"I love the metaphor of Twister," he says. "When you begin the game, it's simple – put your left hand there, right foot here. But as you start piling on demands, you force architecture out of its box, and the building ends up bending over backwards in its efforts to please every single criteria and it ends up looking different. Maybe it's being from a Danish background, with the ultimate culture of consensus, but I always see the potential for synergy or harmony..." — Bjarke Ingels, independent.co.uk
15 Comments
Depends on how you feel about Jeff Koons.
definetly not crazy
his work is cheesy. Seems to be a combination of metaphor and procedural processes and diagrams that elementary school children can understand (ie. more sun = more happy). He's a joke, the most brilliant thing about him is he's open about it.
But does it "work"? BIG's designs look pretty (online) and seem environmentally-friendly enough. Investors appear to trust Ingels and his team. I don't know about the buildings' users, but they too appreciate and enjoy the spaces they live or work in, then is the architecture successful without more analysis, depth of thought, or rigor (Although Ingels would argue that BIG's design process is rigorous, despite the simplistic diagrams and emphasis on fun)
world's smartest architect - or just the craziest?
can we get some other options?
fun is more!
Bjarke is wicked smart (I've met him in person), but "smartest architect" is an impossible way to categorize the work that architects do. He's incredibly clever and charming, and his work seems (I've never met any of it in person) to be clever, charming, and delightful without being belittling of its users (thinking of FAT, here) or simplistic (thinking of most metaphorical work, here).
There's no doubt he's smart. Look at what he's been able to accomplish in such a short time. As for talanted, he certainly has many talents, but arcitecture seems to be the least of them.
Are BIG's designs any more "crazy" or "cheesy" than what we're seeing from firms like DS&R or Snohetta? The difference seems to be that BIG is able to effectively communicate the logic of a building (or at least a large part of the logic) to the public. Usually the form of the building makes the logic quite apparent. The purpose of a building isn't buried under layers of rhetoric or seductive materials. That directness seems to offend architects that favor a less pragmatic approach.
Before Bjarke (BIG) and Julien (JDS), they were PLOT. In the video link below, it's interesting to see how far they have come along since 2005, especially in their lecture presentation style.
http://sma.sciarc.edu/video/bjarke-ingels-and-julien-de-smedt/
I agree with davvid, BIG's designs seem strikingly simple - a single formal operation that resolves multiple issues. Perhaps architects - and students especially - are trained to reject such direct solutions?
He is intelligent.let's give him credit for at least out bullshiting the bullshiters. He's smart enough to know people are drinking his koolaid. Wish I had him as a mentor on bs . is he the smartest? Who cares.
legopiece nails it.
actually his bullshit can easily be puerile, tiresome, shallow and quite frankly an immature zitty wishy washy pseudo-intellectualism. On the other hand, while I don't generally like his architecture very much (I think it weighs too heavily on the side of the literal and the simplistic, the gestural), his architectural is certainly better than his talk...which is, to be honest, unoriginal (all this inherited talk of breeding and genetics and pop science references) and crass.
davvid I think you nailed it. His work is so approachable, far more so than Snohetta, whose work I also like.
If we all bitch about software folks being called ______ architects, I've got to raise objections to BIG being called Master Builder. BIG doesn't build anything, especially not Ingels himself - he pays others to produce drawings.
With that out of the way, when your entire schtick is about being 'of the moment,' don't be surprised when that moment passes you by. For now, however, I appreciate looking at pretty pictures of his work from afar.
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