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Photography

Aerial Photos by Tom Hegen Capture the Sprawling Solar Plants Popping Up Around the Planet

In one hour alone, the sun pummels the earth with more power than the world uses in the span of an entire year. This staggering fact inspired German photographer Tom Hegen (previously), whose recent aerial images survey the plants harnessing this source of renewable energy. The Solar Power Series peers down at landscapes across the U.S., France, and Spain that are covered with scores of square panels—according to PetaPixel, the locations include California’s Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, Nevada’s Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, the Les Mées Solar Farm in France, and the PS10 Solar Power Plant and Gemasolar Thermosolar Plant, both near Seville.

Staggered in wide, circular patterns, much of the gleaming infrastructure relies on mirrors called heliostats to collect and direct the sunlight to a central station. This manner of harvesting uses the captured heat to generate steam that then produces energy, and newer solar thermal plants also apply molten salts to store the power long after the sun has set. “These man-made, constructed landscapes represent our efforts of building a more sustainable future in the most sophisticated ways,” the photographer writes.

The Solar Power Series is just one of Hegen’s projects concerned with the human impact on the earth, which you can see more of on Instagram and Behance.

 

Design

Check Out Copenhill, the Snow-Free Ski Hill and Climbing Wall Atop a Copenhagen Power Plant

A year since its opening, the snow-free ski hill and entertainment hub that sits above a waste-to-energy power plant in Copenhagen is fully open to outdoor enthusiasts. New aerial photographs from Hufton+Crow capture the rooftop complex Copenhill (previously) through a blanket of fog, revealing the now lush landscaping that lines hiking trails and visitors as they peer out over the surrounding water. The multi-use site, which is located at the Amager Resource Centre, even has the world’s tallest climbing wall, an 80-meter-high rock structure that scales the entirety of the building.

Copenhill is the project of Danish architectural firm BIG and is the highest outlook in the capital city. The new complex also boasts multi-faceted energy reuse, with the indoor plant converting waste into heat for residents’ homes, while the biodiverse hill outside absorbs heat, filters the air, and minimizes water runoff.

 

Design

A Gear System Helps Visualize the Magnitude of One Googol, or 1 Followed by 100 Zeros

To celebrate spending one billion seconds on Earth, Daniel de Bruin created a gear system that represents the number googol (that’s the digit 1 with 100 zeros behind it). Every time the first wheel completes 1,000 rotations, which happens in about an hour, the second gear turns 100 notches and the third 10. Each following wheel is reduced by 10, meaning in order to turn the last and 100th one, the system would need a googol of energy, which the Netherlands-based designer says is “a number that’s bigger than the atoms in the known universe.” He tells Colossal that when working perfectly, each gear is perpetually in motion. “Visible to the human eye, I could only see ten gears moving in my lifetime,” he says. For more of de Bruin’s mind-boggling projects—like his totally analog 3D printer and pneumatic pinball machine and can opener—head to his Instagram or YouTube.

 

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A post shared by Daniel de Bruin (@daniel_de_bruin) on Mar 1, 2020 at 3:05am PST

Design

Roof of a Copenhagen Power Plant Doubles as Snow-Free Ski and Snowboarding Center

Danish architectural firm BIG recently transformed what would be another underutilized industrial space into a year-round entertainment hub as part of Copenhagen’s plan to be carbon-neutral by 2025. Copenhill, which opened in October of 2019, is situated on top of the waste-to-energy power plant, the Amager Resource Centre, in the Danish capital. Offering snow-free skiing and snowboarding, the outdoor space also allows hiking and running on its trails that border the 41,000-square-meter area. It even boasts the world’s largest climbing wall reaching 80 meters high.

The power plant can convert as many as 440,000 tons of waste into energy and heat for the hundreds of thousands of the city’s homes every year. Each machine is arranged by height, pushing the multi-use site to 90 meters at its peak.