Bjarke Ingels Quotes

Pine can't be outside untreated so René and his chefs, we were so behind on opening day... the chefs with their torches treating the outside against the elements... [T]he torched wood makes it capable of being outdoors.

What if we didn't have to adapt our lifestyle to sustainability, but adjusted our sustainable designs to the way we want to live? Instead of trying to change people, we could change the world.

Also there's the idea of planting forests to sequester carbon, but we would have to plant the entire land mass of earth every third year... so it can only be part of a solution.

[T]he intermittence problem... 99% of the earth's populaton lives within this zone [10,000 km]. ...If each 24 hr zone could provide 1/6 of the power of the planet, the site that has light could... power the other side. ...With current high-voltage connections you lose 3% of the power per thousand km. This means that the maximum loss, you lose... 1/3 of the power if you're going all the way to the other side. ...You already have regional grids. ...[T]here's plans to connect ...northern Europe and north Africa and the Middle East. There's plans to connect the [US] east and the west coasts and Mexico. ...[Y]ou have all of these partial plans. ...[W]hat if you could ...create an entire worldwide grid. The sunny side could power the dark side, or the windy side could power the less windy side... This kind of grid could... unite us all energy-wise...

Architecture is never triggered by a single event... conceived by a single mind... shaped by a single hand.

[A] decade ago I got invited to make a proposal for a building on the waterfront of , and we took that as an opportunity to move to New York, and open our studio there. ...[W]e thought we should make a courtyard building. All buildings in are courtyards... a little oasis in the middle of the city. It's communal, so it's shared by... all 700 apartments... The court-scraper... the height of a skyscraper to the northeast and... the height of a handrail in the southwest. So everybody who lives around the courtyard has views of the sun setting over the Hudson river... almost like bringing the communal qualities of a Copenhagen courtyard with the... verticality and density of an American skyscraper.

A radically different example of hedonistic sustainability and urban ecology... that we spent the last nine years making... [T]his is the cleanest waste-to-energy power plant in the world.

Architecture is most appealing with simple lines and clear ideas. A city... becomes alive when it is rich with experiences and surprises. So the paradoxical challenge is to... create simplicity and variety, difference and coherence... a city in the building.

[A] last smaller building before we escalate is a cultural institution which just opened in ... bringing three different cultural institutions together in a new building: a library, a media tech, a performance space, and a contemporary art center. The art gallery's on the top to... access skylights, and connected by a shared lobby on the waterfront of the ... and... the library and the theater creating the two pillars. The art museum [is] the bridge to enclose a big public [outdoor] room. The... building finished in prefabricated concrete. You can... see that the French invented steel because they are so incredibly good at it. Also the sand in the south of France is so insanely beautiful. That's why in is maybe the only truly beautiful of the unités that Le Corbusier did, because of the quality of the sand. ...[T]he three institutions enclosing this giant outdoor urban room, where the... institutions, but also the city itself can invade. On the inside it's... 150,000 sq ft building with a $40 million dollar budget... so we had this... positive side-effect that all the finishes inside are... insanely raw. It's... concrete in different shades. ...The most important part of the building is what's not there. ...Even the furniture is cast out of concrete, some of it tiled. ...The ballerinas can look out at the square and vice versa. ...The theater ...this mosaic of tarred wood, hot-rolled steel and black concrete to create the perfect... acoustic mix, and finally this... art barn at the top and a sculptural park... [I]n this very... simple building... the main gesture... providing this... new shaded and covered outdoor space for the cultural life of the city.

Starting with the smallest project that we have created... but maybe also one of the most complex. This is ... he pioneered the... regionalistic cuisine with his restaurant Noma... in Copenhagen...Noma is short for Nordic food, "Nordic smell" in Danish. He... rediscovered the Nordic landscapes, the flora and fauna of Nordic nature... to see how those plants and... animals could... be seen as ... a cuisine that's been dominated by French and Asian cuisine. ...[W]here we ...aligned with him was ...this idea that healthy could also be incredibly delicious. We have this notion... hedonistic sustainability, that sustainable can... be more enjoyable. Sustainable cities, sustainable buildings can be more enjoyable, not just good for the environment, but also great for the people living there. He's... done that to food.

[W]e started looking... at water. This is how much water we have [1.4 billion km³ compared to earth's volume of 1,100 billion km³]... [V]ery little of it [2 1/2%] is freshwater... and of the fresh water, very little is surface freshwater, 30$ is groundwater and 2/3 is glaciers... [O]f the surface freshwater 3% is in the atmosphere, 1/4 of it is in all living things... 1/2% in rivers, 6% in soil moisture, and swamps, 20% in lakes, and... 2/3 in ground ice. So basically water is saltwater and freshwater is ice.

This is an art museum we designed in Norway, in a sculpture park... on two sides of a river, and we suggested that the museum could be the bridge... from one side... to the other. ...As the building crosses the river ...it zips closed the daylight. ...[I]t's made out of standard extruded aluminum profiles ...to make warehouses... A lot of identical elements put together in a carefully orchestrated way. Inside it is... white painted 2x4 timber... and again, by gently shifting the orientation... by leaving half of them open, we have all of the... ventilation for state of the art... climate control, all the lighting... It's... creating something extraordinary out of a lot of ordinary. ...[A] museum that is also a bridge that is also a sculpture, in a sculpture park.

[S]olar power... since the 70s the price has gone drastically down <nowiki>[</nowiki>PV prices: $76 down to $0.30].

In Sevilla, the hottest city in Spain, we are building the for the . It's half a public square and half the... Commission. It's covered by this... canopy of photovoltaic panels that creates a shaded square, which means that we can make the facade in one of the sunniest places in the world entirely out of glass, because it's... shaded... It's a naturally ventilated square... The building... produces twice as much energy as it consumes... [T]he photovoltaics are funded and maintained by the local energy company... It becomes... an energy machine or a decentralized power plant...

This is , the capitol of Albania... [W]e were invited to imagine their National Theatre. ...It is pinched to perform a gateway between the Plaza... and... City Hall on the other side, and that... wrinkled opening creates a covered plaza that is the entrance into the theatre. ...[A] very simple ...public gesture that becomes an invitation... shading from the Mediterranean sun, made out of... red upcycled concrete. ...The national color of Albania is red. We found this beautiful red stone ...locally sourced. ...The main hall is faceted out of hot-rolled steel ...a mixture of perforated and reflective surfaces creates the perfectly calibrated acoustics, almost like an of black steel. ...The second auditorium can ...open its backstage out to the roof, and the ...roof becomes a ...starlit, open-air performance space. ...[W]e've tried to squeeze as much creative energy and performance possibility into the smallest possible volume. It's currently under construction. ...[I]t's going to be a building that looks different because it performs differently.