This episode is a doozy. Paul and Amelia left the temperate sunshine of Los Angeles for Washington, DC's frigid monumentality, to interview Bjarke Ingels on the eve of his "Hot to Cold" exhibition at the National Building Museum. The 40-year old architect shared some quick-won wisdom about scaling a business, the Danish condition, and the indispensability of humor and play in architecture.
Donna and Ken joined Paul and Amelia to speak with Lian Chang about her recently published visualizations of the Archinect Salary Poll for the ACSA, in charming emoji-based data sets. The Sessions co-hosts also discuss Aaron Betsky's new appointment as the head of the deeply troubled Taliesin West, and what Thom Mayne's demolition of Ray Bradbury's house means for architecture preservation and sentimentality.
And for another climatological analogy, Paul and Brian Newman, Archinect Sessions's legal correspondent, poke at the tip of the iceberg concerning issues of copyright in architecture.
A reminder: send us your architectural legal issues, comments or questions about the podcast, via twitter #archinectsessions, email or call us at (213) 784-7421.
Listen to episode fourteen of Archinect Sessions, "His bjark is BIGger than his bjite":
If the above embed doesn't work, click here to listen.
Shownotes:
Sunrise Caribbean Cuisine in DC's Union Station.
Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine of Living Architectures, whose films are featured in BIG's "Hot to Cold", recently were named one of 2015's Game Changers by Metropolis Magazine.
Mortal Engines sci-fi series, and some accompanying fan visualizations
KCRW interview with Thom Mayne and his wife, Blythe, concerning the Bradbury demolition.
51 Comments
OMG I love the way Bjarke says "ahhrchitecture"!
it must have been a lot of fun getting to run around with him and interview him. it seems he's always selling, and he's got to have a lot of energy.
great cast!
I got the feeling Bjarke was not selling. He was just talking and we just happen to be buying. Thats a pretty impressive talent.
The ongoing discussions with the archinectual lawyer are also great. After a while they'll probably add up to quite a lot more than we got in Architectural Law class in school.
very interesting episode. can any one tell me the name of (Kristin??) and her firm that Bjarke mentions around 1:02:35?
lesro - Bjarke referenced Christine Binswanger from Herzog & de Meuron.
was it coincidence or intentional that Bjarke Ingles and Lian Chang were on the same podcast.
Isn't BIG architecture 'emoticons' of stats? A happy Koolhaas.
for example
what music am I listening to - kiya by M I R A
love Archinect ;)
as I enjoy the first trappist monk beer Made in USA!
They were both newsworthy this week, Olaf!
The salary poll data viz is really cool, and more analysis of the data is coming.
Donna was the ! a
or
or
Everything I say is that last one, Olaf.
Olaf will keep it rolling Ms. Donna -
what do you kids do all day? I'm married, 2 kids, dog, 1/2 acres, AOR for some serious shit, and drink more beer than you drink water....
am I the only one that doesn't sleep!
QUALITY shall return.
just to be clear, the rant is not directed at Lian or Bjarke, both concerned with QUALITY.
I just want to hear more than myself and a few others on archinect post on this.
nice interview y'all -
there's a really great issue of abitare (the magazine) before it folded where they followed bjarke around for a year. it's definitely a peek into the operations as they were scaling up; how he thinks; how the firm culture is manifest; etc. for some who really enjoyed your interview, it'd be a more in-depth expansion on several of the themes.
If you don't think that he's always selling, I have a bridge to sell you. Not that most architects aren't on some level, but his Rem with a smile (and cool graphics) routine is a bit much. He seems to retain that joy from grad school when your super cool idea seemed like it was going to re-make how people (fill in the blank), yet when the smoke clears, it's just another grandiose scheme. I can totally see his appeal though. I mean, who doesn't like a smiling norseman with a cute accent? But when you look closely at his projects and proposals, so many are absolutely massive street killers. Starchitecure with out the baggage is still starchitecture.
"But when you look closely at his projects and proposals"
Which projects have you actually visited and found to be "massive street killers"?
Thanks Paul!
Good point davvid. As an architect, I completely depend on actually being next to the building as my ability to construct a mental image from a two dimensional representation is absolutely impossible. For that matter, I don't see why everyone continues to debate Le Corbusier's Villa Radieuse, as it was never built. It could have been wonderful, but since no one experienced it in person, who knows. Even if they had though, it would just be one opinion and therefor of no use in any rigorous analysis, which is the only kind worth studying.
Thanks!
Who ever said that Bjarke isn't always selling? He's the face of his firm, and probably does more selling than anything else. What is it with these neo-classicists? I thought you were supposed to be the fucking Brady Bunch, and the modernists were lithium taking social party crashers? You're shitting on Bjarke because he actually has fun doing what he loves? Maybe he'd fit better with your narrative of contemporary architects, if he wrote a blog post comparing working for a particular firm and being raped?
Hedonistic Sustainability is still one of the better lectures. He does what he says.
I like that he's having fun, and I love his approach. My objection isn't that he forgot to stencil a classical pediment on his buildings but rather their scale. I just prefer finer grained urbanism, heterogeneous stylistically, but at a human scale. His work is simply too BIG. I don't know if that's something out of his control or just how he works, I just know what makes a street feel good.
