Located on the outskirts of Shenzhen – the Shenzhen East Waste-to-Energy Plant will incinerate 5.000 tonnes of waste per day, generating 550 million kWh every year. With a population of 20 million Shenzhen produces 15.000 tonnes of waste a day, a number that is increasing approximately 7% per year. To counteract this Shenzhen Energy wish to build a new plant that not only uses the most advanced technological processes in waste incineration but also act as a source of education for the citizens of the city.

The proposal organizes the entire plant, including auxiliary buildings, into one circular building breaking the traditional rectangular layout of an industrial power plant. By proposing a clean circular form the footprint of the plant is controlled and reduces the amount of excavation required to build on the site.

Inside the plant the technical processes from waste collection to incineration are repeated three times and placed around a central turbine. All technical access for the plant occurs at ground floor level.

Public visitors are invited into the plant through a landscaped park, via an entrance bridge that rises between the stacks to an entrance lobby and visitor centre overlooking the plant machinery. An in-ternal circular path and walkway circle the plant explaining each process, before leading up to a 1.5km panoramic public walkway on the roof overlooking the surrounding landscape and back to-wards the city.

The 66,000m2 roof is designed to be covered by up to 44.000m2 of photovoltaic panels providing the opportunity for the plant to not only provide a cleaner way to deal with the city’s waste but also contribute to the renewable energy provision for the city.

The plant is intended to showcase the Waste to Energy production as an important technical pro-cess that is geared to dealing with both the issues of growing waste, but also the issue of finding new more environmentally friendly ways of generating electricity. At the same time visitors can be-come informed on the challenge of the growing waste we produce every day and be educated on initiatives on how we can reduce our own amount of daily waste.