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interview/forum aid awards 2009
Bjarke Ingels
It's easy to forget that Bjarke Ingels has yet to turn 35. After studies in Copenhagen and Barcelona, and a stint with Rem Koolhaas at the Office of Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, the Danish architect founded PLOT together with his Belgian OMA colleague Julien de Smedt in 2001. Five years, three buildings, and a bursting prize cabinet later (among them two Henning Larsen Prizes, two Mies van der Rohe Awards, and a Golden Lion from the Venice Biennale), he moved on to set up his own practice.
Bjarke Ingels Group has gone on to receive even more critical acclaim, pushing its director into the spotlight as Denmark's – and perhaps Scandinavia's – leading young architect. Since 2007, 22 projects have been added to www.big.dk, where 85 »architects, designers, builders and thinkers« define each new building site as a »testbed for its own pragmatic utopian experiment«.
A fearless focus on collision as method leads to a meticulously modulated merge between seemingly opposed programs (a parking garage and a housing block), which turns the Mountain Dwellings, BIG's latest addition to the Ørestaden development in Copenhagen into an interesting essay in programmatic possibilities.
»The Mountain,« explains Ingels, »is the first example of what we call architectural alchemy – the idea that by mixing traditional ingredients such as housing and parking, you can exploit the differences and create unprecedented qualities, if not gold. This symbiotic mix of different programs into one idea is a strategy that we will pursue a lot more in the future, especially in the context of sustainability.«
How so?
- Our work will be characterized by a renewed commitment to what we term ecolomical design, an approach that combines economical and ecological sustainability. If a sustainable idea is too expensive it will never be applied on a large scale, and large-scale applications are what we need. Reversely, a business model that is based on exhausting our natural resources won’t provide long-term growth. So we have to pursue a hybrid that merges the two. This form of alchemical combination of complementing programs is one of many strategies that we're currently using.
Where lies your focus at the moment?
- Three years ago I was profoundly interested in formulating the potential of Copenhagen. The Danish capital seemed to finally be waking up to economic growth, a building boom, increased effects of globalization: the bridge to Sweden, the Mohammed cartoons. It felt like the right place to operate, and the Mountain is a consequence of this optimism. Now Stockholm seems to be experiencing a similar renaissance, with government and planners geared for a more experimental approach than previous regimes. We have been heavily involved with an urban project for Slussen in Stockholm, that Gordian knot of political, infrastructural, cultural, historical and social issues, and we would love to play an active role in its disentanglement.
What lessons did you learn from merging housing with parking?
- Cars want big open floor plates close to the street. Apartments want sun and views. Turn the parking into a tilted podium for the apartments, and both can have what they want. The cars occupy all areas unsuited for housing and vice versa, creating a strange utopian project where all apartments are penthouses, everybody has both a view and a garden, and the parking becomes so generous a public space that Copenhagen’s annual Distortion Festival throws its main concerts in it.
You seem to have a vested interest in topography as architecture. Why this obsession?
- We should probably all see a shrink. A Freudian explanation could be a topographical penis envy – based in a country without mountains we have become obsessed with making them ourselves.
Hm.
- Okay, I'll try harder. I think it's to do with the idea of creating possibilities, of opening up space that is normally closed, of providing access to areas that are normally restricted. In the Mountain, the parking is transformed into a ‘cathedral of car culture,’ and people can walk all the way along the Mount Everest façade to the top and down again, while mountain climbers can climb a 25 meter wall inside the peak of the Mountain. It's about extracting pleasure from the things that are already there. Getting maximum effect with minimal means.
Magnus Larsson