Bjarke Ingels

Bjarke Ingels (born 1974) is a Danish architect, born in Copenhagen. He graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture in 1999, after also studying in Barcelona, and worked for Rem Koolhaas at OMA in Rotterdam from 1998 to 2001. He ran the firm PLOT with Julien De Smedt from 2001 to 2005 and then founded Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). He moved to New York in 2012.

He calls his approach hedonistic sustainability: environmentally efficient buildings that also give people new public uses. In Ørestad, Copenhagen, his firms built the VM Houses (2005), the Mountain Dwellings (2008), with apartments terraced over a sloping parking garage, and the 8 House (2010), a figure-eight block whose ramp lets residents walk or cycle up to the tenth floor.

CopenHill, the Amager Bakke waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen, opened in 2017; its sloping roof carries an artificial ski slope, a hiking trail and a climbing wall, opened to the public in 2019. VIA 57 West in New York (2016) is an apartment building shaped like a warped pyramid around a central courtyard, a type BIG called a "courtscraper." Other works include the LEGO House in Billund, Denmark (2017), and the 2016 Serpentine Pavilion in London.