2019-10-01 Robb Report

156 OCTOBER 2019

PREVIOUS SPREAD: COPENHILL AND GROVE

AT

GRAND BAY: RASMUS HJORTSHOJ; LEGO HOUSE:

KIM CHRISTENSEN; VIA

AT

W57: IWAN BAAN; OPPOSITE: PARI DUKOVIC/TRUNK ARCHIVE.

THE MAN JUST

“Long before he

started his firm,

the idea to

think big was

always there.”

CAN’T SIT STILL.

When I meet Bjarke Ingels in his firm’s surprisingly nondescript

red brick office building in Copenhagen, the architect radiates

a Tigger-like energy, even though he’s just stepped off a plane

from Mexico. There isn’t a hint of jet lag while he sits to talk—or

at least tries to. Constantly shifting in his chair, Ingels seems

to be straining against the urge to get up and pace the room,

or maybe do some calisthenics. Yet that restlessness will be

essential if he’s to complete the extraordinary slate of projects

under way—so many, in fact, that his 14-year-old firm will dou-

ble its overall output in the next 18 months.

The high-profile commissions for Bjarke Ingels Group

(or BIG) include a new Champs-Elysées flagship for Galeries

Lafayette, Audemars Piguet’s new watch museum in Switzer-

land, two campuses for Google in California (one with Thomas

Heatherwick) and several skyline-defining apartment towers

in Manhattan. But Bjarke (pronounced BYARK-uh) seems

neither intimidated nor overscheduled by this onslaught;

rather, he appears to relish it. Ruffling his artfully tousled,

Calvin and Hobbes–like hair, he speaks in blurted phrases,

leaving uneven pauses between them that suggest he’s

updating or revising what he thinks as he speaks. “Each

project we do has to identify how the world is changing, or

has changed.” Pause. “And then address the consequences,

the conflicts, the problems and the potentials.”

Indeed, with each new project, Ingels pushes himself

to reinvent. Whether the sloping roofs of Google’s Sunny-

vale campus, which will double as ramps for walking or

rolling, or the Hualien Residences in Taiwan, which echo

the nearby mountains (down to the steep façades cov-

ered in vegetation), Ingels’s designs fearlessly break the

rules, playing with geometry and materials to create a

built world worthy of 21st-century innovation. If Ingels

has a signature move, it’s subverting expectations.

Both his boundless vim and his derring-do are the

defining qualities of this 45-year-old Dane, at least

according to those who know him best. “From the

get-go, that’s what struck me: his amazing energy,”

recalls Hans Ulrich Obrist, an early champion who is

the artistic director of London’s Serpentine Galleries.

“Even in my first meeting with him, long before he

started his firm, the idea to think big was always there.”

“Energy” is one keyword for Bjarke; “big” is

another. It isn’t just the name of his firm, though the

pun-prone Ingels is schoolboyishly fond of rehash-

ing how happy he is that due to its Danish origin,

its website address is big.dk. “At the end of the day,

I don’t mind telling the same story,” he says with a

shrug. Bigger, bolder and larger than life—it’s his

approach to everything. It’s also a jarring jolt of

swagger in a country known for egalitarianism

and restraint, a quiet conformity codified in a sys-

tem known as janteloven. Asked to explain this

idea, he turns to a favorite, if flawed, metaphor:

the thermostat. It’s no coincidence that it was

devised here, Ingels confidently but incorrectly

notes with a laugh (it was originally invented in

Scotland), considering its ability to regulate and

maintain temperature, keeping everything at the

same level. “Janteloven is a social thermostat that

keeps everyone on an even keel.” He pauses. “I

think I would have cabin fever if I were to stay in

Copenhagen.”

Nothing about his early life suggested that

Ingels, the middle child of a dentist mother and

an engineer father, would leave Denmark, let

alone become a worldwide architectural wunder-

kind. Growing up in a modest, single-story home

just outside the capital, he played with Legos like

any young Dane (though, unlike his peers, Ingels

went on to design the new Lego House interac-

tive museum, which opened at the company head-

quarters on Denmark’s west coast two years ago).

