The former prison installation


A former female prison block is being rebuilt into a ‘Living Green Tower’ with vertical parks, urban gardening and restaurants in the south of Amsterdam. Designed by OMA Architects, together with FABRICations, and developed by AM Project Developers, The Waste Transformers will supply the installation bearing the same name, that will transform all the organic waste from 1350 homes, into good energy.

In 2016, the former Amsterdam prison ‘Bijlmer Bajes’ closed his doors (to prisoners), and opened the area for a new bright and positive future. This area, in the city of Amsterdam, is being redeveloped into the most green and innovative neighbourhood, in which you can live, work and play. Meeting the highest standards of living, wellbeing and sustainability, one of the six former prison towers - the female prison tower - will be stripped down to it's skeleton, the rooftop removed and replaced with a vertical green park with a climbing wall, restaurants and offices with urban gardening and greenhouses.

From a prison to vertical parks inside a tower

98% of all the materials from the former prison will be re-used in this new neighborhood.

The area, redeveloped by OMA Architects and AM Project Developers, will place one of our Waste Transformers inside this Green Tower.

Our modular system will be taken out of its basic structure (a 20 ft shipping container) and the digester and biogas tanks will break through the floor into a public space. They will be like mushrooms popping up in an autumn forest. Visitors to the Green Tower can experience and learn how our Waste Transformer will transform food waste into clean energy, heat and natural fertilizer for the vertical park.

Transforming food waste streams on-site has a substantial positive impact on reducing the amount of waste that needs to be collected by garbage trucks. This Waste Transformer helps to significantly reduce the amount of food waste related logistics in the neighbourhood, reducing congestion, air pollution and urban traffic. It also allows those who produce the waste, to recover and share the value in that waste.
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Images provided by FABRIcations, designer of the Green Tower. 

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