makes people say ‘Yes in my back yard’ rather than ‘no.’ It encourages designers to think beyond the brief, to argue for ideas, and to ride the tides of politics and economics in the pursuit of the socially beneficial. And it reminds us that buildings can be fun!”

The 41,000 m2 Copenhill plant replaced an adjacent 50-year-old waste-to-energy plant, adding a ski slope, hiking trail, and climbing wall to the large piece of industrial infrastructure to embody the “notion of hedonistic sustainability while aligning with Copenhagen’s goal of becoming the world’s first carbon-neutral city by 2025,” per BIG. The ski slope extending from the building’s high point to the ground is not arbitrary: its arises from the placement of machinery beneath the slope in the order of their heights. The recreational center atop the energy plant has been so popular in the two years since it opened Fonden Amager Bakke and CopenHill A / S is already replacing parts of the ski surface.