TEDGlobal 2009
Bjarke Ingels: 3 warp-speed architecture tales
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Danish architect Bjarke Ingels rockets through photo/video-mingled stories of his eco-flashy designs. His buildings not only look like nature -- they act like nature: blocking the wind, collecting solar energy -- and creating stunning views.
Bjarke Ingels - Architect
Theory meets pragmatism meets optimism in Bjarke Ingels' architecture. His big-think approach is informed by a hands-on, ground-up understanding of the needs of a building's occupants and surroundings. Full bio
Theory meets pragmatism meets optimism in Bjarke Ingels' architecture. His big-think approach is informed by a hands-on, ground-up understanding of the needs of a building's occupants and surroundings. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
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The public debate about architecture
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quite often just stays on contemplating the final result,
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the architectural object.
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Is the latest tower in London
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a gherkin or a sausage
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or a sex tool?
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So recently, we asked ourselves
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if we could invent a format
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that could actually tell the stories behind the projects,
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maybe combining images and drawings and words
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to actually sort of tell stories about architecture.
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And we discovered that we didn't have to invent it,
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it already existed in the form of a comic book.
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So we basically copied the format of the comic book
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to actually tell the stories of behind the scenes,
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how our projects actually evolve through adaptation
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and improvisation.
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Sort of through the turmoil and the opportunities
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and the incidents of the real world.
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We call this comic book "Yes is More,"
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which is obviously a sort of evolution of the ideas of some of our heroes.
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In this case it's Mies van der Rohe's Less is More.
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He triggered the modernist revolution.
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After him followed the post-modern counter-revolution,
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Robert Venturi saying, "Less is a bore."
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After him, Philip Johnson sort of introduced
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(Laughter)
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you could say promiscuity, or at least openness
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to new ideas with, "I am a whore."
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Recently, Obama has introduced optimism
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at a sort of time of global financial crisis.
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And what we'd like to say with "Yes is More"
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is basically trying to question this idea
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that the architectural avant-garde is almost always negatively defined,
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as who or what we are against.
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The cliche of the radical architect
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is the sort of angry young man rebelling against the establishment.
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Or this idea of the misunderstood genius,
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frustrated that the world doesn't fit in with his or her ideas.
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Rather than revolution, we're much more interested in evolution,
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this idea that things gradually evolve
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by adapting and improvising
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to the changes of the world.
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In fact, I actually think that Darwin is one of the people
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who best explains our design process.
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His famous evolutionary tree
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could almost be a diagram of the way we work.
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As you can see, a project evolves through
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a series of generations of design meetings.
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At each meeting, there's way too many ideas.
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Only the best ones can survive.
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And through a process of architectural selection,
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we might choose a really beautiful model
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or we might have a very functional model.
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We mate them. They have sort of mutant offspring.
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And through these sort of generations of design meetings
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we arrive at a design.
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A very literal way of showing it is a project we did
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for a library and a hotel in Copenhagen.
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The design process was really tough,
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almost like a struggle for survival,
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but gradually an idea evolved:
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this sort of idea of a rational tower
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that melts together with the surrounding city,
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sort of expanding the public space onto what we refer to as
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a Scandinavian version of the Spanish Steps in Rome,
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but sort of public on the outside, as well as on the inside,
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with the library.
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But Darwin doesn't only explain the evolution of a single idea.
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As you can see, sometimes a subspecies branches off.
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And quite often we sit in a design meeting
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and we discover that there is this great idea.
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It doesn't really work in this context.
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But for another client in another culture,
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it could really be the right answer to a different question.
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So as a result, we never throw anything out.
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We keep our office almost like an archive
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of architectural biodiversity.
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You never know when you might need it.
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And what I'd like to do now, in an act of
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warp-speed storytelling,
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is tell the story of how two projects evolved
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by adapting and improvising
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to the happenstance of the world.
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The first story starts last year when we went to Shanghai
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to do the competition for the Danish
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National Pavilion for the World Expo in 2010.
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And we saw this guy, Haibao.
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He's the mascot of the expo,
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and he looks strangely familiar.
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In fact he looked like a building we had designed
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for a hotel in the north of Sweden.
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When we submitted it for the Swedish competition we thought
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it was a really cool scheme, but it didn't exactly
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look like something from the north of Sweden.
