Bjarke Ingels Reaches New Heights: Danish Architect Talks Philosophy & Projects
Bjarke Ingels is comfortable with contradictions. Throughout the course of our video call, the superstar Danish architect and founder of Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) often opts for oxymorons to etch out his philosophies. Expounding on these terms (such as “hedonistic sustainability” and “pragmatic utopia”) is how he distills his big ideas on environmentalism, place-making, and the future. It’s also how he contextualizes his work in a world where his designs surpass the norm.
“If utopia is the idea of a world so perfect that it can’t exist in real life, and pragmatism is an attitude toward the world that deals with it as it is, pragmatic utopianism is this idea that — within the constraints and confines of the canvas you have to play with — you try to make the best possible manifestation of the ideal world.”
Bjarke Ingels
Conceptually, Ingels perceives projects as ways of reconciling opposing forces, like transforming outlandish ideas into concrete structures or creating technologically advanced buildings that seamlessly complement their natural settings. At the Brooklyn headquarters of BIG, a group that specializes in architecture, urban planning, engineering, landscape ideation, and product design, Ingels leans back in his chair, BIG employees can be seen scurrying around behind him through the conference room’s glass walls.
Pragmatic utopia, a term first coined by architect Davidya Kasperzyk, has become a compass of sorts for Ingels, who moved from Denmark to New York in 2010. “You’d think that pragmatism and utopianism would be irreconcilable,” he explains from his DUMBO office. “But if utopia is the idea of a world so perfect that it can’t exist in real life, and pragmatism is an attitude toward the world that deals with it as it is, pragmatic utopianism is this idea that — within the constraints and confines of the canvas you have to play with — you try to make the best possible manifestation of the ideal world.”
Bjarke Ingels: Selected Works
King Toronto
Bjarke Ingels: Selected Works
King Toronto
Bjarke Ingels: Selected Works
King Toronto
Bjarke Ingels: Selected Works
King Toronto
Each of Ingels’s designs is an expression of this ethos. From the tiered floors at the Heights School in Arlington, VA, and the towering isosceles at VIA 57 West in New York City, to the floating hotel nestled among the trees in northern Sweden and a forestial Norwegian furniture factory that looks like it’s emerging from the ground, his projects often give the illusion of being in motion, evoking a feeling of momentum.
In Canada, BIG was the team behind both Vancouver House, a skyscraper with cascading units that create the illusion of a twisted building, and Telus Sky, a high-rise with a futuristic facade designed to look pixelated. Next up is King Toronto, a unique 16-storey residence located on King Street West. With this new addition to the city’s oft-discussed condo landscape, Ingels hopes to create opportunities for connection and community. And, with balconies attached to each unit and lush terraces on more than half of them, he’s also trying to bridge the gap between inside and out. This concept hits close to home: back in Denmark, Ingels’s childhood cast nature as the catalyst for creativity.
As a child, the architect recalls often forgetting his house keys and being stuck outside after school. “I would typically be with a friend and we would venture into the forest adjacent to my house. We’d roam around there,” he recalls. Ingels credits these moments of being locked out and left to explore in nature for fostering his deep sense of wonder.
He also fondly remembers his childhood bedroom being covered with his drawings. Along one wall, a long bookshelf was filled with graphic novels — early on in life, Ingels dreamt of being a cartoonist, which eventually inspired him to attend architecture school. As a student, the idea of bringing drawings or sketches to life inspired him above all else. And, having gleaned inspiration from Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight and Jean Giraud’s Blueberry, he initially began studying architecture only to improve his drawing. “I thought it was a good idea to learn to draw buildings and landscapes because I spent most of my childhood focusing on characters, vehicles, animals — anything that moved. I wanted to spend some time on the backdrop.”
It wasn’t until a class trip to Barcelona that he truly fell in love with architecture. Studying the work of icons like Antoni Gaudí, he says, “[showed me] that architecture could be incredibly fascinating and rich with stories and alternative environments that were much more different from the ordinary that I had imagined.”
In 2002, BIG’s first project tasked Ingels with redesigning the Copenhagen Harbour Baths, an industrial port turned social hub on the city’s waterfront. Seeing sustainability efforts become opportunities for leisure was revelatory for the architect. As he watched citizens of Copenhagen jumping into the Harbour Baths to swim, he says, “it became clear to us that this was a bigger idea: the idea that the clean port was not only nice for the fish, it’s also much more enjoyable for the people that inhabit it.”
