Funky, hedonistic and pleasurable – that is what architecture should be according to Danish starchitect Bjarke Ingels. “I see architecture as applied art. But the artworks that interest me are the artworks that expand our perception on life.” On Thursday 22^nd of March Ingels showed a sold-out de Doelen that fantasy and humour are vital for his architectural love-affair.

“When you announce love, people sign up in the hundreds, thousands even”, Ole Bouman, director of the NAI (Netherlands Architecture Institute) stated in his introduction. It is clear that in times of financial and climate crises there is a definitive need for a positive and pleasurable story on architecture. There seems to be no better storyteller than the 37-year old Bjarke Ingels, who with his architectural practice BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) made it to the top of the industry in less than 6 years.

Photo: Jakob Galtt

Part of the success of BIG seems to lie in their unusual mix of functions and their unconventional way of mixing traditional ingredients. “Architectural alchemy” Ingels calls it, which leads to new qualities and added value. Whether it be combining a bicycle lane and a building (like in Shanghai), or apartments and a parking garage (like in BIGS 8 House in Copenhagen), or even Morroccan fountains, Spanish s-curve-benches and Estonian swings (like in the public space of the Copenhagen ‘ghetto’ Superkilen), the unusual mix leads to a whole range of new possibilities.

Images: Bjarke Ingels Group www.big.dk

Like skiing on mountains of trash. In BIGs most ambitious project so far, ‘Loop City’ , which connects several Danish and Swedish cities through a bridge and railway, but also through waste- and energy streams, Ingels envisioned a skislope unto a waste-mountain of a former powerplant. “Danes love to ski, but Denmark is as flat as Holland”. The project is not the mere fulfilment of Ingels’ hedonistic fantasies, but it also turns waste into a resource and a powerfactory into a public park. Ingels ambition to make manmade ecosystems, without dead ends – seems to be turned into reality. The crown will be the chimney of the power plant which, as an artistic expression of hedonistic sustainability, will puff ‘harmless’ C02-smokerings.

Originality, fantasy but also humor are very important in Ingels’ architecture. “In many ways the solution to architectural problems is in line with the diagram of a good joke”, the architect admits. The punch line is the perfect outcome of what no-one had expected. “With architecture it is the same. The idea of the skislope started lightly, but then you start to think, even though the solution is different, it still makes perfect sense. This alternative reality is actually plausible.”