DREAM BIG

At the head of BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) - currently one of the most prolific architecture firms - Danish man Bjarke Ingels has ambitions for grandeur, and is not afraid to show it! From daring projects to “pragmatic utopias”, his BIG architecture firm seems unaffected by the crisis. We have a look at this modern-day builder, whose next dream is to conquer space.

By Delphine Gallay

MAKING THE ORDINARY EXTRAORDINARY

BIG is an acronym that sets the tone for the ambitions of Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group. Three letters and a perfect name, in tune with the creative appetite of the insatiable Bjarke Ingels. A true visionary, he combines large-scale projects—from Google’s next HQ in California (constructed in collaboration with Thomas Heatherwick) to NEURO, a future neuroscience and psychiatry centre in Denmark. Thanks to a unique approach, he breathes new life into contemporary architecture.

Don’t be fooled by his dishevelled teenage look, this charismatic New Yorker by adoption goes beyond classification and challenges stereotypes of the profession. He lays the foundations of tomorrow. An adept of the “yes is more” philosophy in his work, the unshakeable Ingels, who founded his agency in Copenhagen in 2006, now plays in the big league and frequently rubs shoulders at international competitions with his former mentor Rem Koolhas (OMA, Office for Metropolitan Architecture). In an interview with Time magazine, the Danish starchitect is full of praise for his former protégé: “I don’t see him as the reincarnation of this or that architect from the past. On the contrary, in my opinion, he represents a totally assertive new typology, which perfectly responds to the spirit of the times. He is the first major architect to have disconnected the profession from its existential angst.”

MAKING ARCHITECTURE MORE DEMOCRATIC

A founding member of the Plot agency in 2001, alongside Belgian Julien De Smedt (now JDS Architects), Ingels and his alter ego, whom he had met in the OMA offices, were quick to assert themselves. Together, they challenged the limits of the possible by launching a series of highly visible residential projects like VM House and The Mountain (five hundred houses and interconnecting gardens above a parking lot), and gradually forged a name for themselves on the international architectural scene. Their credo? Economical and innovative constructions at very attractive prices (less than €1,000 per m2), something that was previously unheard of. If the collaboration between the two men was fruitful, it nevertheless gave Ingels the desire to tackle even crazier projects on his own. The two architects parted ways, and Bjarke Ingels immediately founded BIG in the Danish capital.

The firm’s first big project was 8 House in Ørestad, Denmark (2010): a “city building” comprising five hundred apartments in the shape of a roller coaster, reminiscent of Brueghel’s masterpiece, The Tower of Babel. Heavily inspired by mountain villages, 8 House reinvents the urban landscape and community life. Here, inhabitants can live and work together: there are two interior courtyards, a crèche, offices, shops, a cinema, squares of greenery, a body of water … not to mention a ramp (or rather a street), allowing bicycle-using residents to ride their bikes up to the tenth floor!

While some of his fellow architects persist in creating irrational and expensive architectural gems, Bjarke Ingels finds the right balance by proposing projects that are both innovative and reasonable, scrutinized by his financiers. An approach to architecture that he himself describes as a pragmatic utopia. To do this, he is quick to explore new forms of sustainable and accessible architecture, and to appropriate sites by building hybrid bridges between the urban and natural elements. All of this, combined with a focus on experience, function, and feasibility, makes for a winning combination.

PROJECTS IN PHASE WITH THEIR TIME

Amongst the projects that best illustrate the “dream BIG” concept of this highly versatile designer: the avant-garde Superkilen urban park in Copenhagen (2012), a model of living together; the VIA 57 West skyscraper (2016), a bold urban pyramid in the heart of Manhattan overlooking the waters of the Hudson River; the improbable Copenhill (2019), a green ski slope located on the roof of an incinerator, as well as several floating container cities to respond to the student housing crisis, and more recently, a promising collaboration with Texan start-up ICON, a 3D printing specialist. Together, they are currently working on designs for a residential district of a hundred houses in Austin, a city in full expansion, all fully printed in 3D (the project completion date is set for 2022). Unbeatable, in terms of both cost and delivery times.

