TEDxAmsterdam - Bjarke Ingels - 11/20/09

I'm I'm very happy to be back in uh in Holland because I actually spent uh uh my two first years as a young architect working here so I I could do this presentation in Dutch but um but none of the other guys did so uh I'll stick to English um and be you um actually sort of um architecture is um if you like sort of the the Art and Science of us um as human beings continually refurbishing the surface of our planet so it actually fits better to the way we want to live um and

that's why we find it so um paradoxical that the public debate about architecture is uh is so often restricted to just sort of looking at the final result like sort of contemplating the architectural object you know is it beautiful is it ugly uh and sort of a typical example of how the public media treats architectural debate is uh is you know whether or not Norman Foster's new tower in London looks like a A girkin or a sausage or a dildo um so so recently we we asked ourselves if there was actually a way of U

of telling stories uh with architect are sort of going behind the the scenes looking at all the different forces of society the the cultural the political the economical forces that sort of uh influence the the designs and actually shape our world and our buildings and our cities into the way they are uh so we tried to imagine if there was a way to to use uh images and and drawings and uh uh and and pictures to actually tell stories about architecture we basically sort of uh turned um turned our work into this sort of comic

book about architecture uh because we really wanted to sort of um communicate not just you know uh how good or bad the building looks but like how it actually became what it is uh and we called our comic book yes is more uh which is obviously a sort of revolution of um of M fos less is more um this sort of modern architect who triggered the modern re Revolution uh with this sort of idea liberating architecture from the constraints of style or history and making it about sort of pure Essence but quickly this idea like

degenerated into some kind of minimalistic Manifesto and that triggered the postmodern counterrevolution uh Robert Venturi saying Les is a bore why do modern buildings have to be so boring then uh Philip Johnson came uh saying I'm a uh introducing the the potential of let's say promiscuity or at least sort of openness to new ideas uh he died recently and he left an estate in new Canan with 14 different buildings that looked like they had been designed by radically different Architects they were actually all designed by him so you know as life evolves so should architecture

then came a local hero R kolas uh the guy guy who kept me sort of uh engaged in rdam for like almost two years um with with his statement more and more more is more um sort of observing the the impact of sort of GL globalization and and global capitalism on on Urban space sort of suspending judgment and sort of purely observing what's going on um then recently Obama sort of um introduced optimism in a time of global financial crisis uh but but sort of more specifically he was running as a in opposition with a

very unpopular president and he could easily have sort of taken the traditional sort of opposition card of always saying the opposite of the sitting guy but instead he said you know there are no red States of America there are no blue States there's the United States of America like this idea of like not focusing on on the conflict but uh what we're trying to say with with yes is Mo is essentially this idea that um you know the typical image of the of the avangard is this sort of uh Angry Young Man regeling against The

Establishment somehow radicality is almost always negatively defined the sort of the stereotypical sort of progressive architect is this sort of um sort of frustrated uh person standing in the corner angry at the world for not fitting in with his or her ideas um so rather than sort of U the concept of of Revolution against something we're much more interested in the idea of evolution the idea that things gradually evolve um that sort of by incorporating different inputs from uh from the turmoil of of the world you can actually sort of evolve new ideas as a

matter of fact we think that Charles Darwin is one of the best people to ever sort of uh describe how our design process actually works um his his famous diagram from uh uh from the Origin of Species The evolutionary tree could almost be a diagram of how our design works in the office that you know a design evolves through this sort of series of of generations of design meetings at each meeting we have like way too many ideas only a few of them manag to survive and maybe we we sort of choose a really beautiful

model and a very functional one and then we try to mate them and then they have sort of different mutant Offspring some of them are sort of hopeless abortions and some of them are like really promising uh steps uh and then gradually an idea evolves one example of this was a project we did for um a new city library and and Hotel and Conference Center in downtown Copenhagen uh and the site was um uh was like a very small site for really big programs it was like really tough a tough project um and soort of

the design process was almost like this sort of struggle for survival like a hundred sort of different individuals had to sort of uh uh Live and Die in order to reach the sort of final idea of a almost like a rational Tower melting together with the surrounding city soort of essentially expanding the the public space from the from the ground floor up to the roof almost like a sort of a a scandinavi version of the Spanish Steps in Rome sort of public on the outside uh as as well as on the inside with with the

library cascading but um Darwin doesn't only explain how a single idea evolves also as you can see sometimes a species branches off uh you know we might sit in a design meeting and there's like a really great idea but it doesn't really fit in with this uh with this context but you know in in other country with another client with another program it could actually become the right answer to a completely different question um because of that we never throw anything out uh we keep all our models in the office uh our office is almost

like a sort of an archive of architectural biodiversity um because you know we we never know when which model might actually be the the one we need um and and what I'd like to do today is is tell you the story of um of uh of three projects and and tell you sort of uh how they evolved through this sort of a gradual process of uh of excess and selection uh the first story started like a year and a half ago when we went to to Shanghai to do the competition for the Danish Pavilion for

the Shanghai World Expo and we saw this guy ha BAU who's the mascot for the Expo and he seems strangely familiar um in fact he looked like a building we had designed for um for a hotel conference center and Spa in UMO in the North of Sweden um when we submitted the project we thought like this was a really cool building but it didn't EX look like something from the North of Sweden um and uh and and the Swedish jury didn't think so either so we um we we lost the project but um then we