Large buildings operate at multiple scales simultaneously. If you're eating Indian Food in the restaurant at the Mountain Dwellings project, its not as though the experience feels out of scale. Just like if you are browsing the Apple store in Grand Central Station, the patrons are not dizzy from the massive scale of the space.
his firm's name is BIG. that's like saying bjarke is too bjarke. i assumed thayer was just punning around.
"Just like if you are browsing the Apple store in Grand Central Station, the patrons are not dizzy from the massive scale of the space. "
True, because of the scaling qualities of classical architecture help the human form relate to it. But I don't think his buildings need to be classical by any measure. They are too expressive for that in terms of massing. They are giant sculptures like Zaha's or Gehry's work, which (I think) is the general criticism of starchitecture in general.
I listened to that lecture Hedonistic Sustainability, and while I grant the concepts are catchy, the translations seem too literal, without consideration for ...context. But I'm beating a dead horse with that criticism. It's stupid actually because it's inherent in the kind of work they do.
I just wouldn't want to live around his buildings because they don't make good urbanism. But I'll try to shut up on this topic and just enjoy the show.
Bjark is the Katy Perry of architecture.
Explaining the genius of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream”—using music theory.
S,M,L,XL. We are all BIG consumers!
theoretically.
I really struggle to understand where people like Thayer and jla-x are coming from.
^ not deep but catchy...David, im coming from a place that knows the difference between Katy Perry music and Pink Floyd....or Between BIG architecture and Ando...
however, sometimes im not sure "depth" is really all that. I mean if you put things into perspective in a cosmic sense maybe fun is more important than deep and somber. perhaps a bouncy castle is the greatest work of architecture ever concieved.
We need some Bruder Klaus Chapels in the world, and we need some castle-shaped bouncy houses in the world. They can actually co-exist, and the world would be boring if our options were limited to only one kind of architecture.
agree^
Olaf say deep and somber is fun. Ohmmmmmm....G.
^I'm intrigued by the implied possibility of architectural bouncy castles.
I still struggle with the idea that people still think Pink Floyd is relevant in music.
I like beautiful castles and New Order, but agree with Donna. We have space for everybody.
btw, b3, it's not what's relevant, it's what people like. How that's too hard to get, "I really struggle to understand."
B3ta....got to go with thayer-d on this one since the notion "relevant in music" practically means nothing anymore with a seriously overly saturated industry where the free stuff by some kid in his garage is just as good as a promoted band by budweiser or red bull. Back when the source were radios and an MTV that played videos we could all name a band or artist and discuss, but now no one has a clue what the other person is talking about.......but we sure as hell all know who Pink Floyd is.
I don't know exactly what it means to be the Katy Perry or Pink Floyd of Architecture. I'm assuming Katy Perry means something like vapid, superficial, insubstantial. And the Pink Floyd of Architecture seems to mean deep, contemplative, perhaps angsty/uneasy. (Correct me if I'm wrong)
Ah. ok. So Bjarke's architecture is about sexual curiosity and Ando's is about the passage of time/mental illness/greed. I think this music analogy might actually be confusing more than its clarifying.
I wish there were an architecture equivalent to DJ George Constanza. Its the next thing in my Soundcloud stream after Archinect Sessions.
davvid, I was just noting that in architecture as in music there are different genres. It would be unfair and ineffective to compare Calvino with Jk Rowlings or Chopin with the Sex Pistols...They have different funtions and completely different philosophical drives. Neither is right or wrong.
we often talk about style, but in reality style is basically visual. I am saying that there are architectures fundamentally different in their essence. I think that this transcends aesthetics.
Ingels addresses that directly in the interview after around 53:00.
His personality sometimes gets more attention than the words coming out of his mouth. I think his ideas are extremely appropriate for this point in Architecture history, when the public is extremely skeptical of new development and expressive style and is demanding that architects be more political and more in touch with populist (sometimes contradictory) desires and perceptions.
His words are benign...which explains his success.
Which words?
all of them. Nothing controversial or new really. Says exactly what his clientele would want to hear. It all easily palatable....his words and his architecture.
He created a brand that is easy to sell. Its almost as neutral as possible while still being distinct and memorable...
He addressed that too. He's not an artist. He's not being individualistic. Armchair critics hammer "controversial" architects. He's trying to work with the feedback, not against it, to create buildings that various stakeholders (client, users, public-local, public-global) will enjoy. I'm getting the sense that you're dismissing his words too quickly.
Don't be the Katy Perry of architecture criticism.
why are you getting your panties in a bunch? just making an observation that, according to you, the architect himself acknowledges as being true. BIG is a mainstream starchitectire firm which is sort of different than most starchitectire firms.
actually, I would argue that BIG is the most successful branding in architecture.
My panties are not in a bunch. I'm just challenging you a little because you're not being very clear.
when donna mentions she met BI in Louisville. Yes, I was there also. I sat next to BI during our casual lunch and mainly talked about Rick Moodys The Ice Storm and the waitresses butt. Good times.
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