Famous Architects

Interview with Bjarke Ingels

You've been calling for a new approach, "hedonistic sustainability," which is "sustainability that improves the quality of life and human enjoyment." What are some examples of this?  Why is it important for sustainability to enhance pleasure?We shouldn't forget what we are here to do in the first place as architects and landscape architects. It's to improve the quality of life for everyone and not at the expense of the quality of life for other people or other life forms, for that matter. The whole discussion about sustainability isn't popular because it's always presented as a downgrade. The position has been there's a limit to how good a time we can have. We have to downgrade our current lifestyle to achieve something that is sustainable. That makes it essentially undesirable. People can be to the left and maybe shop a little bit green, but they're not going to drop their car if they have to pick up their kids from football and go to the movies. It becomes an impossible mission.

However, there's nothing in our lifestyle that necessarily requires CO2 emissions. It's just an unforeseen side effect of all of the increases in quality of life that we have been able to deliver through modernization and industrialization. As we get smarter and more aware of these side effects, we can factor them in and start delivering urban mobility without emissions by switching to fuel cells or batteries.

My two favorite examples from Copenhagen: 37 percent of the Copenhageners today commute by bicycle so they are never stuck in a traffic jam. You know how unenjoyable it is to sit stuck in traffic, especially if you do it every day. So 37 percent of the Copenhageners never experience that because they have the convenience of going from A to B on a bicycle. Also, our port has become so clean you can swim in it. You don't have to commute to the Hamptons to have clean water. You can actually jump in the port downtown. So these are basic examples where sustainability actually starts becoming an upgrade rather than a downgrade.

In your large-scale master plan and park projects, you often feature landscape loops. For example, in your Stockholmsporten project, "a continuous bike and pedestrian path reconnects different areas in an un-hierarchical and democratic way." In Clover Block, there's a perimeter loop surrounding a massive lawn.  In another project still in the idea phase, you propose a loop city in the Copenhagen suburbs. What's the attraction to these loop forms? How well do they work?They have to do with connectivity. You can see it in the loop city idea. The old paradigm for Copenhagen a city was the five finger plan, where from the central orientation of downtown Copenhagen you have these corridors of urban tissue that extend, leaving gaps between the fingers of green and agriculture. But, of course, this is a hierarchical and central model where the further you get out in the finger, the further you are away from the concentration of connectivity and activity. Given a lot of the Copenhageners live out in the fingers, and a lot people actually work in this finger and live in this finger and play football in this finger, another kind of connectivity starts becoming interesting. Since Copenhagen is actually the other side of the Oresund by Malmö and Lund and Elsinore, you have a whole suburbia over there. Historically, because it's on the Swedish side (ten years ago, we didn't have the bridge between Copenhagen and Malmö), there's never been any kind of central planning authority considering these Swedish/Copenhagen suburbs as part of the metropolitan area of Copenhagen because they're in another country. They're eight hours away from Stockholm but only 30 minutes away from Copenhagen.So what we are proposing with the loop city is to create a bi-national continuous urban tissue where people are no longer condemned to live in the outskirts and commuting into downtown Copenhagen and back out again. There will be a continuous ability to interact between these kind of urban areas that now house the majority of the population of the area. You have 500,000 people living in Copenhagen inner city and you have three and a half million people in the region.

Loop City / Image credit: BIG / Glessner

You told Metropolis magazine that one of your goals is to put architecture on the public school curriculum, "given nobody has thought of giving students a basic understanding of how our cities have evolved." What about the other disciplines and forces shaping cities: landscape architecture, urban planning, climate, and ecological sciences? How must they be taught in schools?I see them all as part of the same curriculum in that sense. Holistic design awareness. We've actually had a little revolution or evolution in Denmark. We recently had elections and we got a very photogenic female left-wing prime minister and we have an incredible cultural minister. Five or six years ago, I was on the cultural ministry's educational council. Architecture, art, design, and planning are all under the cultural ministry rather than the ministry of education. My first proposal to the cultural minister was to give them back to education so that the whole range of architecture, including landscape architecture, is seen as an investment in the future rather than a form of high-brow entertainment. This can really ensure these subjects are seen with the seriousness of education, instead of just as a luxury, like culture is sometimes peceived. Now they're actually proposing to do it and it's causing a lot of debate in Denmark. I really believe it's the right thing to do. I wouldn't be surprised if architecture and design is not part of the public curriculum in Denmark in the next five years.  

