Danish architect (b.1974)
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[W]e seem to be... incapable of dealing with the climate crisis, and we were thinking why? Because humans have... shown to be... capable of taking... resource-demanding multi-generational efforts like building cathedrals. The great cathedral in Køln took 632 years to complete... We laugh at the Catalans because they're still building , but they've only been building for a 137 years, so they're not supposed to be done yet. ...[T]he Romans were capable of building the... Roman aqueduct system for more than 500 years bringing fresh water to all of their urban settlements. ...It's because there was a master plan ...[W]hen the first architect of the died, the next worked... on those same drawings, and the next... and you probably went through 20 different architects... or more. ...[O]ne of the problems of climate change and climate action is that it's the realm of... climate scientists that are mostly academics... [T]hey're very good at science and academic accuracy but not so much at entrepreneurship and action. ...[T]hen you have politicians... not so good at... a 50 or 100 year commitment because they have election cycles of 4 or 8 years... [E]ven a short architectural project takes longer than that. ...[W]e thought, what if we, because architects make master plans for buildings... city blocks... neighborhoods... for cities... regions... even for coutries. Why not make a master plan for the planet? ...[N]ormally we get hired to do things, but in this case there was no obvious client, except maybe Greta Thunberg. So we started it ourselves... [C]limate change has been going on catastrophically since the dawn of planet earth, from a... ball of lava to... heavy bombardment of meteors 4 billion years ago, to the snowball 2 1/2 billion years ago, the Cambrian explosion 500 million years ago, much more like current... present day. When you look 500 million years back... there's always been... fluctuations in <chem>CO2</chem> related to fluctuations in temperature.... If you look at the last 500,000 years... the ice ages are always valleys in the <chem>CO2</chem> levels, separated by peaks that also correspond to rising temperatures, and vice versa... [I]f you look at the last 500 years you see relatively stable, and then... 150 years ago it really starts escalating. ...It's 407 particles per million, and we have to go back 20 to 30 million years before we find the same levels of <chem>CO2</chem>... Regardless of global warming, at 1,000 particles per million the... ventilation in any room kicks in, because it becomes unhealthy for humans to breathe... So we're... not just warming the planet, we're also making it less inhabitable...
[T]he idea of the Vltava Philharmonic is to... celebrate the journey of the Vltava river, the Vltava symphony, the journey from the stream, the source in the mountains... through the ... through dams, through cities, and eventually to [Prague]... Imagine an architecture that... is... a journey from the river to the roof... as public... engaging and inviting... To bring the... the life of the city center down to the river. Create a landmark... for the neighborhood, for the city. To resolve this... of trams... trains... highways... metro stops... pedestrians and cars, in a three dimensional city, to create a literal and accessible connection to the river, to provide... an active social environment for the fine performing arts... also for the popular culture... to create this... perfectly tuned instrument for the performance and delivery of symphonic music. ...[F]rom this incredibly rational, orthoganal diagram, use the public realm, the canopies, the es and the s to create a public destination, and similarly in plan, to blur the distinction between inside and outside by pulling out the canopies to connect with the environment to create a zone that is neither indoor nor outdoor, that is protected from the rain and shaded from the sun... [T]his kind of very basic principle created this building that... starts at the edge of the water and winds itself up to the main level of the city and the bridge, and from here creates a series of destinations and lookouts... to the top of the city. ...[A] music student can walk all the way up to class on the outside of the building. ...[T]he highway... has... been overflown, so instead of having cars dominating the waterfront... it becomes public life. ...[Y]ou don't really know where the building ends or the city begins, and you have... generous spaces where public life is invited to enter and linger. ...From the city side you can see into... green rooms, rehearsal rooms and... a culture hub with musical studios. ...[A]t night the... transparency... illuminates the wooden... [ceilings] made out of locally sourced timber. Towards the water... pulling out the balconies and... terraces you get these... lookouts... almost at the... water's edge. [A]... pavement made out of locally sourced stone and the... integration of greenery... blurs the distinction between what is park, what is plaza, what is building... [S]tepping of stones create a series of... hangout spaces or... informal performance spaces. ...[W]hat could... sometimes be construed as a... , highbrow cultural institution becomes a very... welcoming and accessible landscape of... familiar local materials, and an abundance of places with views... shade... sun and shelter. ...[O]n the plaza level between the city and the traffic of the main street... a very permeable zone that also becomes an informal hangout space, so before performances or after, a place to linger... [W]hen the [day]light drops and the... [interior lighting] energy arises the building... comes alive when it starts... inviting guests for the performances. ...[E]ven though all of the... sloping roofs are... gentle in their ascent, at certain angles it... becomes this... incredibly dramatic overlapping of forms. ...Arriving across the bridge you... have the choice to connect... to the plaza... passing through the trees of the plaza that provide shade... having a major arrival plaza in front of the . The foyer wraps the city and the riverfront... [A] building without a... back side.
