Current Work: Bjarke Ingels, BIG

Recorded: December 15, 2009

Bjarke Ingels of BIG, a Copenhagen based group of architects, designers, and thinkers operating within the fields of architecture, urbanism, research, and development, present the firm’s recent and current work noted for its analysis, playful experimentation and humor, and social responsibility. The firm describes its practice as, “programmatic alchemy, mix[ing] conventional ingredients such as living, leisure, working, parking, and shopping into new forms of symbiotic architecture.” The firm’s projects seek to “free architectural imagination from habitual thinking and standard typologies in order to deal with the constantly evolving challenges of contemporary life.”

Bjarke Ingels started his own office in 2005, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), after having co-founded PLOT Architects in 2001 and collaborating with Rem Koolhaas at OMA. In 2004 Ingels was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for the Stavanger Concert House, and the following year he received the Forum AID Award for the VM Houses. His latest completed project, The Mountain, has already received numerous awards including the World Architecture Festival Housing Award, Forum AID Award and the MIPIM Residential Development Award.

The Architectural League’s Current Work series presents the work of significant international figures, who powerfully influence contemporary architectural practice and shape the future of the built environment.