Bjarke Ingels: Selected Works
Copenhill, photo by Rasmus Hjortshoj.
Bjarke Ingels: Selected Works
Copenhill, photo by Hufton Crow.
Bjarke Ingels: Selected Works
Capitaspring, photo by Finn Fallon.
Bjarke Ingels: Selected Works
The Plus, photo by Einar Aslaksen.
Bjarke Ingels: Selected Works
Google Bay View, photo by Iwan Baan.
Bjarke Ingels: Selected Works
Lego House, photo by Rasmus Hjortshoj.
Bjarke Ingels: Selected Works
The Twist Museum, photo by Laurian Ghinitoiu.
This sparked a concept that he calls hedonistic sustainability, explained as “the idea that a sustainable city or building not only is better for the environment, but also so much more enjoyable for the people that inhabit it.” Ingels’s most imaginative manifestation of this concept is the Danish capital’s CopenHill, a waste-to-energy plant topped with a hiking trail, climbing wall, and ski slope. Like the Copenhagen Harbour Baths, the plant became a social destination when it was completed in 2019. “I like this idea that we’ve elevated the norm in Copenhagen to the heights where kids think it’s normal to ski on the roof of power plants that turn trash into electricity,” Ingels says with a laugh.
Over the years, Ingels and his colleagues have developed an air of aesthetic prescience — often leaning toward or predicting trends and styles to come. But King Toronto harks back to an emblem of contemporary Canadian architecture. The downtown mid-rise, which is being developed with Westbank, is inspired by Habitat 67, the innovative Montreal housing complex designed by Israeli-Canadian architect Moishe Safdie in 1967. Ingels visited Safdie’s own apartment at the iconic address before the unit was sold.
“We thought it could be interesting, 50 years later, to pick up where Moishe Safdie left off and create an urban-integrated continuation of the ideas that he initiated back in the day,” he explains. King Toronto sits on top of historic buildings at King Street West and Spadina Avenue, which will be left intact. The design creates the illusion that the units are seamlessly sprouting from these structures. Together, Ingels says, the buildings “create a symbiosis between the old and the new.” Plus, the abundance of greenery promised by the project’s renderings give the look of an urban oasis.
“In the first 25 years, you evolve, grow, learn and become the person that you are. The next 25 years, you hone your craft, you acquire skills, you build your team or you become part of a team. In the third quarter, you take all the gifts that you’ve acquired and you give the world what you have to give.”
Bjarke Ingels
King Toronto is one of BIG’s many, many projects still underway across the globe, one of which includes developing a Mindfulness City in Bhutan. But, this year, Ingels is keeping a special project top of mind: his 50th birthday. The architect has been working on transforming a space in Brooklyn Heights for over five years, and he hopes to ring in his 50th birthday there — though he worries it may not be ready in time. Ahead of the milestone, he’s clinging to advice from the King of Bhutan, His Royal Highness Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck.
“He was talking about the four quarters of your life,” Ingels explains. “In the first 25 years, you evolve, grow, learn and become the person that you are. The next 25 years, you hone your craft, you acquire skills, you build your team or you become part of a team. In the third quarter, you take all the gifts that you’ve acquired and you give the world what you have to give.”
Bjarke Ingels: Selected Works
King Toronto
Bjarke Ingels: Selected Works
King Toronto
Bjarke Ingels: Selected Works
King Toronto
Bjarke Ingels: Selected Works
King Toronto
One of the gifts Ingels hopes to offer is an “oxymoronic manifesto,” which will expand on some of his more treasured, firmly held beliefs. “I think it’s something the world needs now more than ever,” he says. Ingels is attracted to oxymorons because the tension between opposing ideas, like a building that fuses old and new architecture, or a unit that highlights both natural and manmade elements, can be a seed for something transformative. “In everything we do,” Ingels explains, “the fundamental agenda is to reconcile what seems at the surface to be polarized opposites and show that they can perfectly and harmoniously thrive together,” he explains. Ingels simply intends to prove both things can be true, and celebrated, at once.