His early goal didn’t involve architecture: He was

a comic-book nerd. “It was never superheroes but

Europeans, especially the Italians

with their highly erotic graphic nov-

els,” he says, adding with a smile, “I

drew them myself.” Certainly, he’s

maintained a fanboyish nerdiness

into adulthood, whether it’s persuad-

ing his friend Nicolaj Coster-Waldau,

who starred as Jaime Lannister on Game of Thrones,

to arrange a role for him as an extra in the series or

passionately advocating for the entire Matrix trilogy.

“I defend the second two, very often,” he says, semi-se-

riously. “It’s such a predictable attitude to piss on the

sequels, but they actually do deliver. Your mind can’t

be blown the same way two or three times.” Though he

never pursued comics professionally, Ingels did fulfill his

childhood dream in 2009, publishing his Mies van der

Rohe–tweaking manifesto, Yes Is More, as a graphic novel.

It was while studying at the Royal Danish Academy of

Fine Arts in Copenhagen that Ingels discovered architec-

ture, via an internship at Rem Koolhaas’s OMA. The gig led

to a full-time job after graduation under Koolhaas’s tute-

lage; that’s where Obrist first encountered Ingels, when the

curator and longtime Koolhaas collaborator was working on

a book with the OMA founder. “That office was a Warholian

situation for architecture, with so many incredible young

collaborators who would go on to become major architects,”

Obrist recalls of the firm. It has produced so many notewor-

thy new talents, from Fernando Romero to Joshua Prince-Ra-

mus, that they’ve been dubbed the Kool Gang or Baby Rems.

Even among such an abundance of gifted minds, Obrist says,

“Bjarke stood out from the first conversation I had with him.”

In part, it’s the force and size of his personality, which bucks

the composed, overtly cerebral affect commonplace among

architects. It’s also Ingels’s chutzpah: He didn’t linger at OMA

but struck out on his own at the tender age of 27 before found-

ing BIG four years later, in 2005. A bold move in any industry

but extraordinary in architecture, where many standouts break

through in their 50s or later. †

Bjarke Ingels,

photographed

at Via 57 West

on Manhattan’s

West side.

156 OCTOBER 2019

PREVIOUS SPREAD: COPENHILL AND GROVE

AT

GRAND BAY: RASMUS HJORTSHOJ; LEGO HOUSE:

KIM CHRISTENSEN; VIA

AT

W57: IWAN BAAN; OPPOSITE: PARI DUKOVIC/TRUNK ARCHIVE.

THE MAN JUST

“Long before he

started his firm,

the idea to

think big was

always there.”

CAN’T SIT STILL.

When I meet Bjarke Ingels in his firm’s surprisingly nondescript

red brick office building in Copenhagen, the architect radiates

a Tigger-like energy, even though he’s just stepped off a plane

from Mexico. There isn’t a hint of jet lag while he sits to talk—or

at least tries to. Constantly shifting in his chair, Ingels seems

to be straining against the urge to get up and pace the room,

or maybe do some calisthenics. Yet that restlessness will be

essential if he’s to complete the extraordinary slate of projects

under way—so many, in fact, that his 14-year-old firm will dou-

ble its overall output in the next 18 months.

The high-profile commissions for Bjarke Ingels Group

(or BIG) include a new Champs-Elysées flagship for Galeries

Lafayette, Audemars Piguet’s new watch museum in Switzer-

land, two campuses for Google in California (one with Thomas

Heatherwick) and several skyline-defining apartment towers

in Manhattan. But Bjarke (pronounced BYARK-uh) seems

neither intimidated nor overscheduled by this onslaught;

rather, he appears to relish it. Ruffling his artfully tousled,

Calvin and Hobbes–like hair, he speaks in blurted phrases,

leaving uneven pauses between them that suggest he’s

updating or revising what he thinks as he speaks. “Each

project we do has to identify how the world is changing, or

has changed.” Pause. “And then address the consequences,

the conflicts, the problems and the potentials.”

