ARCHITECTURAL BIODIVERSITY

Ralf F. Broekman and Olaf Winkler in conversation with Bjarke Ingels

Bjarke Ingels, with your office BIG you lately published “Yes is More”, a book based on the aesthetics of comic books. Could you describe your intention a bit – regarding the publication itself as well as the slogan that you chose as title?
Architecture is the art and science of continually refurbishing our planet to fit to the way we want to live. If life evolved through a Darwinian process of adaptation to the surroundings, this process has been reversed since mankind invented architecture. Since then we have constantly adapted our surroundings to the way we want to live. This gives us architects an incredible potential as well as an incredible responsibility. Our cities and buildings are not the way they are because they have to be – nor because some god created them – we did! And if our cities don’t fit the way we want to live, it is our job to make sure that they do. As architects we have to stay alert to how life in the cities evolve – and make sure that our cities and buildings evolve with it. But the public debate about architecture in the media rarely goes beyond contemplating the final result: the object. Does London’s latest tower look like a gherkin or a sausage or a sex tool? Recently we asked ourselves if we could invent a format that could combine drawings, images and words to tell the stories behind the projects. We discovered that it already existed – in the form of the comic book. So we simply copied the format of the comic book to take you behind the scenes of the design process and reveal some of all the unseen incidents, accidents and influences of society that shape our buildings and cities in to what they are. We called this archicomic “Yes is More” as a sort of evolution of the ideas of some of our heroes: First Mies van der Rohe who triggered the modernist revolution with his “Less is More”. Then came the postmodern counter revolution with Venturi’s “Less is a bore”. Then Philip Johnson introduced promiscuity or at least openness to changing styles, saying “I’m a whore”. Rem Koolhaas observed the impact of global capitalism on urban space with “more and more, more is more”. Recently Obama introduced optimism in the times of global financial crisis with “Yes we can”. What we would like to say with “Yes is More” is to question why the avant-garde almost always is negatively defined – by who or what it is against. The traditional image of the radical architect is the angry young man rebelling against the establishment. Or the misunderstood genius frustrated that the world doesn’t fit in to his or her ideas. Rather than rejecting reality as a relentless source of mediocrity and compromise shaving everything down to the lowest common denominator, we propose to embrace reality and turn pleasing into a radical agenda. To say yes to almost any demand – reasonable or otherwise, and absorb them into back bending forms shaped by the forces of reality acting upon them. Rather than revolution we are interested in evolution. The notion that ideas evolve by adapting to external influences from the rest of society.

Could you refer to that notion of “evolution” a bit more, as it can be applied to your situation as an architect?
In fact we think Darwin is the one who best explains our design process. His famous evolutionary tree could be a diagram of the way we work. Ideas evolve through generations of design meetings. But Darwin doesn’t only explain the design of a single idea. Sometimes a subspecies branches off. And often we find ourselves with a great idea that doesn’t work in our specific situation, but for another client, in another culture it could be the right answer to a completely different question. As a result we never throw anything out. Our office is like an archive of architectural biodiversity, cause you never know which idea you might need. The work an architect gets to realize in his or her career is often the result of random opportunities and chance. Architects can hardly plan their careers, or decide what they want to do, or where. We have to respond to accidental challenges through opportunistic improvisation, mutation and migration of ideas. And often the story we tell is a product of post rationalization or hindsight. We are much more interested in how things actually evolved through accidents and misunderstandings. And “Yes is More” portrays exactly those unpredictable and accidental evolutionary trajectories of the body of our work. Turning architectural evolution into the plot of hilarious comedies or devastating tragedies.

How much do you count on other disciplines as an influence for your architecture? In how far is crossing of boundaries between disciplines reflective to a new spacial understanding of architecture and of cities, of cultural space in general?
the film “my playground” – a film about urban movement and guerilla style appropriation of public space. I think the impact people have on their city through the way they interpret it is as important or more than the limitations and possibilities we architects impose on it through the choices we make.



