In the last 100 years we six times doubled our consumption [0.7 trillion m³ in 1900, to 4 trillion m³ in 2018] of water. ...Mos… - Bjarke Ingels

[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...

[E]scalating in scale and impact, one project is... for a new baseball stadium for the Oakland A's. ...[S]tadia ...these ...massive venues in a giant sea of parking that are only active a few days a year, baseball more than any other sport, roughly a hundred in a year... {W]e thought what if this new stadium could... be... the cultural foundation for the city? What if we could bring the ball park back into the park? ...[B]aseball started in parks and... at some point a guy got the idea to build a fence around the park and charge [for] tickets. So we thought, what if we could... bring the park back, so instead of this... enclosed stadium, what if the main concourse was... Main Street? ...[B]ecause baseball is an asymmetrical sport with the outfield, what if the entire stadium could open up to the city and the water and the views? ...[I]magine as the roof dips down it... becomes... Oakland equivalent of the , a public park that is part of the experience of the game, but 250 days of the year it's... a park for the citizens... [I]magine that 365 days a year this is part of the enjoyable space of this new neighborhood. ...[N]ormally the seats that are the furthest away from the game would be the lousiest. Her they have this amazing experience of... being a part of the park... so... that a hundred days a year they shut down access to the park, like if you have a concert in Central Park, and it becomes part of the spectator experience. All the restaurants and cafes open up to the park. ...[T]he other days they open up to the park so you can... have a coffee... So you have this... connection from the inside to the out. Above... the running track on game day is part of the circulation, and on a non-game day it's part of the experience of living in Oakland. The same for the pinic lawn... [T[he stadium doesn't become this... massive... empty white elephant, a kind of void in the city, it... becomes a... bringer of life and energy into a new neighborhood... [B]ecause of the... asymmetry in extreme you have this... incredible view out over the port towards San Francisco... For the facade we wanted to spend as little money for the enclosure as possible... [W]e need to provide some shelter from the wind, so we came up with this idea of this... louvered structure... facing the predominant direction of the wind... {W]here we have the concessions... the circulation, we need to provide wind protection so it... becomes this series of scarfs wrapped around the building... providing only the necessary protection... [E]ven if you were only trying to make this... skeletal non-building it ends up having... elegant expression. ...[W]hen you arrive, you... walk over the edge of the stadium and onto the arms of the field. To provide access and... minimize... parking, because it's part of an urban neighborhood, we can share the parking. But also we have the BART... only... a mile away, but you have to cross a 12 lane highway, and a freight train, so the simplest way of connecting is by putting a single mast... We can put a gondola that takes you straight from the BART, across both highway and train tracks, lands you on , and... you walk... across the perimeter park and into the game.

[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.