Bjarke Ingels

Bjarke Bundgaard Ingels is a Danish architect, founder and creative partner of Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), widely known for buildings that defy convention while incorporating sustainable development principles and bold sociological concepts.

In Denmark, Ingels became well known after designing two housing complexes in Ørestad: VM Houses and Mountain Dwellings. In 2006 he founded Bjarke Ingels Group, which grew to a staff of 400 by 2015, with noted projects including the 8 House housing complex, VIA 57 West in Manhattan, the Google North Bayshore headquarters (co-designed with Thomas Heatherwick), the Superkilen park, and the Amager Resource Center (ARC) waste-to-energy plant — the latter which incorporates both a ski slope and climbing wall on the building exterior.

Since 2009, Ingels has won numerous architectural competitions. He moved to New York City in 2012, where in addition to the VIA 57 West, BIG won a design contest after Hurricane Sandy for improving Manhattan's flood resistance, and are now designing the new Two World Trade Centerbuilding. Ingels and his company are the subject of the 2017 documentary BIG Time.

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I first heard about Bjarke Ingels last week while speaking with a parametric architect and, after searching him all over Internet, I fell in love with his idea of architecture. Here there is a quote from him: "Historically the field of architecture has been dominated by two opposing extremes. On one side an avant-garde full of crazy ideas. Originating from philosophy, mysticism or a fascination of the formal potential of computer visualizations they are often so detached from reality that they fail to become something other than eccentric curiosities. On the other side there are well-organized corporate consultants that build predictable and boring boxes of high standard. Architecture seems to be entrenched in two equally unfertile fronts: either naively utopian or petrifyingly pragmatic. We believe that there is a third way wedged in the no-mans-land between the diametrical opposites.

Or in the small but very fertile overlap between the two. A pragmatic utopian architecture that takes on the creation of socially, economically and environmentally perfect places as a practical objective."

After the death of Zaha Hadid, he could perfectly be the best parametric architect alive. Bjarke Ingels studied architecture at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen and Higher Technical School of Architecture in Barcelona, graduating as an architect in 1998.8 In his third year of studies, he exercised his career for the first time winning his first contest. From 1998 to 2001 he worked for OMA [Office for Metropolitan Architecture] and directly for Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam.

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VM House in Ørestad, Denmark

VM Houses is a housing project consisting of two adjacent apartment buildings in Ørestad, Copenhagen, Denmark. Designed by JDS Architects and Bjarke Ingels Group, the M House with 95 units was completed in 2004 and the V House with 114 units, in 2005. Inspired by Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation concept, two residential blocks, with footprints in the shape of the letters V and M, have been designed with an emphasis on daylight, privacy and views. Rather than looking over the neighbouring building, all the apartments have diagonal views of the surrounding landscape. Corridors are short, rather like bullet holes through the building. There are some 80 different types of apartment in the complex, adaptable to individual needs.

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Mountain Dwellings

Mountain Dwellings is an award-winning building in the Ørestad district of Copenhagen, Denmark, consisting of apartments above a multi-story car park. The building is designed by Danish architectural practice Bjarke Ingels Group. The apartments scale the diagonally sloping roof of the parking garage, from street level to 11th floor, creating an artificial, south facing 'mountainside'. Each apartment has a "backyard" on the roof of the property in front and below it. The resulting courtyard penthouses are an attempt to balance "the splendours of the suburban backyard with the intensity of an urban lifestyle". Throughout the building, it plays on a mountain metaphor as well as the clash between the urban vibe of the interior parking space as well as the surroundings and the peaceful and organic hillside.

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8 House

8 House, also known as Big House, is a large mixed-use development built in the shape of a figure 8 on the southern perimeter of the new suburb of Ørestad in Copenhagen, Denmark. Designed by Bjarke Ingels, founding partner of the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), the bow-shaped building consists of 61,000 square metres of three different types of residential housing and 10,000 square metres of retail premises and offices. It is the largest private development ever undertaken in Denmark. Commissioned by Store Frederikslund Holding, Høpfner A/S and Danish Oil Company A/S in 2006, it is Ingels' third housing development in Ørestad, following VM Houses and Mountain Dwellings.

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VIA 57 West

VIA 57 West (marketed as VIΛ 57WEST) is the name of a residential building designed by the Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). The pyramid shaped tower block or "tetrahedron" rises 467 ft (142 m) and 35 stories tall and is located on West 57th Street in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, New York City.

According to The New York Times, the name was chosen "because the southbound West Side Highway slopes down as drivers enter the city, right at the spot where the building is situated", serving as an entrance to Manhattan "via 57th".