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The Swedish jury didn't think so either. So we lost.
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But then we had a meeting with a Chinese businessman
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who saw our design and said,
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"Wow, that's the Chinese character for the word 'people.'"
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(Laughter)
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So, apparently this is how you write "people,"
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as in the People's Republic of China.
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We even double checked.
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And at the same time, we got invited to exhibit
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at the Shanghai Creative Industry Week.
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So we thought like, this is too much of an opportunity,
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so we hired a feng shui master.
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We scaled the building up three times to Chinese proportions,
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and went to China.
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(Laughter)
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So the People's Building, as we called it.
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This is our two interpreters, sort of reading the architecture.
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It went on the cover of the Wen Wei Po newspaper,
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which got Mr. Liangyu Chen, the mayor of Shanghai,
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to visit the exhibition.
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And we had the chance to explain the project.
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And he said, "Shanghai is the city in the world
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with most skyscrapers,"
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but to him it was as if the connection to the roots had been cut over.
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And with the People's Building, he saw an architecture
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that could bridge the gap between the ancient wisdom of China
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and the progressive future of China.
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So we obviously profoundly agreed with him.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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Unfortunately, Mr. Chen is now in prison for corruption.
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(Laughter)
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But like I said, Haibao looked very familiar,
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because he is actually the Chinese character for "people."
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And they chose this mascot because
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the theme of the expo is "Better City, Better Life."
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Sustainability.
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And we thought, sustainability has grown into being
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this sort of neo-Protestant idea
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that it has to hurt in order to do good.
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You know, you're not supposed to take long, warm showers.
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You're not supposed to fly on holidays because it's bad for the environment.
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Gradually, you get this idea that sustainable life
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is less fun than normal life.
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So we thought that maybe it could be interesting to focus on examples
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where a sustainable city
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actually increases the quality of life.
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We also asked ourselves, what could Denmark possibly show China
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that would be relevant?
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You know, it's one of the biggest countries in the world, one of the smallest.
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China symbolized by the dragon.
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Denmark, we have a national bird, the swan.
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(Laughter)
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China has many great poets,
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but we discovered that in the People's Republic
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public school curriculum,
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they have three fairy tales by An Tu Sheng,
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or Hans Christian Anderson, as we call him.
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So that means that all 1.3 billion Chinese
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have grown up with "The Emperor's New Clothes,"
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"The Matchstick Girl" and "The Little Mermaid."
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It's almost like a fragment of Danish culture
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integrated into Chinese culture.
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The biggest tourist attraction in China is the Great Wall.
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The Great Wall is the only thing that can be seen from the moon.
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The big tourist attraction in Denmark is The Little Mermaid.
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That can actually hardly be seen from the canal tours.
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(Laughter)
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And it sort of shows the difference between these two cities.
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Copenhagen, Shanghai,
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modern, European.
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But then we looked at recent urban development,
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and we noticed that this is like a Shanghai street,
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30 years ago. All bikes, no cars.
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This is how it looks today; all traffic jam.
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Bicycles have become forbidden many places.
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Meanwhile, in Copenhagen we're actually expanding the bicycle lanes.
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A third of all the people commute by bike.
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We have a free system of bicycles called the City Bike
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that you can borrow if you visit the city.
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So we thought, why don't we reintroduce the bicycle in China?
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We donate 1,000 bikes to Shanghai.
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So if you come to the expo, go straight to the Danish pavilion,
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get a Danish bike, and then continue on that to visit the other pavilions.
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Like I said, Shanghai and Copenhagen are both port cities,
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but in Copenhagen the water has gotten so clean
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that you can actually swim in it.
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One of the first projects we ever did
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was the harbor bath in Copenhagen,
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sort of continuing the public realm into the water.
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So we thought that these expos quite often have a lot of
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state financed propaganda,
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images, statements, but no real experience.
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So just like with a bike, we don't talk about it.
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You can try it.
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Like with the water, instead of talking about it,
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we're going to sail a million liters of harbor water
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from Copenhagen to Shanghai,
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so the Chinese who have the courage can actually dive in
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and feel how clean it is.
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This is where people normally object that it doesn't sound very sustainable
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to sail water from Copenhagen to China.
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But in fact, the container ships go
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full of goods from China to Denmark,
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and then they sail empty back.
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So quite often you load water for ballast.
