ROBBREPORT.COM 159
From the outset, though,
BIG showed promise, thanks in no small partto Ingel’s instinct for hype.
From the outset, though, BIG showed promise, thanks in
no small part to Ingels’s instinct for hype. When his fledgling
firm was shilling for work, he dumped every design onto its
website—whether a concept, a failed competition entry or
a client proposal—to help drive interest and suggest, albeit
obliquely, that BIG was a larger operation than it was. He no
longer needs to dissemble: Ingels now has 500 or so staffers,
spread among this office in Denmark and others in London,
Barcelona and Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood. The firm
still uploads designs to the website with apparent trans-
parency, though guests to the Copenhagen office are not
afforded the same creative leeway; stern signs warn visi-
tors not to snap and post images from inside the building.
The ban on posting is particularly ironic because
Ingels is an avid Instagrammer, sharing with his 653,000
followers images of his inner circle, which, in addition to
Coster-Waldau, includes Noma chef René Redzepi, and
about his work and personal life, such as annual trips to
Burning Man, where he met his partner, Spanish archi-
tect Ruth Otero (“She’s much more Latin, more colorful
than me; it’s something I would like to have more of”).
The couple are parents to a young son, Darwin. While
some observers sneer at his shameless self-promotion,
others, including his friend and Museum of Modern
Art curator Paola Antonelli, wave away such snark.
“He’s an amazing communicator, and he has a great
sense of curiosity, enthusiasm and adventure, which
you can see from his Instagram,” she says. “He’s good
at it, because he can see how public and private
spaces have changed.”
The combination of talent and energy earned
Ingels several high-profile commissions early on,
though almost all were domestic, in Denmark. It
was 2010 that proved a turning point for BIG—and
Ingels himself. That’s when he moved full-time to
New York, shucking off the shackles of janteloven
to chase business in a far larger market; at the
same time, during the Shanghai Expo, Denmark
debuted a witty pavilion under his guidance.
Ever charming and connected, Ingels wrangled
the right to borrow the original Little Mermaid
statue from Copenhagen’s waterfront and install
it in China for a few months. He filled a pool
with water from the harbor back home, then
created a series of spiraling bike lanes around
the pool, where visitors could either walk or
borrow one of the pavilion’s loaner bikes to cir-
cle, velodrome-style—another nod to cycling-
mad Copenhagen. “It was like moving the
Statue of Liberty for six months,” he recalls.
“So we installed a surveillance camera in the
pavilion, which transmitted a live image to a
giant screen mounted where she normally
sits.” Widely praised, that project earned him
accolades, commissions and invitations—including to the Venice Biennale architec-
ture exhibition that same year. It was at a din-
ner there that Ingels’s sunny optimism was
tested. His effervescence about the potential
for humankind was reportedly shot down by
his fellow guests, whose view of the future
was more negative. It was a rare moment
when Ingels’s genial affect snapped: He is said
to have stormed out of supper, slamming the
door behind him—after barking that the others
shouldn’t leave until they had each read a few
pieces from Wired magazine (and so, in theory,
come around to his future-friendly worldview).
Did that incident really happen? He dodges the
question like a pro, grabbing his phone instead to
show some video. “Watch this,” he says. Pressed
again, Ingels laughs. “I’m not sure. I can’t say that
I remember, but that’s hilarious.”
Other invitations proved more welcome,
including one from his old champion Obrist, who
hired Bjarke in 2016 to create the Serpentine Gal-
leries’ summer pavilion. Each year, Obrist tasks an
architect with realizing a fantasy building on-site,
and Ingels was honored to follow the likes of Frank
Gehry, Zaha Hadid and his old boss, Koolhaas. His
design, which the curator describes as “one of the
most dramatic, spectacular pavilions in the series,”
was made from fiberglass bricks, artfully stacked
into a shape-shifting structure that resembled an
artistic climbing wall. Viewed from various angles, it
looked opaque or translucent, two- or three-dimen-
sional. “He has an amazing force de conviction, as they
say in French, and is able to negotiate, because he’s
such a great conversationalist—and a very good lis-
tener,” Obrist says.ince then, Ingels’s ascent has acceler-
ated even faster—and nowhere is his firm
in greater demand than New York. The
surge in development there in the wake
of the Bloomberg administration has been
a boon for many architects—and Ingels,
ever vigilant for opportunity, hurled himself at prospec-
tive clients with characteristic gusto.
The birth of his son late last year has kept Ingels more
anchored to Copenhagen, but New York remains the focus
of his work, and a place he still regularly visits. BIG has
already finished one building in Manhattan, the pyra-
mid-like, 44-story Via 57 West apartment complex, and has
several more towers under way. “If New York was a coun-
try, it would be the country in the world where we have the
most work. And when you think of New York, you think of
a city that is already complete, with a skyline of man-made
mountains, but there are lots of empty pockets,” he says,
relishing the particular challenges of working within them.S
ROBBREPORT.COM 159
From the outset, though,
BIG showed promise, thanks in no small partto Ingel’s instinct for hype.
