The BIG group now unites 85 architects and has existed in this composition for about one year, and its name is an abbreviation of the name of the founder and stands for Bjarke Ingels Group. BIG architects are confident that their architecture always grows out of the features of the area, and only then takes on a certain, sometimes very iconic form, that is, literally similar to some sign, letter or squiggle. Growing out of a specific locality, however, as it turned out during the lecture, does not prevent BIG architects from doing the favorite trick of our contemporaries - the subsequent transfer of the same form from place to place until it takes root somewhere. This happened with two projects made for Denmark and attracted in China. The truth is that neither one nor the other has been implemented.
At the Venice Biennale 2007 BIG presented the Danish Super Port project. Most of the country's population lives on the coastline and, at the same time, the coastal strip is built up with cargo ports. In order to free the most beautiful part of the city for housing and make a single powerful port in Denmark, the architects developed a project of an artificial lake in the shape of a seven-pointed star, each side of which serves a specific direction of the port. This research project, as the architect said, received a great response in the press and many investors, including Chinese - and the symbol of China almost coincides with the shape of the island - wanted to implement it, but so far it remains on paper.
Another project originated from a local situation and then turned into an urban planning one. In the city of Unio, Sweden, it was necessary to create a port and at the same time some significant place almost from scratch. This is how the project of the Arch was born, where two high-rise buildings merge together, a road passes between them, and public areas are located around. The architects understood from the very beginning that such a project was not quite suitable for Sweden and therefore they did not win this competition. However, one Chinese man, accidentally seeing the project, said that it resembles the Chinese character 人 for "people" - and then the architects reworked it a little and put it under the name Peoples Building for a competition in Shanghai that was going to make a symbol for Expo 2010. The authors were going to join this building combines five substances that the Chinese consider necessary for a good building - fire, water, earth, metal and wood - all in the form of simple symbols. However, the competition for a new landmark was canceled, although thanks to participation in it, the project received a lot of publicity - and now it is again looking for its customer.
Among the projects with real prospects, the most interesting seemed to me a residential building for Copenhagen. As Peter said, in the Danish capital there are the same problems as in Moscow - due to population growth, real estate prices are growing wildly and the mayor set the task to build 5 thousand square meters in the city. m of housing. And since there are no empty seats in Copenhagen, the only place that was "accidentally found" is the football stadiums located on the site of the first city airport. But the architects thought that if they built up the fields, it would be a murder for football fans, and then they came up with a very bold and extravagant decision - to wrap a wide landscape "wall" around the perimeter of the stadiums, which will house the future living space of 3 thousand square meters. Where the surroundings are beautiful, the wall runs along the ground, where it is not very - smoothly rises, forming a public zone under it. The roof will be planted with greenery and will replace the courtyard for the residents. The mayor of the city liked the project very much, who is now doing everything possible to ensure that it is implemented.
Another project for his native Copenhagen also grew out of the specifics of the place - it is located on the border between the old and the new city, and therefore, according to the architects' plan, it should combine two times. Since Copenhagen is called "the city of towers", the architects decided to "build up", but "just a tower" did not suit them, because "they would not live next to the city, but would be on its own." Therefore, they drew a house like an inverted hammer - a wide volume at the bottom, a tower at the top. The result is a fairly simple skyscraper, twisted at the base, which becomes a large public area and at the same time an observation deck. Each of the additional functions has its own zones: for the library there is an adjacent area, and for the hotel - the first tier of the tower, where concerts and festivals can be held. Due to the large slope of the roof, the library is fully illuminated by the sun.
briefly about BIG - on the website (https://www.big.dk) of the bureau, which has become noticeably prettier over the past six months:
Bjarke Ingels Group - BIG - is a Copenhagen based group of 85 architects, designers, builders and thinkers operating within the fields of architecture, urbanism, research and development.
Historically the field of architecture has been dominated by 2 opposing extremes. On one side an avant-garde full of crazy ideas. Originating from philosophy, mysticism or a fascination of the formal potential of computer visualizations they are often so detached from reality that they fail to become something other than eccentric curiosities. On the other side there are well organized corporate consultants that build predictable and boring boxes of high standard. Architecture seems to be entrenched in two equally unfertile fronts: Either naively utopian or petrifying pragmatic. We believe that there is a third way wedged in the no mans land between the diametrical opposites. Or in the small but very fertile overlap between the two. A pragmatic utopian architecture that takes on the creation of socially, economically and environmentally perfect places as a practical objective. In our projects we test the effects of scale and the balance of programmatic mixtures on the social, economical and ecological outcome. Like a form of programmatic alchemy we create architecture by mixing conventional ingredients such as living, leisure, working, parking and shopping. Each building site is a testbed for its own pragmatic utopian experiment. At BIG we are devoted to investing in the overlap between radical and reality. Choosing between them you condemn yourself to frustrated martyrdom or apathic affirmation. By hitting the fertile overlap, we architects once again find the freedom to change the surface of our planet, to better fit the way we want to live. In all our actions we try to move the focus from the little details to the BIG picture.
