From inside the National Building Museum’s cavernous atrium, gaze upwards and you’ll see a series of white icons, suspended from the ceiling. Printed on square boards, the symbols loop around the museum’s 800-foot arcade, their background shifting from red to green to blue. This iconic distillation is the core organization strategy for Bjarke Ingels Group’s “Hot to Cold” exhibition, which opened in DC last Friday, categorizing the wunderkind and novel-minded firm’s global projects into climatological groups of hot, temperate, and cold.
Despite the name, the exhibition isn’t about the architectural imperatives of climate change. Rather, “Hot to Cold” is a showcase of BIG’s diversity of work (built and not) around the world, in program and local biome. Opening to the public in the U.S. capital, the exhibition comes at a strategic time in BIG’s project trajectory, having been recently assigned to the massive Smithsonian renovation project, and hot on the heels of their BIG Maze at the same museum, which drew over 50,000 visitors in its two month run. The exhibition is also the National Building Museum's most ambitious show devoted to a single architect, and the first to use the sheer volume of the atrium as the display space.
The models are hung flush against the edge of the second floor arcade’s barrier, making the viewing perspective relatively strict and consistent. BIG’s work has been described as playful, seductive, innovative, and youthful – characteristics that follow in the exhibition, with punning names and combinations of unexpected elements. The firm’s relatively quick-won success (Ingels split from PLOT to form BIG in 2006) and rapidly increasing list of impressive projects, including Manhattan's The Big U, aka The Dry Line, made Bjarke Ingels himself into a kind of Willy Wonka of architecture, as he spoke with the press and charmed the crowd’s collective pants off. A power plant that’s also a ski slope! The residential “courtscraper” that reconciles height and open greenspace! In the presence of Ingels’ giddy explanations, the projects seemed to lose their suspension wires and float, buoyed by the effervescence of their own optimistic vision.
"Hot to Cold" runs through August 30, along with a slew of international collaborators, including Stefan Sagmeister and Living Architectures duo Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine. And to learn more about the man of the hour, listen for our interview with Bjarke on Episode 14 of Archinect Sessions, available this Thursday. He opens up about:
Studio culture at BIG: "You can’t just deduct a mathematical equation of what is going to be the architectural response, you have to put in different ideas and see how they perform against the selection criteria that they’ve established. Without the element of playfulness, you won’t be able to find unexpected ideas."
The new generation of architects: "We see the architect as not isolated from society, or like some artist doing his or her own little thing, but rather someone that could play a key role in society and maybe helping society formulate where they want to go by manifesting it into concrete visions of a potential future."
And of course, humor: " I think a kind of jokey environment, you might actually end up posing the breakthrough idea in the form of a joke, and once the laughter settles, you think maybe it’s not so silly after all." (in particular reference to the Powder Plant project)
9 Comments
Yay I will get to see this exhibit when I'm in DC for Grassroots in March!
That Smithsonian thing will be regretted.
I don't think that Smithsonian thing will get off the ground;)
Good work archinect on getting the interview.....look forward to it. Nice models as well.
+1 Donna - maybe we can scrounge up a group to go!
Gregory, yay! My son and husband are traveling with me to Grassroots - even though my son jokingly complains about me dragging him around to look at "booooooring architecture", I think he would enjoy this building and the exhibit of models!
Donna, your son will absolutely love the building museum. There's so much to do there for kids. I'd be happy to show you and anyone else around and talk about architecture. When you go, be sure to visit 14th street around Logan circle. It has both gorgeous 19th century architecture and lovely modernist condos happily coexisting, to say nothing about the restaurants.
That's a generous offer, Thayer! My time in DC will likely be scheduled every single second, as I'll be doing the conference activities plus trying to sneak in a little time with my family. But if we do get a group of 'necters together to go to the Building Museum I will let you know, I would love to meet you!
fineprint, dish more! Who do you suspect?! Was it an inside job? A disgruntled intern?
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