Another milestone in the ascension of Bjarke Ingels was the 2021 launch of the start-up Nabr in collaboration with real estate and new technology experts Nick Chim and Roni Bahar. This promises a (r)evolution of the real estate model, coupled with the art of the tailor-made, thanks to cutting-edge software allowing future buyers to fully personalize their dream home within a specific price range. After an initial order for one hundred and twenty-five apartments in San Jose, California (SoFA One, completion date 2023), Nabr intends to continue in this direction, and plans to deliver one hundred thousand residences around the world, all based on the same model: a unique design, a controlled cost, and low environmental impact. What’s not to like?

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Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet © Iwan Baan & BIG Bjarke Ingels Group. May 7, 2021

THE RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

Far from promoting a distinctive BIG identity, Ingels seeks to reinvent himself with each new project. The only recurring feature of this heavyweight: a relentless methodology in tune with the climatic, environmental, and societal issues of today and tomorrow. A generic architecture, according to his detractors… Nevertheless, the BIG formula works, and the biggest names have entrusted the agency with forging the DNA of their evolving brand, including the workshop museum of Swiss watch manufacturer Audemars Piguet (2018); the three-star restaurant Noma 2.0 (2018); Galeries Lafayette Champs Elysées (2019); the Lego House (2017); the Danish pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo (2018), and a number of museums, such as The Twist (2019); Tripitz (2017); MECA (2019), and the pavilion of the Serpentine Gallery (2016). All are indisputably first-rate architectural feats.

Some of the upcoming projects for the Danish firm include NEURO, a new 20,000 m2 neuroscience and psychiatry centre in Aarhus, Denmark (opening planned for 2026), freely inspired by the gyrification of the brain in order to create more connections and spaces within the same place; the construction of the most sustainable industrial building in the world in the heart of a 120-hectare park for Finnish furniture manufacturer Vestre; the construction of a New York film and television studio for actor Robert de Niro (estimated at the tidy sum of 400,000 million dollars), and last but not least, the remarkable design of a floating city with a capacity for 10,000 residents for American start-up Oceanix. The latter is part of a project supported by the UN in an effort to help climate refugees.

FINGER ON THE PULSE

Today, head of offices of five hundred employees all over the world, with offices based in New York, London, Barcelona, and Shenzhen, Ingels has his finger in plenty of pies! Boasting one or two productions per month and some one hundred projects under study each year, Ingels continues to keep his agency in the media eye. BIG is on everyone’s lips! No mean feat in an ultra-competitive industry reputed to be conservative.

With a domain name - “big. dk” - that brings a smile to many professionals in the field, this uninhibited architect, irritates as much as he fascinates. A skilful player, Bjarke Ingels has clearly understood that to stand out, you have to get people talking. A past master in the art of democratizing his profession, this king of communication carefully curates his message: a comic-strip manifesto (with the graphic novel Yes is More), various publications in tune with the times (How to cold on the evolution of architecture in the face of climate change and Formgiving, on the future of architecture); a documentary on Netflix (Big Time, 2017); various TEDx talks and lunar declarations (more on this below!), and even a 2019 foray into an episode of Game of Thrones!

NEXT STOP: THE MOON!

The next step for this incorrigible dreamer is nothing less than colonizing the planet Mars and the Moon! Presented in Dubai in 2020 as part of the United Arab Emirates’ “Mars 2117” project during the 5th World Government Summit, Ingels’ life-size model of Mars Science City caused quite a stir! A city in space stretching over 56,810 m2, imagined from scratch, allowing humans to invest the red planet within a century. Printed in 3D from desert sand, these vernacular houses sheltered under domes meet dizzying extra-terrestrial specifications: gravity, pressure, extreme temperatures, radiation levels, etc. Enough to tickle the curiosity of billionaire Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX.

A contender in the space race, Bjarke Ingels is also aiming for the Moon. His latest utopia? A 3D space station on the Moon built from in-situ resources. To this end, in the autumn of 2020, BIG, in collaboration with 3D printing specialist ICON, filed a permanent lunar habitation programme known as the Olympus Project. If to date, the main difficulty remains the transportation of raw materials to space, BIG and ICON are working alongside NASA and SEARch+ (a company specializing in extra-terrestrial structures) and currently exploring the possible use of dust from the Moon to build the structure of this space station.

But while waiting to reach such stellar heights, BIG continues to reinvent the architecture of tomorrow on planet Earth.

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Via 57 © Iwan Baan & BIG Bjarke Ingels Group. September 24, 2018