[Enrique Ramirez] You’ve been at your Nørrebro office for almost a year, and as I am walking through your studio, I cannot help but notice the way your practice uses iconography. Was this always a conscious part of your work?

[Bjarke Ingels] Yeah, I would like to think so. But it was never as calculated as people would think. A while back, I was in Shanghai. PLOT had just split up. I knew I was going to continue my practice. I was in the process of finding a new name, and it was kind of hard. I had this idea of giving the office a name that wouldn’t be my name. We had used “PLOT” for 5 years, and now we had to find another catchy name. So the thing I liked about the name, Bjarke Ingels Group, was that it had the word “group”, as in “group effort.” It was an acronym that was funny, at least in the Danish context. I mean, we are a tiny country, and of course, BiG sounds a little bit pretentious.

Having the right initials did not hurt.

(smiles) Of course not. But, there’s more. So, in Shanghai, we discovered that a sign we had done for a client actually looked like the character that means “People” in Mandarin. We then realized that the Mandarin word for “Big” looks remarkable like the word for “People”, but with a line drawn across it. It felt like destiny.



I won’t be the first to tell you that this is simply amazing branding. It’s interesting to see branding fully integrated into the firm, in terms of web design, the building, everything

Yes, but I think these things always occur accidentally, or maybe during brainstorming. It’s really hard to find a new name, but once I found out there was this weird relationship between the Mandarin script, our company’s name and ideas, well, you can imagine our excitement.

But that word, “excitement” really describes something really compelling about BIG. If you look at your work, your projects, there’s this incredible mix of unquestionable legibility and clarity, and outright giddiness. You look like you are actually having fun.

But it’s very serious. Like Monty Python would say, “we are serious about being funny.” But there is some truth to that, you know. Having fun is of course good for us. But it’s also important for the client. Having fun means creating a climate where everybody is willing to push themselves, to go a little bit further.



Indeed! Like this Lego site model. Can you describe it?

It was a competition for a mixed-use development. Well, essentially it’s this very large development, 40,000 square meters, based near the Copenhagen central station. The client required a 400 FAR, so this meant we had to investigate different ways to increase density. Doing that is a struggle. People here are skeptical of high rises … everything above 20 meters is immediately “un-Copenhagen.” If you analyze the skyline here, you will find out very quickly that a 400 FAR is near impossible without breaking the height limit. I think we were facing an age-old problem, and therefore had an age-old response. Until the beginning of last century, architects could actually imagine really cool and interesting projects, but with demands of production, economics, etc., it seemed that the only solution was a modernist box. I know this may seen simplistic, but bear with me. Copenhagen is known as a city of towers. What if you could combine the two things, the Copenhagen tower and the modernist box, seeing their combination as an opportunity instead of as an inhibition? Instead of starting by doing something unimaginative, instead of trying to squeeze something irregular into a regular grid, we constantly experimented with creating various any shapes. So in 3dMax, we made a carpet that we pulled over the site, creating a low-resolution blob with peaks and valleys – something very much like those pin shape puzzles you see everywhere.







We like this project very much. On the ground floors you have parking, sky lit shopping, becoming three floors of offices, becoming housing. It also features this transition from the ground to the towers – a transition from the arena-like public areas to the more private offices in the towered peaks.

And why are you building the model out of Lego pieces?

Perhaps it’s a tribute to modularity? Or a homage to the building industry? Like our logo, we had another lucky moment. We found out that if we build our context model in 1:500, we would essentially be matching the scale of a single Lego figurine.





So we built the context model using this software you can download from Lego. When you’re done with the model, you click “submit” and you pay. They send you a box with a picture of your Lego model. So after we won this competition, we got the idea to get Lego to sponsor the construction of a model scaled to a Lego person. So they donated 220,000 Lego pieces. The results will speak for themselves.

But at what point did the inspiration to use Lego become evident? At what stage?

There are a lot of Copenhagen things – Danish things in this project. We were actually thinking about Jørn Utzon, especially his idea of the additive, that you could create any possible form out of a series of industrially produced elements. This is basically the same thing. But we wanted to take it further. We wanted to use two Danish icons, two things from our childhood and our education – Utzon and Lego – and take it to extremes.



But it seems to me that a perfect example of BIG’s approach. Here we have a design problem, and yet you have the capabilities to negotiate with companies like Lego. Do you view BIG more like a consultancy than anything else?

We just try to keep things interesting. A project becomes interesting when it is an experiment. And once you formulate the plot, the starting concept, what a project is about, it becomes infinitely easier to do it. It sounds silly, and you are probably saying. “Duh!”, but you would be surprised how far one can get along by treating a design problem like an experiment. You start opening your mind to new possibilities. And this means that when things become too rigid, you revisit the problem, and tweak it. You change the parameters. And I think that at this point, the decision making process becomes much more sound, and much more fun. So with this project, we never began with the idea of a Lego branding exercise. Only when we started talking about the modularity of Lego bricks, the popularity of the Lego brand, and the fact that we are, first and foremost, a Danish company, then things began to get interesting.

But your idea of keeping things interesting must certainly be related to your own experiences as a studio instructor. The idea of “ecolomy” was certainly a big part of your advanced studio at Harvard Design School, can you tell me a little bit more about it? What do you mean by “ecolomy”?

