It talks about how buildings should make their occupants feel that they are special, the contributions of their projects to architecture, the absence of form (Danish Maritime Museum) or the way they define their identity ( VIA 57 West).
“Great buildings blatantly express their true essence to the world.” The lauded Danish architect Bjarke Ingels here shares his personal story and his bold approach to architecture, which he feels should always be playful, generous and empathetic.
Having nurtured a love of drawing since childhood, 18-year-old Ingels enrolled into The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture in 1993, feeling that architecture would be “the perfect missing piece to be able to really draw worlds and populate those worlds.” The school, however, proved to be a very conservative institution where there was hardly any curriculum due to the idea that everything had to be original. In response to this, Ingels and a friend ended up spending their first years in the library, seeking inspiration from other architects such as Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Rem Koolhaas: “You find something that speaks to you, and then you try to understand it, by following its sources, and those sources have other sources, and at some point things connect.” In continuation of this, Ingels feels that the ideas that you put forward and the new ideas they produce are essential for architecture: “Not only does the building you make matter, but the example it puts out in the world matters maybe even more.”