Yet most of your designs show a clear iconographic power. How much relevance do you see in the production of images, in opposition or connected to dealing with questions of e.g. functionality and readability, complexity and simplicity?
In general we strive towards creating maximum effect with a minimum of means. Maximum expression with minimum gesture. Also quite often we have to deal with complex programs in complex situations. In computer science complexity (unlike complication) is actually defined as the capacity to transmit the maximum amount of information with the minimum amount of data. So complexity is a higher form of simplicity. So a major part of our work is dealing with a constant curation and editing of our projects until they achieve a certain efficiency. In a way iconicity is the art of distilling maximum impact into a simple form.

Together with Kilo Design and Skibsted Ideation you founded the industrial design firm KiBiSi – based on the belief that “the product should be the carrier of its brand idea rather than some designer’s form or formula”. What are the aims of KiBiSi, how do they correspond with the work of BIG?
To start with KiBiSi is based on my friendship with Lars Larsen and Jens Martin Skibsted. I used to work with Lars before he moved fully into design and Jens Martin has been supplying my last four bicycles (I refuse to get the last one stolen). We had already started collaborating on various projects and thought it could be a potent mix to join forces in a more organised manner. We are still in the process of fully exploring the specifics of our mixture of skills and perspectives, but essentially with our range of professions and experiences we cover the range from the sharp focus on details to the big overview and from the most abstract ideas to the most practical application. And then we are all free from a formalistic bias – and are willing to pursue the idea, wherever it takes us, and free to embrace whatever aesthetic it generates. We are committed to the pursuit of the power of ideas rather than a commitment to a signature style – identity can be liberating but it can also be inhibiting – if it restricts your freedom of expression.

In fact – coming back to the question of collaboration – several of your works have been done in cooperation with other architects or protagonists of other disciplines, also in terms of authorship. Do you see this openness towards cooperative forms, cultural exchange, maybe other pronounced characteristics as a common basis of young architecture, of a new generation of design offices today?
Architecture is always a collaborative effort – within the design team as well as with all the other consultants, clients, authorities, contractors etc. We operate in more than 20 countries and in the same fashion my colleagues come from more than 20 different nationalities – not exactly the same 20, though. This means we constantly have to acquire information about new places, cultures, professions, legislations, etc. And we do it through the eyes and experiences of people with different cultures, languages, education, experiences, etc. This demands that we become experts in transmitting ideas to each other in the most blatant and instant way. To translate from one media to another, from one language to another, from one building code to another. You cannot operate in a globalized society, deploying rapidly evolving technologies and an increasing sea of specialists without embracing collaboration as your most important design tool. And yes – I guess our generation, having grown up with Erasmus, international internships and the internet knows this better than our previous generations.

You and your office have become quite known and successful within only a few years. Has this development and the expectations that might come with it changed your work, your view on todays production of architecture?
I think the primary effect of increased attention to our work has been that the opportunities that appear and the CV’s we receive have become increasingly interesting. And to work with smarter and smarter people on increasingly challenging projects is not exactly the worst fate I could imagine for an evolving architect.


Bjarke Ingels, born 1974 in Copenhagen, Denmark, studied architecture in Copenhagen and Barcelona. In 2001, he was co-founder of the office PLOT together with Julien De Smedt. In 2006, he opened his office Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) in Copenhagen, which since then has won numerous international competitions such as for the Danish Maritime Museum in Helsingor, Denmark, the Denmark Pavilion for the Shanghai Expo 2010 and the new National Library of Kazakhstan in Astana. In addition, in 2009 the start of KiBiSi was announced, a Copenhagen based idea-driven industrial design firm by Kilo Design / Lars Holme Larsen, BIG/Bjarke Ingels and Skibsted Ideation /Jens Martin Skibsted. Bjarke Ingels has been giving lectures at various international universities. www.big.dk


Renderings: BIG/bjarke ingels group
Fotos: Jakob Boserup, Carsten Kring, Jens Lindhe