Trash - perhaps a city's greatest resource:
The Urban Hearth project attempts to visualize this reality, as well as address the growing concerns of compounding trash within Chicago's dense urban fabric through incineration. While large factory-scale incineration plants exist across the US, turning municipal trash into alternative energy, none have been implemented within a city at building-scale. Furthermore, none have been implemented alongside public park space or housing. So what if there was a building that could use a city's waste to power the city's hotel & recreation space?
At Chicago's urban hearth, located at 610 S. Michigan Ave, local trash is deposited at the rear of the building, where it is incinerated. The resulting ash is transported underground to nearby train tracks, while the gases released from the process is then filtered through modern filtration systems before being funneled upwards through three "honeycomb" frameworks to heat the rooms & environments within.