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So we can actually hitch a ride for free.
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And in the middle of this sort of harbor bath,
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we're actually going to put the actual Little Mermaid.
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So the real Mermaid, the real water, and the real bikes.
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And when she's gone, we're going to invite
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a Chinese artist to reinterpret her.
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The architecture of the pavilion is this sort of loop
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of exhibition and bikes.
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When you go to the exhibition, you'll see the Mermaid and the pool.
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You'll walk around, start looking for a bicycle on the roof,
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jump on your ride and then continue out into the rest of the expo.
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So when we actually won the competition
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we had to do an exhibition in China explaining the project.
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And to our surprise we got one of our boards back
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with corrections from the Chinese state censorship.
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The first thing, the China map missed Taiwan.
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It's a very serious political issue in China. We will add on.
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The second thing, we had compared the swan to the dragon,
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and then the Chinese state said,
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"Suggest change to panda."
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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So, when it came out in Denmark that we were actually going to
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move our national monument,
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the National People's Party sort of rebelled against it.
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They tried to pass a law against moving the Mermaid.
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So for the first time, I got invited to speak at the National Parliament.
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It was kind of interesting because in the morning, from 9 to 11,
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they were discussing the bailout package --
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how many billions to invest in saving the Danish economy.
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And then at 11 o'clock they stopped talking about these little issues.
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And then from 11 to 1,
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they were debating whether or not to send the Mermaid to China.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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But to conclude, if you want to see the Mermaid from May to December
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next year, don't come to Copenhagen,
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because she's going to be in Shanghai.
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If you do come to Copenhagen,
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you will probably see an installation by Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist.
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But if the Chinese government intervenes, it might even be a panda.
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(Laughter)
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So the second story that I'd like to tell
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is, actually starts in my own house.
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This is my apartment.
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This is the view from my apartment,
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over the sort of landscape of triangular balconies
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that our client called the Leonardo DiCaprio balcony.
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And they form this sort of vertical backyard
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where, on a nice summer day, you'll actually get introduced to all your neighbors
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in a vertical radius of 10 meters.
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The house is sort of a distortion of a square block.
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Trying to zigzag it to make sure
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that all of the apartments look at the straight views,
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instead of into each other.
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Until recently, this was the view from my apartment,
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onto this place where our client actually bought the neighbor site.
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And he said that he was going to do an apartment block
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next to a parking structure.
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And we thought, rather than doing a traditional stack of apartments
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looking straight into a big boring block of cars,
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why don't we turn all the apartments into penthouses,
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put them on a podium of cars.
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And because Copenhagen is completely flat,
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if you want to have a nice south-facing slope with a view,
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you basically have to do it yourself.
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Then we sort of cut up the volume,
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so we wouldn't block the view from my apartment.
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(Laughter)
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And essentially the parking is sort of occupying the deep space
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underneath the apartments.
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And up in the sun, you have a single layer of apartments
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that combine all the splendors of a suburban lifestyle,
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like a house with a garden with a sort of metropolitan view,
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and a sort of dense urban location.
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This is our first architectural model.
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This is an aerial photo taken last summer.
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And essentially, the apartments cover the parking.
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They are accessed through this diagonal elevator.
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It's actually a stand-up product from Switzerland,
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because in Switzerland they have a natural need for diagonal elevators.
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(Laughter)
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And the facade of the parking,
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we wanted to make the parking naturally ventilated,
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so we needed to perforate it.
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And we discovered that by controlling the size of the holes,
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we could actually turn the entire facade
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into a gigantic, naturally ventilated,
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rasterized image.
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And since we always refer to the project as The Mountain,
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we commissioned this Japanese Himalaya photographer
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to give us this beautiful photo of Mount Everest,
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making the entire building a 3,000 square meter artwork.
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(Applause)
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So if you go back into the parking, into the corridors,
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it's almost like traveling into a parallel universe
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from cars and colors,
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into this sort of south-facing urban oasis.
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The wood of your apartment continues outside becoming the facades.
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If you go even further, it turns into this green garden.
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And all the rainwater that drops on the Mountain
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is actually accumulated.
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And there is an automatic irrigation system
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that makes sure that this sort of landscape of gardens,
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in one or two years it will sort of transform
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into a Cambodian temple ruin,
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completely covered in green.
