Bjarke Ingels: BIG ART in Copenhagen

Available for over a year

Bjarke Ingels is a Danish architectural wunderkind. He has has projects all over the world – from eco-skyscrapers in China to a flood resistant water park in Manhattan, from zoos and museums to hotels and public swimming pools in the reworking of old industrial ports. He has offices in New York and London but we catch up with him in the Copenhagen studio, an airy former Carlsberg factory in the industrial quarter. Here Bjarke and his team are at work putting the finishing touches to a new addition to the Copenhagen skyline. A waste to energy plant – a vast silvery building may not seem very glamorous but Bjarke is turning its huge slanting roof into a ski slope. Copenhagen has plenty of snow after all, but no hills. The plant’s chimney, which emits steam not toxins, Bjarke is fashioning to blow vast ‘smoke rings’, fluffy donuts into the sky…that’s a work in progress. Bjarke explains his philosophy as an architect, why he is obsessed with Darwin and we are with him for the opening of BIG ART in Copenhagen’s Charlottenborg Gallery – a celebration of how Bjarke and his team collaborate with artists - and manages to have fun.