Indeed, with each new project, Ingels pushes himself

to reinvent. Whether the sloping roofs of Google’s Sunny-

vale campus, which will double as ramps for walking or

rolling, or the Hualien Residences in Taiwan, which echo

the nearby mountains (down to the steep façades cov-

ered in vegetation), Ingels’s designs fearlessly break the

rules, playing with geometry and materials to create a

built world worthy of 21st-century innovation. If Ingels

has a signature move, it’s subverting expectations.

Both his boundless vim and his derring-do are the

defining qualities of this 45-year-old Dane, at least

according to those who know him best. “From the

get-go, that’s what struck me: his amazing energy,”

recalls Hans Ulrich Obrist, an early champion who is

the artistic director of London’s Serpentine Galleries.

“Even in my first meeting with him, long before he

started his firm, the idea to think big was always there.”

“Energy” is one keyword for Bjarke; “big” is

another. It isn’t just the name of his firm, though the

pun-prone Ingels is schoolboyishly fond of rehash-

ing how happy he is that due to its Danish origin,

its website address is big.dk. “At the end of the day,

I don’t mind telling the same story,” he says with a

shrug. Bigger, bolder and larger than life—it’s his

approach to everything. It’s also a jarring jolt of

swagger in a country known for egalitarianism

and restraint, a quiet conformity codified in a sys-

tem known as janteloven. Asked to explain this

idea, he turns to a favorite, if flawed, metaphor:

the thermostat. It’s no coincidence that it was

devised here, Ingels confidently but incorrectly

notes with a laugh (it was originally invented in

Scotland), considering its ability to regulate and

maintain temperature, keeping everything at the

same level. “Janteloven is a social thermostat that

keeps everyone on an even keel.” He pauses. “I

think I would have cabin fever if I were to stay in

Copenhagen.”

Nothing about his early life suggested that

Ingels, the middle child of a dentist mother and

an engineer father, would leave Denmark, let

alone become a worldwide architectural wunder-

kind. Growing up in a modest, single-story home

just outside the capital, he played with Legos like

any young Dane (though, unlike his peers, Ingels

went on to design the new Lego House interac-

tive museum, which opened at the company head-

quarters on Denmark’s west coast two years ago).

His early goal didn’t involve architecture: He was

a comic-book nerd. “It was never superheroes but

Europeans, especially the Italians

with their highly erotic graphic nov-

els,” he says, adding with a smile, “I

drew them myself.” Certainly, he’s

maintained a fanboyish nerdiness

into adulthood, whether it’s persuad-

ing his friend Nicolaj Coster-Waldau,

who starred as Jaime Lannister on Game of Thrones,

to arrange a role for him as an extra in the series or

passionately advocating for the entire Matrix trilogy.

“I defend the second two, very often,” he says, semi-se-

riously. “It’s such a predictable attitude to piss on the

sequels, but they actually do deliver. Your mind can’t

be blown the same way two or three times.” Though he

never pursued comics professionally, Ingels did fulfill his

childhood dream in 2009, publishing his Mies van der

Rohe–tweaking manifesto, Yes Is More, as a graphic novel.

It was while studying at the Royal Danish Academy of

Fine Arts in Copenhagen that Ingels discovered architec-

ture, via an internship at Rem Koolhaas’s OMA. The gig led

to a full-time job after graduation under Koolhaas’s tute-

lage; that’s where Obrist first encountered Ingels, when the

curator and longtime Koolhaas collaborator was working on

a book with the OMA founder. “That office was a Warholian

situation for architecture, with so many incredible young

collaborators who would go on to become major architects,”

Obrist recalls of the firm. It has produced so many notewor-

thy new talents, from Fernando Romero to Joshua Prince-Ra-

mus, that they’ve been dubbed the Kool Gang or Baby Rems.

Even among such an abundance of gifted minds, Obrist says,

“Bjarke stood out from the first conversation I had with him.”

In part, it’s the force and size of his personality, which bucks

the composed, overtly cerebral affect commonplace among

architects. It’s also Ingels’s chutzpah: He didn’t linger at OMA

but struck out on his own at the tender age of 27 before found-

ing BIG four years later, in 2005. A bold move in any industry

but extraordinary in architecture, where many standouts break

through in their 50s or later. †

Bjarke Ingels,

photographed

at Via 57 West

on Manhattan’s

West side.