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So, the Mountain is like our first built example
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of what we like to refer to as architectural alchemy.
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This idea that you can actually create, if not gold,
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then at least added value by mixing
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traditional ingredients, like normal apartments
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and normal parking,
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and in this case actually offer people
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the chance that they don't have to choose between
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a life with a garden or a life in the city.
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They can actually have both.
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As an architect, it's really hard to set the agenda.
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You can't just say that now I'd like to do a sustainable city
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in central Asia,
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because that's not really how you get commissions.
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You always have to sort of adapt and improvise
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to the opportunities and accidents that happen,
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and the sort of turmoil of the world.
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One last example is that recently we,
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like last summer, we won the competition
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to design a Nordic national bank.
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This was the director of the bank when he was still smiling.
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(Laughter)
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It was in the middle of the capital so we were really excited by this opportunity.
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Unfortunately, it was the national bank of Iceland.
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At the same time, we actually had a visitor --
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a minister from Azerbaijan came to our office.
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We took him to see the Mountain. And he got very excited
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by this idea that you could actually make mountains
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out of architecture,
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because Azerbaijan is known as the Alps of Central Asia.
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So he asked us if we could actually imagine
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an urban master plan
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on an island outside the capital
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that would recreate the silhouette of the seven most significant mountains
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of Azerbaijan.
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So we took the commission.
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And we made this small movie that I'd like to show.
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We quite often make little movies.
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We always argue a lot about the soundtrack,
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but in this case it was really easy to choose the song.
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So basically, Baku is this sort of crescent bay
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overlooking the island of Zira, the island that we are planning --
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almost like the diagram of their flag.
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And our main idea was
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to sort of sample the seven most significant mountains
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of the topography of Azerbaijan
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and reinterpret them into urban and architectural structures,
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inhabitable of human life.
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Then we place these mountains on the island,
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surrounding this sort of central green valley,
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almost like a central park.
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And what makes it interesting is that the island right now
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is just a piece of desert. It has no vegetation.
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It has no water. It has no energy, no resources.
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So we actually sort of designed the entire island as a single ecosystem,
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exploiting wind energy to drive the desalination plants,
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and to use the thermal properties of water
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to heat and cool the buildings.
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And all the sort of excess freshwater wastewater
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is filtered organically into the landscape,
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gradually transforming the desert island
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into sort of a green, lush landscape.
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So, you can say where an urban development
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normally happens at the expense of nature,
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in this case it's actually creating nature.
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And the buildings, they don't only sort of
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invoke the imagery of the mountains,
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they also operate like mountains.
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They create shelter from the wind.
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They accumulate the solar energy.
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They accumulate the water.
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So they actually transform the entire island
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into a single ecosystem.
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So we recently presented the master plan,
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and it has gotten approved.
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And this summer we are starting the construction documents
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of the two first mountains,
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in what's going to be the first carbon-neutral island
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in Central Asia.
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(Applause)
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Yes, maybe just to round off.
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So in a way you can see how the Mountain in Copenhagen
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sort of evolved into the Seven Peaks of Azerbaijan.
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With a little luck and some more evolution,
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maybe in 10 years it could be the Five Mountains on Mars.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Bjarke Ingels - ArchitectTheory meets pragmatism meets optimism in Bjarke Ingels' architecture. His big-think approach is informed by a hands-on, ground-up understanding of the needs of a building's occupants and surroundings.
Why you should listen
Bjarke Ingels is principal of BIG, based in Copenhagen. An alumnus of Rem Koolhaas' OMA practice, Ingels takes a similar approach: experimenting with pure space, but never losing sight of the building as a solution to a real-world problem. His manifesto "Yes Is More" takes the form of a giant cartoon strip, 130 meters long, that reminds people to keep thinking big -- to see all our modern problems as challenges that inspire us. (The manifesto is now available in comic-book form.)
His deeply-thought-out and often rather large works -- including several skyscrapers and mixed-use projects in a developing section of Copenhagen, plus a project for a new commercial harbor-island -- work to bring coherence to the urban fabric and to help their occupants and users lead better lives. His most famous works include: the Stavanger Concert House, Tallinn’s city hall and the VM Houses. He recently won a competition to design Copenhagen’s waste-to-energy plant with a design that will place a ski slope on top of the structure.
Bjarke Ingels | Speaker | TED.com