Bjarke Ingels

Bjarke Ingels is principal of BIG/ Bjarke Ingels Group, a Copenhagen-based architecture firm considered by many to be among the most important emerging architecture offices in the world. Ingels has received numerous awards, including the 2004 Golden Lion at the Venice Bienale and the 2005 Forum AID Award. In addition to running BIG, he has also been active teaching around the world, including stints as a visiting Professor at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. This year Ingels was named by ICON magazine one of the 20 most influential young architects in the world.

In 2001, after working for Rem Koolhaas /OMA, Ingels, along with former partner Julien de Smedt, founded PLOT. Like OMA, PLOT sought to transform research and analysis of practical and theoretical issues into powerful new forces of design. With the completion of a number of critically acclaimed projects, including the Maritime Youth House (2004) in Copenhagen, and the VM Houses (2005), a 250 unit housing block also in Copenhagen, the firm established a reputation for wildly experimental pragmatism. After only five years, however, Ingels and de Smedt dissolved PLOT and formed two separate offices, BIG and JDS.

Today, BIG has expanded to more than 60 employees and is now completing a number of new buildings including the remarkable Mountain Housing complex in Copenhagen, a manmade concrete hillside of parking covered with a thin layer of terraced housing.

http://www.big.dk