The city of Uppsala invited BIG to design a biomass cogeneration plant to supplement Uppsala&#;s existing energy infrastructure during the peak loads in the dark and cold fall, winter, and spring. With its beautiful old town, home to the oldest university in Scandinavia and the impressive Uppsala cathedral, it required careful consideration to integrate a vast structure into the historical skyline.

The plaza will consist of two overlapping spaces. One space is conceived like a contemporary interpretation of the Souk, the vast shaded public space where people gather during the day. Tall slender columns mushroom at the top forming a continuous canopy of interconnected disks. Like light filtering through the leaves of the trees, daylight will seep through the gaps through the canopy above. Each disc is tilted towards the center, rising towards the perimeter – the result is a shaded square – opening up to receive visitors from all directions.

Cloud Valley takes its inspiration from the natural Wulong Karst in the Chongqing Wulong National Park, where valleys and mountain form stunning connections between the earth and the sky. BIG’s proposal for Cloud Valley is conceived as two plots along Xinzhou Avenue and Gaoxin Avenue, that mimic each other’s opposites. There is the Mountain, which forms a striking landmark in the area that gives shelter to a protected network of courtyards filled with inviting public functions. Then there is the Valley, which offers the largest publicly accessible green rooftops in China for open-air events. Below the roofscape, the building opens up to the surrounding public to invite visitors into this new neighborhood.

Beneath the slopes, whirring furnaces, steam, and turbines convert , tons of waste annually into enough clean energy to deliver electricity and district heating for , homes. The power plant&#;s infrastructure, from ventilation shafts to air-intakes, helps create the varied topography of a mountain; a man-made landscape created in the encounter between the needs from below and the desires from above.

In , Copenhagen was experiencing what happens to many cities today: the real-estate prices had skyrocketed, propelling an exodus of lower and middle-income residents who could no longer afford to live in the capital. An ambitious political campaign to create new, affordable homes within years was launched. BIG responded by proposing Clover Block &#; a km long perimeter block surrounding the centrally located sports and soccer field Klovermarken.