The Leadership of Bjarke Ingels for The BIG Succesness

Born on 2 October 1974, Bjarke Bundgaard Ingels is a Danish architect who is the founder & creative director of Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). It has grown organically over the past two decades or so since its inception in 2006 from a single founder, to a family, to 700 employees. Coming up with its latest transformation BIG LEAP: Bjarke Ingels Group for Landscape, Engineering, Architecture, Planning and Products. Some of his notable projects include the 8 House housing complex, VIA 57 West in Manhattan, the Google North Bayshore headquarters (co-designed with Thomas Heatherwick), the Superkilen park, and the Amager Resource Centre (ARC) waste-to-energy plant amongmany others. Since 2009, Ingles has won many architectural competitions

8 House by BIG (cr: Maria Gonzalez)

Portrait of Bjarke Ingels (cr: BIG)

Bjarke Ingels was born into a family background where his father was an engineer and his mother a dentist. His childhood aspiration was to be a cartoonist. Starting his architectural education at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1993, which at the time only wanted to help him improve his drawing skills, but after a few years, Bjarke Ingels began to take an interest in architecture seriously. He continued his studies at the Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura in Barcelona and, in 1999, returned to Copenhagen to receive his diploma. During his studies as a third-year student in Barcelona, Bjarke Ingels established his first architecture practice and won his first competition. In addition to his architecture practice, Ingels has been a visiting professor at several renowned universities including the Rice University School of Architecture, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and the Yale School of Architecture. 

VIA 57 West by BIG (cr: Nic Lehoux)

Amager Ressource Center by BIG (cr: Nic Lehoux)

Superkilen Park by BIG (cr: Iwan Baan)

In 2001, Ingels returned to Copenhagen after working for Rem Koolhaas at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, where he founded the architectural practice PLOT with his Belgian OMA colleague Julien de Smedt. It has since gained national and international attention for its innovative designs. PLOT's first major achievement was the award-winning VM Houses at Ørestad, Copenhagen in 2005. Inspired by Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation concept, they designed two residential blocks, in the shape of the letters V and M (as seen from the sky); M House with 95 units, completed in 2004, and V House, with 114 units, in 2005. The design places great emphasis on daylight, privacy andviews. The complex has around 80 different apartment types, customized to suit individual needs. The building earned Ingels and Smedt the Forum AID Award for best building in Scandinavia in 2006. But at the end of 2005, PLOT was officially dissolved. And in January 2006 Ingels incorporated the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) as his own company, which continues to grow rapidly today. 

VM Houses by BIG (cr: Maria Gonzalez)

In 2012, Ingels moved to New York to oversee work on a pyramid-shaped apartment building on West 57th Street in collaboration with real estate developer Durst Fetner Residential. BIG opened its permanent office in New York and committed to continuing the work in New York, which was used to launch other projects in North America. Ingels also released his first book entitled Yes Is More: An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution, which catalogs 30 projects from his practice in comic book form, which he feels is the best way to tell the story of architecture as the media has successfully contributed to the perception of some of his projects being cartoonish. 

Yes Is More: An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution Book (cr: BIG)

BIG defines itself as an optimistic vision of the future, where art, architecture, urbanism, and nature magically find a new balance. This includes a new generation of architects who combine astute analysis, playful experimentation andsocial responsibility. Ingels gives his views on his design philosophy, which defines architecture as ‘the art of translating all the intangible structures of society, such as social, cultural, economic, and political structures, into physical structures. Architecture must ‘emerge into the world’ by capitalizing on future concerns about climate change. For his architectural practice, according to BIG, buildings must respond to the local environment and climate to be habitable for human life. Ingels draws on metamodern sensibilities, adopting a metamodern attitude that seems to oscillate between a modern and a postmodern position, something unusual and something grounded, naivety and knowledge, idealism and practical matters. Sustainable development and renewable energy are important to Ingels, which he calls ‘hedonistic sustainability’. Ingels says that, ‘It's not about what we sacrifice to be sustainable, it's about what we will get later.