Ingels' practice, Bjarke Ingles Group (BIG), has been appointed to replace a 40-year-old waste treatment plant with a new one, and the 36-year-old architect has announced his desire to use the opportunity to rejuvenate the industrial quarter and to turn it into a destination.

Plans for the new plant include turning the roof into an artificial ski slope with three separate runs of varying difficulties, a range of restaurants and a visitor centre showcasing the workings of the waste treatment plant.

The site is owned by Amagerforbrænding, a partnership company owned by the capital municipalities Dragør, Frederiksberg, Hvidovre, Copenhagen and Tårnby. Its core businesses are recycling and waste-to-energy incineration.

Ingels said his plans to conceal a working plant underneath a recreational centre aimed to "hide functionality".

"Instead of considering Amagerforbrænding as an isolated object, we mobilise the architecture and intensify the relationship between the building and the city by expanding the existing activities in the area and turning the roof into a ski slope," he said.

"We propose a new breed of waste-to-energy plant, one that is economically, environmentally and socially profitable."

As part of plans to make the site sustainable and to highlight the effects of consumption and global warming, Ingels has devised a modified smokestack.

"Sustainable energy has become increasingly important in media and politics, but does anybody know what a ton of CO2 looks like?", he said.

"We propose a simple modification to the smokestack which will allow it to puff smoke rings whenever one ton of fossil CO2 is released, serving a communicative function as a gentle reminder of the impact of consumption."

BIG won the DK3.5bn (£404m, US$643m, 470m euro) project in a design competition which featured the likes of Wilkinson Eyre Architects, Dominique Perrault Architecture and 3XN.

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