Well, it’s a little different than Koolhaas’ use of the word in “Junkspace,” I would like to think of “ecolomy” as a particularly Danish thing. It began here in Copenhagen. We were working on an energy-related project for the city. It was around the time of this conference about consensus. The conference organizers invited all types of economists, and together, they began to prioritize all of the world’s economic and environmental issues in terms of price. People were appalled at the idea of putting a price on the environment. But the sad truth is that if you don’t do it, it won’t have any value to anyone. Whether you want it or not, you will actually priortize things against each other.

The idea of ecology and economy, or ecolomy, offers a different spin on this problem. It is a way of preventing a “good versus bad”, “philanthropy versus capitalism”, “economy versus ecology” dichotomy. Looking at things in these absolutes is quite harmful. Ecolomy is thus a way of thinking and working. It goes beyond looking at things in terms of solely expenses and or investments.



So it’s a systemic approach?

Exactly. And we try to incorporate it into our work. Our projects continue to incorporate ideas about sustainability. But we don’t see sustainability as this pious thing. It doesn’t have to hurt. In fact, our choice of materials and systems for our buildings actually help reduce maintenance costs and allow for longer life cycles.

Do you see this as a paradigm shift for architecture practice? Can you elaborate a little bit on “ecolomy” and Danishness?

I think the Danishness of BIG’s practice, which I am fairly conscious about, is a reaction to the egalitarian-ness of Danish culture. Everyone is supposed to be heard. There is no culture of majority. It is a culture of consensus, incorporating concerns of everyone. Traditionally this has lead to a case of mediocrity, as evidenced by the fact that all Copenhagen’s buldings are the same height. No extremes. Essentially, it creates a lowest common denominator. Architecturally, this means the repetition of common square boxes.

BIG is about finding ways to empower ourselves as architects and urbanists. It is about thinking how all these concerns -- site, program, form, ecolomy -- can be wielded as a power. There is a zen koan that talks about making the force of your opponent your own force. In terms of our project, we do not compromise. We take all the demands and insist of solving every single one of them. We think that, as with the Lego project, the result is infinitely more adventurous than plain housing slabs. BIG is not about the power of architectural genius. We explore the idea that collective interest is a viable design power.

Perhaps this explains your interest in both public and developer-based models.

I think so. We’ve had great success with our Kløverkarren project. We actually had to act as a developer, entering into a contract with the City of Copenhagen, to finalize this project. We designed a superstructure along the perimeter – a 3km long building that surrounds a network of sports fields.

But this is not easy. I have been traveling for the past six weeks trying to sell this project. And at this point, you begin to see how being an architect means that you have to be a little bit of a politician. You become too familiar with codes, laws, and how they can be limiting.

Do you think that architects can use their expertise to change these laws? Do you see a need for BIG to go beyond a developer model and enter the realm of advocacy? How complicated an issue is this?

I would like to think of it as being rather simple. When it comes down to it, the mechanisms behind all these systems – legal or institutional -- are simple. I recently read Ray Kurzweil’s book Singularity is Near, where he defines complexity in a very nice way: complexity is the ability to convey the maximum amount of information with the minimum amount of data. So complexity is a form of simplicity. BIG is about the complex, not the complicated. There’s a difference. Einstein said something like “Don’t simplify things, make simple things.”

So for a designer, simplicity can be this very subjective thing. One person’s complexity is another’s simplicity. Take the Lego project, for instance. In one sense, the idea of using Lego bricks seems rather simple or facile. But in fact, it entails a very nuanced business savvy – an appreciation for the corporate sphere.

Perhaps. Have you seen ICON magazine? Our manifesto is entitled “BIGAMY.” It’s about the ability to have things your own way, on your own terms. It was a manifesto for this essentially Danish approach. It was our way of saying fuck the budget, fuck the rules, fuck the context. You do not have to define yourself as a revolutionary against the establishment. If you decide to be a radical against someone else, essentially you are a radical in reverse. So perhaps there could really be something radical about pleasing everybody.

Do you see any opportunities to explore this idea in the future? Do you think that this is something worth negotiating in an academic setting, or in professional practice?

Well, there may be an opportunity very soon, at the Architectural Association in London. I’m talking with people about teaching a studio there. The topic would be the 2020 Olympic Games in Copenhagen – a hot discussion topic there right now. It would be an opportunity to further press the ideas of ecolomy, sustainability, consensus, complexity. You can pass legislation such that all large-scale buildings should have low energy consumption, you can even mandate zero-energy buildings. But this will never change the fact that Copenhagen has already been built. To really think about sustainability, to think ecolomically about it, you need to exploit the syntheses of programs at a massive level, at the urban level. This means integrating the flow of infrastructures into a viable design strategy. In other words, what if all investments for the 2020 Olympic Games can be marshaled to make Copenhagen the world’s first 100% ecolomical capital?

That seems daunting.

But it’s worthwhile. You have to look at things anew. Take new approaches. Once you have done that, great things will happen.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Left: Bjarke Ingels of BIG

Related Links:
Bjarke Ingels Group – BIG

Enrique Ramirez (author/interviewer)