[W]hat was mesmerizing... was this... marvel of modern engineering... was going to be the cleanest waste-to-energy power plant in the world. No toxins coming out of the chimney. So we thought maybe a mountain of trash could become an actual mountain. Our nearest ski slope... is 6 hours away in Isaberg... Sweden... We could put 2/3 of Isaberg's main slope on the roof of the power plant, and so we did. ...The kind of cliff face of the mountain is made out of these gigantic folded raw aluminum bricks that are... planters. ...Raw aluminum so they... reflect the surroundings, so... the building changes color over the course of the day. ...The entire power plant is ...daylit. 50% of the facade is transparent. ...This spring it's going to open the tallest in the world, 300 feet. ...[T]he roof is maybe the most exciting facade. ...[T]he skiing is ...free. It's a public park. If you want to use the lift system, you have to buy a lift pass. It's... designed to... help spread vegetation to the surrounding... post-industrial area. You have hiking paths, different... activity zones. You have... vegetation that changes over the... season. There's more than 400 different trees. ...It's purely indigenous species. If Denmark had mountains this is probably what they would look like. ...[T]he entire roof park has been made for a budget of... $13 million dollars... absurdly inexpensive so everything has... been done with... the least... maintenance and... acquisition cost. ...Maybe the most important material, because Denmark doesn't have enough snow so... we found this Italian company that makes this... mat that has the same friction as a groomed slope. The only problem was that it was... ugly. Also because of the and contraction it had to be split in... 7x7 foot squares. So we sat down... with the company and... managed to develop a... new product... by joining every two circles [holes in the material] in two... directions... This... simple geometric invention... now the standard product of the company, meant that we could have a continuous surface on the... roof... We color-coded it so that the brighter the slope... the less likely... to crash... [E]ventually the grass grows through... [T]he grass... holds the mat to the roof, so eventually it's going to be like skiing on an alpine meadow. ...What is amazing ...it ...shows this ...world-changing power of architecture ...[M]y son is ...never going to remember that there was a time when you couldn't ski on the power plant in Copenhagen ...[F]or him and his entire generation, that's going to be their normal ...the starting point from where they start having crazy ideas about their future. ...A landmark for this ...idea of hedonistic sustainability, that a sustainable city can also be, not just better for the environment, but better for the people living there.
[W]hat we're trying to do... is try to apply the kind of tangible, practical thinking. We almost took the... way we would normally approach an architectural project and a master plan. So this is the kind of index... for the master plan of the planet, and going through it with this kind of pragmatic utopian approach, hoping that we can develop insights, and ideally a master plan for the planet that could be... handed... to corporations and governments with a much more tangible and... promising concrete plan of action than the reports or sort of political agendas that... exist today.
This is a site not too dissimilar from the other... not depicting the story of the Second World War but... the cradle of watchmaking in Switzerland. It's where Audemars and Piguet started making watches 150 years ago... I never had much of an interest... until I went to visit their workshop, invited to make this proposal for a small... competition, and I met this... master watchmaker... [H]e made me aware... that today we're so used to the divorce between hardware and software. Between... form and content, that the hardware is... this neutral, always identical and it's the software that gives... attribute... character and use. But in watchmaking and... architecture the hardware is... the software. It's the geometry and the interlocking of gears... materials, and... spaces that makes the clockwork... and the building work. ...[T]hey had this idea of a linear chronological exhibition, but that you should be able to... dig through and make shortcuts, so we... coiled the chronology into this... double spiral that leads to a central gallery in the middle, and then unwinds again. The roof follows the slope of the landscape bringing daylight and views deep into the floor plate. ...This resource spirál, which is the element inside the watch, that makes it store kinetic energy and... tick. There's not a single column in the entire building. It's as if a spiral is floating above you. The glass is... load-bearing. ...[O]ne of the elements of watchmaking is to provide the maximum impact with a minimum of material, skeletonization, minimization... is all about reducing the amount of material... [Y]ou can...look over the shoulders of some of the expert watchmakers, and ask them questions while they're trying to put very small things together... [A]t any time you can jump from one part of the chronology to the other. So you have this... surreal experience where the entire roof seems to be hovering over your head. You enter from the existing historical building and enter into the spiral. It's this... , environmentally high performing building, so we needed to provide passive sun shading and develop... undulating ribbons of brass, but have the effect that from the angle of the sun, they're opaque, but when you look at them straight from the inside they're entirely transparent, almost to the point where they... disappear... [F]or any architect who dreams about potentially doing something that is close to a perfectly built building, working in Switzerland where practically everybody is a watchmaker at heart, for watchmakers, is as good as it gets. ...[W]e've never seen concrete... metalwork or glasswork like this. ...[A] building for the pure thrill of celebrating the craftsmanship of watchmaking, and of architecture.
Historically the field of architecture has been dominated by two opposing extremes. ...[A]n avant-garde of wild ideas, often so detached from reality that they fail to become... other than eccentric curiosities. On the other side... well-organized corporate consultants that build... boring boxes of high standard. Architecture seems entrenched between two... unfertile fronts: either naively utopian or petrifyingly pragmatic. ...BIG operates in the fertile overlap between ...opposites. A pragmatic utopian architecture... creation of socially, economically and environmentally perfect places as a practical objective.
One... way to explain... the power of architecture... is to explain the Danish word for design, which is "Formgivning," which... means "form giving," because to design something is to... give form to that which has not yet been given form... [i.e.,] to give form to the future. ...We're giving form to the world which we would like to find ourselves living in ...Design becomes much more important than style or aesthetics and fashion.
He came to us because he wanted to move his restaurant... to... Christiania, this kind of hippie commune in Copenhagen. It's part of the old fortification... a historical landmark... The hippies invaded in 1969 and never left. You can buy mild drugs openly... The main part of the building is an old... mine storage. ...We thought the city was going to give us a medal for trying to make it nice, but the city had this attitude that as long as it was only deteriorating organically, everything was fine... [A]s soon as we started trying to repair it, everything was incredibly restricted.