From the outset, though, BIG showed promise, thanks in
no small part to Ingels’s instinct for hype. When his fledgling
firm was shilling for work, he dumped every design onto its
website—whether a concept, a failed competition entry or
a client proposal—to help drive interest and suggest, albeit
obliquely, that BIG was a larger operation than it was. He no
longer needs to dissemble: Ingels now has 500 or so staffers,
spread among this office in Denmark and others in London,
Barcelona and Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood. The firm
still uploads designs to the website with apparent trans-
parency, though guests to the Copenhagen office are not
afforded the same creative leeway; stern signs warn visi-
tors not to snap and post images from inside the building.
The ban on posting is particularly ironic because
Ingels is an avid Instagrammer, sharing with his 653,000
followers images of his inner circle, which, in addition to
Coster-Waldau, includes Noma chef René Redzepi, and
about his work and personal life, such as annual trips to
Burning Man, where he met his partner, Spanish archi-
tect Ruth Otero (“She’s much more Latin, more colorful
than me; it’s something I would like to have more of”).
The couple are parents to a young son, Darwin. While
some observers sneer at his shameless self-promotion,
others, including his friend and Museum of Modern
Art curator Paola Antonelli, wave away such snark.
“He’s an amazing communicator, and he has a great
sense of curiosity, enthusiasm and adventure, which
you can see from his Instagram,” she says. “He’s good
at it, because he can see how public and private
spaces have changed.”
The combination of talent and energy earned
Ingels several high-profile commissions early on,
though almost all were domestic, in Denmark. It
was 2010 that proved a turning point for BIG—and
Ingels himself. That’s when he moved full-time to
New York, shucking off the shackles of janteloven
to chase business in a far larger market; at the
same time, during the Shanghai Expo, Denmark
debuted a witty pavilion under his guidance.
Ever charming and connected, Ingels wrangled
the right to borrow the original Little Mermaid
statue from Copenhagen’s waterfront and install
it in China for a few months. He filled a pool
with water from the harbor back home, then
created a series of spiraling bike lanes around
the pool, where visitors could either walk or
borrow one of the pavilion’s loaner bikes to cir-
cle, velodrome-style—another nod to cycling-
mad Copenhagen. “It was like moving the
Statue of Liberty for six months,” he recalls.
“So we installed a surveillance camera in the
pavilion, which transmitted a live image to a
giant screen mounted where she normally
sits.” Widely praised, that project earned him
accolades, commissions and invitations—
including to the Venice Biennale architec-
ture exhibition that same year. It was at a din-
ner there that Ingels’s sunny optimism was
tested. His effervescence about the potential
for humankind was reportedly shot down by
his fellow guests, whose view of the future
was more negative. It was a rare moment
when Ingels’s genial affect snapped: He is said
to have stormed out of supper, slamming the
door behind him—after barking that the others
shouldn’t leave until they had each read a few
pieces from Wired magazine (and so, in theory,
come around to his future-friendly worldview).
Did that incident really happen? He dodges the
question like a pro, grabbing his phone instead to
show some video. “Watch this,” he says. Pressed
again, Ingels laughs. “I’m not sure. I can’t say that
I remember, but that’s hilarious.”
Other invitations proved more welcome,
including one from his old champion Obrist, who
hired Bjarke in 2016 to create the Serpentine Gal-
leries’ summer pavilion. Each year, Obrist tasks an
architect with realizing a fantasy building on-site,
and Ingels was honored to follow the likes of Frank
Gehry, Zaha Hadid and his old boss, Koolhaas. His
design, which the curator describes as “one of the
most dramatic, spectacular pavilions in the series,”
was made from fiberglass bricks, artfully stacked
into a shape-shifting structure that resembled an
artistic climbing wall. Viewed from various angles, it
looked opaque or translucent, two- or three-dimen-
sional. “He has an amazing force de conviction, as they
say in French, and is able to negotiate, because he’s
such a great conversationalist—and a very good lis-
tener,” Obrist says.ince then, Ingels’s ascent has acceler-
ated even faster—and nowhere is his firm
in greater demand than New York. The
surge in development there in the wake
of the Bloomberg administration has been
a boon for many architects—and Ingels,
ever vigilant for opportunity, hurled himself at prospec-
tive clients with characteristic gusto.
The birth of his son late last year has kept Ingels more
anchored to Copenhagen, but New York remains the focus
of his work, and a place he still regularly visits. BIG has
already finished one building in Manhattan, the pyra-
mid-like, 44-story Via 57 West apartment complex, and has
several more towers under way. “If New York was a coun-
try, it would be the country in the world where we have the
most work. And when you think of New York, you think of
a city that is already complete, with a skyline of man-made
mountains, but there are lots of empty pockets,” he says,
relishing the particular challenges of working within them.S