Building Rating 60% of readers like the Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant.
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Description by Sorg and Associates S org & Associates, a leading Washington D.C.-based architectural firm, has designed a new biosolids treatment process facility at the Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant, the largest treatment facility of its kind in the world. Suman Sorg’s groundbreaking design of eight giant egg-shaped digester tanks transforms the landscape into a futuristic plane of animate forms, rising majestically above the shores of the Anacostia River.
While Washington D.C. is not known for its resplendent industrial structures, the impressive digester tanks, which resemble otherworldly cocoons, mark a major addition to the city’s skyline, highlighting the importance of sustainable urban infrastructure. Nestled in two orderly rows of four, the striking digester tanks measure up to 93 feet at their widest point and rise 108 feet from the ground, with sleek elevator towers reaching up to 120 feet. Sorg connected the egg-shaped digester tanks via elemental yet elegant stainless steel bridges, making worker access more convenient and creating a sense of aesthetic unity. The dipping profiles of the trusses complement the tanks’ soft, rounded forms, while ribbed anodized cladding in the form of a “closed blossom” adds a contrasting note of lightness. At night, towering over the river, where the Anacostia meets the Potomac, the massive digester tanks appear almost magical.
“The delicate, organic exteriors of the digester tanks provide a necessary balance to the structures’ inherent industrial character,” said Suman Sorg, founder and CEO of Sorg and Associates. “For the first time, a digester tank facility – commonly disguised by cheap sheathing - fuses aesthetic concerns with practical realities, thereby creating a refined, precedent-setting model for the future of treatment plant facilities,” she said.
Located on eight acres, the $311 million project also includes two silo-like storage tanks of similar height, two gas equalization tanks, four waste gas flares, and a 34,000 square foot operations building. Sorg adorned each of the additional buildings with brick and metal cladding, so as to complement the pre-existing structures that were built in the 1930s. The facility, at the tip of Southwest Washington D.C., serves more than 2 million customers daily. A major public initiative of the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority, the facility will process about 350 tons of sludge daily.
N Dockett
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 @ 6:13pm
The Blue Plains plant is a monument to environmental responsibility. We are lucky to have a facility of this scope serving us. The water it returns to the river is much cleaner than the river water itself. Very few wastewater treatment plants can make that claim.
Don Hourahane
Saturday, November 8th, 2008 @ 3:55am
An interesting concept, matching aesthetics to the pplication,deserves to be duplicated!
Rebecca Ford
Friday, August 25th, 2006 @ 6:00am
Rating: Five stars. They look giant ancient Egyptian storage jars. They would fit in next to the pyramids. They might even become a tourist attraction in their own right. I think that more sewage treatment plants (such as the stinky one in Richmond, Virginia) would do well to take a lesson from Blue Plains.
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N Dockett
Don Hourahane
Five stars.