Bjarke Ingels is founding partner of Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). Ingels, who rated as one of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company, is also a visiting professor at Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

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8HOUSE Gardens / Image credit: Dwell magazine

In the West 57th project, the entire architecture is created as the framework for the courtyard. Somebody called it a Bonsai Central Park. It's probably 1/500 the size of Central Park but by insisting on creating an urban oasis for the residents, the whole volume of the block, the whole architecture was dramatically reconfigured and we can no longer rely on the traditional boxy typology. We created this highly asymmetrical roofscape that allows in daylight and creates views into a sort of oasis. It was really the Central Park of the Copenhagen courtyard. We arrived at a completely different architecture because of Central Park.

W57, West 57th Street Residential Complex / Image credit: BIG / Glessner

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AYE3w5TWHs

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Zaha Hadid (Biografi)

Born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1950, Zaha Hadid was the first woman to win a Pritzker Architecture Prize. Her work experiments with new spatial concepts and encompasses all fields of design, ranging from urban spaces to products and furniture.

Born:

October 31, 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq

Education:

·         1977: AA Diploma, Architectural Association School of Architecture in London

·         Mathematics at American University of Beirut in Lebanon

Important Projects:

·         1993: A fire station for the Vitra Furniture Company in Weil am Rhein, Germany

·         2001: Terminus Hoenheim-Nord, a “park and ride” and tramway on the outskirts of Strasbourg, France

·         2002: Bergisel Ski Jump, Austria

·         2003: The Richard and Lois Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio

·         2005: Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany

Proposed Projects:

Zaha Hadid has many other projects in various stages of development. They include:

·         Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University in East Lansing

·         The Price Tower Arts Center Museum Expansion in Bartlesville, Oklahoma

·         Olabeaga Masterplan Master Plan, Bilbao, Spain

Other Works:

Zaha Hadid is also known for her exhibition designs, stage sets, furniture, paintings, and drawings.

Partnerships:

·         Zaha Hadid worked at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture with her former teachers, Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis

·         In 1980, Zaha Hadid opened her own practice, Zaha Hadid Architects

Major Awards:

·         1982: Gold Medal Architectural Design, British Architecture for 59 Eaton Place, London

·         2000: Honourable Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

·         2002: Commander of the British Empire

·         2004: Pritzker Architecture Prize

About Zaha Hadid:

From parking garages and ski-jumps to vast urban landscapes, Zaha Hadid’s works have been called bold, unconventional, and theatrical. Zaha Hadid studied and worked under Rem Koolhaas, and like Koolhaas, she often brings a deconstructivistapproach to her designs.Zaha Hadid was the first woman to win a Pritzker Architecture Prize. Learn more: Citation from the Pritzker Prize Jury.

Founder of Zaha Hadid Architects

A unique and hugely respected figure in the world of contemporary architecture, Zaha Hadid is one of the youngest ever winners of the prestigious Pritzker Prize, and the first - and only - woman ever to receive the honour (the highest in architecture).

Her innovative, convention-breaking creations span the entire spectrum of design, from large-scale urban architecture to interiors, furniture and exhibition spaces, and have graced cities around the globe, winning her a plethora of awards and prizes.

Among her best known projects are the BMW Central Building in Leipzig, Germany, the Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany, the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, USA and the Hoenheim Nord Terminus in Strasbourg, France

In addition to her architectural and design work she is a gifted artist - she has exhibited at New York's Guggenheim and Modern Art museums - and also an academic.

She has held the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Harvard University School of Design and the Sullivan Chair at the University of Chicago School of Architecture, and is currently a professor at Vienna's University of Applied Arts.

As well as her many architectural awards she has been made an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Commander of the British Empire.

In her Pritzker Prize citation juror Jorge Silvetti declared: "What she has achieved with her inimitable manipulation of walls, ground planes, and roofs, with those transparent, interwoven, and fluid spaces, are vivid proof that architecture as a fine art has not run out of steam and is hardly wanting in imagination."

 INSPIRATION