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Amager Power Plant, Control Room

The original control room at Amager Power Plant, which was about to be digitized, had no daylight access. Good daylight quality was one of the main objectives in the process of establishing a new control room.

However, there were few options for locating the new control room since the existing cabling could not be extended. On this premise it was decided to establish a new control room building in the form of a light weight pavilion on the roof of the existing building.

The new control room building formed as a box with a glass facade and balcony faces the Copenhagen skyline. The building protrudes from the underlying construction and is supported by a row of steel columns.

The angular and metallic appearance fits accordingly with the architectural scheme of the plant itself. The large windows are in a human scale and reveal the control room as attractive and impressive, even when seen from afar.

The control room is dominated by a concentric layout of desks and screen walls for control and regulation of the three plant units. Projection screens and a range of digital displays are mounted on the curved wall which also contains ventilation installations and acoustically regulating surfaces. Large images are projected onto the screens by powerful projectors positioned on a characteristic circular shelf - lovingly dubbed ’the halo’ - which defines the entire control room.

Adjacent to the central control area are a number of office workspaces as well as necessities like personal lockers for the staff, kitchen, archive and a large documentation table for spreading diagrams and drawings. Naturally, the control room is the most central space of the plant. Since some of the most critical work at the plant takes place here visitors must immediately understand that subdued voices and respectful behavior is necessary here. In a control room one has to wait until the staff-in-charge find the time to be disturbed.

Project location