We designed and built MÉCA, la Maison de l'économie créative de Aquitaine. It's a... regional art foundation, and a library and...performance center... on the waterfront of in ... next to the first bridge designed and built by . ...As you walk along the Garonne river the museum lifts you up, allow you to pass through and continue your journey... The theater and the library become the pillars that carry the art museum. ...It creates this urban room ...shaded from the Bordeaux sun... gently lifts the public up through the building and out. It creates... effortless seating in the shade of the building overlooking the river. ...[J]ust by opening the facade a tiny bit ...all the programs that need daylight are visible from the outside. ...All the finishes ...almost like Le Corbusien ...raw and simple material. ...[Y]ou enter ...a little storytelling pit ...It's really like a warehouse for the arts. ...As you ascend up, the theater with the skylit stage, so for rehearsals they have daylight, and finally the art space on the roof and the beautiful view of the city. ...[A]lmost like an extension of the industrial neighborhood behind, bringing the city and its life all the way down to waterfront.
Danish architect (b.1974)
Showing quotes in randomized order to avoid selection bias. Click Popular for most popular quotes.
[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.
Limited Time Offer
Premium members can get their quote collection automatically imported into their Quotewise collections.
[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.
[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.
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.
Enhance Your Quote Experience
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
There's another aspect, which is the shine effect. So , the Anish Kapoor patented black, the least reflective material on earth, had a shine effect of zero, and perfect white, of one... [A]n ocean or a parking lot has almost no shine effect so it absorbs a lot of heat. So the more open ocean... the more parking lots, the more heat is absorbed, whereas fresh snow has a... good shine effect... [T]o give you an idea of how impactful this is, if earth was all ocean we would have an average temperature of 27°C. Today it's 15°C... If 1/3 of the planet was glacial, it would be frozen. So 1% of change in the shine effect of earth is the equivalent of doubling the amount of <chem>CO2</chem> in the atmosphere. So it's also an important factor that... now works against us.
[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.
A decade after, we opened the Danish Pavilion in Shanghai. The subject for the World Expo was "Better Cities, Better Life," and we thought of the pavilion as a condensation of all the things that make Danish cities more sustainable and... more enjoyable. ...We recreated the harbour bath ...and we were looking for common denominators between Denmark and China ...[W]e found that in the Chinese public school curriculum they have three fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen, one being... , the national symbol of Denmark, so we proposed to move the mermaid [statue] to China. I had to go to Parliament to argue the case, and... we got her.
This is only a fragment of the plan for the planet that we've done as an in-house research project... to answer some of our own questions... [W]e don't have any jurisdiction over Earth, so no one asked us to do this. So what's the point? ...[D]oing the plan for the planet has given us an insight and a clarity... and we started aligning the projects... with the principles of the plan... [P]roject by project we're beginning to give form to a future that is more aligned with the principles...
This is one of my favorite photos. It's all the richest people in Denmark and me. It's... the family that makes . It says something about a country when the richest... make Lego, but they asked us to imagine the home of the Lego brick, an architecture where you could unfold the potential of Lego. ...This is the ...building. We tried to ...imagine an architecture ...as inviting... engaging and inclusive as Lego ...itself. ...Lego is a tool, not a toy ...that empowers the child to create his or her own world and ...inhabit that world through play, and to invite her friends in... cocreating and cohabiting that world. ...[T]hat, at its best is exactly what architecture should be.
For Google we created this... canopy of ... next to the , and the landscape is... root zone gardens, so the roof canopy collects... rainwater, then all the gray and black wastewater is... filtered through the landscape and... let clean into the bay. The only material is photovoltaic tiles... a Swiss product that... has a textured surface... making power out of light... [T]he structure is a grid shell that has a catenary curve, because the natural sagging is the most materially sufficient way to make a long span, so minimizing... how incredibly thin the roof structure is... [T]he smiles are proportioned to let in... the perfect amount of daylight...
[T]rying to... take the entire sensibility and... philosophy of René and noma and trying to create a portraiture or capture the essence... the architectural equivalent of what René has created, and a powerful manifestation of this... urban ecology... in the middle of , but the honey is made there, most of the ingredients...
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.