BIG crowdfunds steam ring prototype for Amager Bakke power plant project

It’s been more than two years since construction of the Bjarke Ingels-designed Amager Bakke power plant started—a project that the firm said will help the public reimagine what power plants and “mixed use” means by designing a ski slope on the industrial facility.

Earlier this week, the firm announced that it has been working on a prototype for a smokestack that will release ring-shaped steam. The idea is for the smokestack, often seen as an antagonistic symbol of the industrial era, to function as a “communicator for the future.”

“The world’s first steam ring generator will puff out a steam ring for every ton of CO₂ burned in the plant,” the firm said on its Kickstarter campaign page. “By sweeping nothing under the carpet, but rather projecting our carbon footprint onto the Copenhagen sky, we provide every single citizen intuitive information to help them inform the decisions they make for their lives and for the city that they want to live in.”

Previous prototype from April 2014. Photo courtesy of BIG.