Striking a balance between Steve Jobs’ product-launching gravitas and the bounding playfulness of a TED-talker, Bjarke Ingels presented a summary of his firm’s work on social infrastructure at the WIRED Business Conference in New York on Tuesday. Instead of displaying static plan sections and a PowerPoint from the last presidential administration, Ingels peppered his talk with creative imagery and a three minute, bass-groove laden video (replete with jaunty squiggle-style animations over live people) illustrating the underlying concepts of “The Dryline.”
The projects that Ingels briefly highlighted, including the Danish National Maritime Museum, the Hellerup Gymnasium, and the Vancouver House all explored how to integrate and amplify the social dynamics of a given space by encouraging greater connectivity among likely inhabitants. This was done in some places by innovatively inverting expectations of what a space should be (converting a dock into a museum, for example) or by creating more common areas that would foster unexpected interaction, a la Google. The lecture distinguished itself by being both intellectually engaging and performatively vigorous: Ingels’ energy seemed better matched to that of a stand-up comedian than a man invested in the complexities of urban planning and design. By relying on the video and graphically vibrant imagery, Ingels managed to turn what could have been a twenty-minute drone-fest into a peppy, engaging presentation.
Bjarke explained that his favorite aspect of architecture was the quality of “turning fiction into fact,” wherein seemingly impossible ideas were gradually realized through exploration. From the real-life energy factory / ski slope that blows out perfectly shaped smoke rings from its chimney, to a “courtscraper” (a landscaped combination of courtyard and skyscraper), Ingels seemed sincere when he closed his presentation with the line, “I think we should make the world of the future more like our dreams.”
You can listen to our Archinect Sessions interview with Bjarke here. Or, traipse back through Bjarke's many speaking engagements:
60 Comments
So you think this is a superior process then? Ok. Everyone is free to build whatever icons they like, just don't tell me it's super awesome.
"the goal is obviously architecture"
Exactly right. These are still architects and they create architecture. But in the safe confines of an architect blog, we're allowed to pretend that famous architects are phonies or rich-kids or gimmicks or whatever.
I agree that BIG's detailing and materiality is not as sophisticated (or expensive) as, say, TWBTA or Chipperfield. But BIG has a conceptual coherence, programmatic complexity and urban/social design approach that many "high end" "materiality" firms lack.
bjarke is huggable mod comfort-tecture. it blows smoke rings and you can slide on it.
which would be kinky if ds+r did it.
children and designers let me walk you through a typical fee proposal of a full service firm as an example.........20% is schematics - diagrams, 20% is design development like facade partiis and refining interior plans which are ultimately diagrams of the parameters set by code and real estate efficiencies.......40% construction drawings - how shit is put together.......20% for construction admin - managing the paperwork on how shit is put together (i excluded Bid negotiations intentionally)..............media,marketing, and academia are Schematic, 20% of the whole architecture design process.............20% does not equal 100%.....................diagrams are cute. i was railing against Diagrams, not necessarily BIG. Bjarke has a little extra the other diagram guys do not just like Rem has always been special..........i just want to make clear that what we are talking about here is only 20% of what architecture is in practice..........the other 80% on diagram projects are figured out by not very interesting professionals because its not like the media or academia would understand what they do and marketing stops after the building is sold - who gives a fuck if it leaks.........
look if i started making good enough money to hire some kid good at making diagrams i would have them post rationalize all my jobs and make cute diagrams and have them harass every media outlet to maximize my marketing exposure..........you know- just a lot of bull shit to get real work.
i pay people. diagrams are abstractions, abstract a narrative that makes any project look good. isn't that the point?.....diagrams by the way are very different than dreams. dreams are collaged sequences prior to abstraction. collages are not diagrams. courtscraper is a collaged diagram perhaps, but not necessarily a collaged sequence of dreams nor a something that is not an abstraction.....unless of course Bjarke had an actual dream with a courtscraper in it and then he reveresed the vision into diagrams and archispeak to sell it.......
Bjarke Ingels doesn't exist in my dreams of the future world.
I'd like to see him make that happen.
Miles i bet Bjarke showed up in your dreams last night!
BIG is inevitable in the current media-architecture world just like cat memes and Internet porn is inevitable. The question is how to make it more substantive and give the work some weight.
Lightperson...I think I am just going to blame the media for now....
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