Year: 2018 – 2020
Client: City of Copenhagen
Role: Architect

With increasing focus on recycling and upcycling of materials, the City of Copenhagen is rethinking the facilities that citizens encounter when disposing of their waste. Since 2012, Platant has worked with the municipality to redesign the city’s local recycling centres. We develop them into places that are socially and physically integrated with the surrounding neighbourhood, and where the focus is on making things live through swapping, repairing, and sorting correctly. The recycling centres were a place where you could dispose of your waste. Now they are becoming places, where you can repair your belongings, swap a sweater for a pot, participate in events and much more.

In the neighbourhood of Nørrebro, you can find the city’s oldest recycling centre. It has many users, but it is run down and in poor condition. Together with the users, the staff, and the municipality we have designed a new layout for the recycling centre. We have added a building and upgraded the space between the buildings.

The new building faces the street and is the first part of the recycling centre you will notice. It is eye-catching with its rose-coloured tiles, the eaves are dark red, we have used recycled lamps, and vines grow up the facade. Facing the street, we have benches from recycled red granite stone. A new balustrade fence has been set up along the entire stretch. The existing building has been painted with two shades of green. We have added windows to get more natural light in and painted the inner walls white. The building is dedicated to displaying items for swapping and it is kept in order by local volunteers.