Editor Gemma Battenbough speaks to Bjarke Ingels, founder of Danish practice BIG Architects, about why yes is more, his theory of architectural evolution and creating a new image of the avant garde
What is the design process at B.I.G Architects?
Quite often architectural debate is something that happens after the fact. You look at the end result and quite often the architectural debate is narrowed down to ‘nice’ or ‘ugly’ so I like to explain the stories behind the projects, how they ended up being what they are, and how they have been shaped by the various forces in society.
There is this cliché about the architect sitting in a restaurant and scribbling down a sketch on the backside of a napkin — the instant conception that is then passed on to their executive minions. This idea that in between the starter and the main, the fate of thousands of people has been decided just with a few lines on a napkin.
In fact, that’s not how the design process actually works; quite often it’s a long and evolutionary process. Darwin’s famous diagram from The Origin of the Species is one of the best ways to describe the creative process in our office.
What is your theory of architectural evolution?
In the office, too many models or ideas are born so, through a process resembling natural selection we discuss the different ideas. One might be very beautiful or another might really resolve the problem well. Then we try to make them. And as a result they develop different kinds of mutant offspring. Some fail miserably and some work really well. And gradually through a series of design meetings and an excess of models, some often not so good ones, we end up with the final idea. It’s like architecture is not really the goal — it’s the means. Human life is the goal.
How does this affect society?
We constantly look out for how life is evolving and we try to make sure that, whenever we get involved, we identify what changes have occurred since the last time somebody built a school or a housing complex, and then we try to add that architecture to life rather than forcing people to fit in with the structures we randomly inherit from the past.
So it is the case of architecture being the process of constantly refurbishing the surface of our planet so that it fits to the way we want to live. And so that we don’t have to live in ways restricted by our physical surroundings.
What, philosophically, are you gaining from saying ‘yes’ to all your design iterations?
Quite often you hear architects complaining that the world doesn’t understand the ideas, or the world doesn’t fit in with the idea. So rather than being angry at the rest of the world for not fitting in to our visions, we try to accept every single demand and actually use it as the driving force in our designs.
We are skeptical of the traditional image of the avant garde, of the angry young man rebelling at the establishment. Radicalism is always negatively defined, as who or what you are against. So rather than revolution, we’re interested in evolution, and rather than saying no, we want to see what happens when we actually accept the world as it is and try to accommodate it.