had a meeting with a Chinese businessman from Guang and he saw the building and he said sort of wow that's the Chinese character for the word people so um so apparently this is how you write people in in Chinese you know we even double checked um and at the same time we got an invitation to exhibit at the Shanghai creative industry week and we thought like this is too much we stumbl upon what could be sort of the the landmark of the People's Republic of China so we we hired a fun Master uh and then

we scaled the building up three times to Chinese proportions um and and uh and went to China um so so uh so this is the People's Building as we called it on the hango river our two interpreters like reading the architecture um and it it went straight on the cover of when hu B newspaper which made Mr Yang Yu Chen uh the the mayor of of Shanghai come to the exhibition we had a chance to explain him the project and his response was that sort of um uh Shanghai is the city in the world with

most skyscrapers but to him it was as if the sort of connection to the Chinese Roots had been cut over and for the first time with the People's Building he saw an architecture that could bridge the gap between the ancient wisdom of China and the progressive future of China so um so we know we obviously profoundly agree with him uh [Applause] uh unfortunately Mr Mr Chen is now in prison for corruption um but but like I said the h b looked he looked very familiar because he is in fact the Chinese character for people uh

and the reason they chose this uh this mascot is because the subject of the Expo is better City better life sustainability and we thought like sustainability is this sort of idea that has quite often been interpreted as some kind of a Neo Protestant concept that it you know it has to hurt in order to do good uh you know you're not supposed to take long warm showers it's not good for the environment you're not supposed to fly on holidays because flying is bad for the environment um so gradually we get this idea that sustainable life

is less fun than normal life so we thought that um yeah which is like obviously not a very competitive uh position uh for sustainability um so we thought like why don't we focus on examples where sustainability actually increases the quality of life we also asked ourselves what can Denmark possibly show the Chinese that would be relevant to them you know Denmark um China One of the biggest countries in the world Denmark one of the smallest uh China symbolized by by the by the great Chinese dragon in Denmark we have a national bird the swan um

China has many great poets but we discovered that in the Chinese Republic's Public School curriculum they have three fairy tales by anun or H Christian Anderson as we call him um and and that means that all 1.3 billion Chinese actually grew up with The Emperor's New Clothes the Matic girl and the Little Mermaid so it's almost like a little piece of Danish culture that has been integrated into Chinese culture the biggest tourist attraction in China is the is the Great Wall of China the only sort of man-made object that can be seen from out of

space um the biggest tourist attraction in Denmark is The Little Mermaid that can sort of hardly be seen from the canal tours um and you know it's it's these sort of obvious differences you know like a Shanghai and Copenhagen are both port cities but of completely different scales and qualities but then we looked at sort of recent Urban Development 30 years ago this is what a street looked like in in Shanghai all bicycles no cars this is what it looks like today traffic jams everywhere and the bicycle has even become forbidden in several places in

Shanghai to not disturb the car um meanwhile in Copenhagen we actually sort of expanding our bicycle Lanes uh more than a third of all Comm copenhageners commute by bike and we have this sort of system of uh uh of city bikes that we've had for 15 years uh I think originally inspired by Amsterdam but but the the first time you tried in Amsterdam they all got stolen um so uh we evolved that idea by making them more uncomfortable so they don't they don't get stolen um but uh but basically we we thought like why don't

we actually relaunch the bicycle something cool in China we donate uh a th City bikes so that when you come to the Expo you should go straight to the Danish Pavilion uh like U Move Around grab a Danish bike and then you continue on your Danish bike to visit happy Street and all the other sort of uh uh Pavilions um because essentially like these sort of Expos tend to be a lot of state finance propaganda like a lot of big statements a lot of images but no real experience here we're not really talking about the

bicycle people can try it and if they like it you know maybe they'll they'll use it um also like I mentioned both Copenhagen and Shanghai are port cities but in uh in Copenhagen our water has become so clean and you can swim in it uh one of our first projects was actually we did the the the Danish Harbor bath in Copenhagen that sort of extends public life into the water so we thought like why don't we take this idea to China also but rather than talking about it why don't we actually sail a million liters

of Harbor water from Copenhagen Harbor to to Shanghai um this is where the environmentalists normally object that it doesn't sound super sustainable to sell water but uh but in fact the the ships they go full of goods from China to Denmark and then they sail more or less empty back so quite often the ships take sea water in for ballast to remain steady at Sea so we can actually hitch a ride for free uh all the way back um and in the middle of this sort of pool of Danish water surrounded by Danish bikes we're

going to put the the The Little Mermaid uh like not a copy but the the real mermaid um so that uh so that the 1.3 billion Chinese that grew up with her can actually experience her in real life um um so essentially the the the Pavilion is conceived as like a loop of exhibition uh like with bicycles on the roof uh when you arrive at the Pavilion you go sort of through the exhibition around the mermaid pool uh you arrive out on the roof you start searching for a bike you jump on your bike and

then you go through the last part of the exhibition and out into to Shanghai so um when we when we were so lucky to win the competition we were asked to sort of organize uh an exhibition in at the Shanghai urban center uh and to hours surprised when we submitted the boards for printing uh the Chinese censorship sent them back with corrections um so first of all we had compared like Denmark and China then they say the China map missed Taiwan it's a very serious political issue in China we will add on sort of okay

um then then we had compared the swan to the dragon and then the Chinese state says suggest change to Panda so like there there's like an incredible care uh in uh in the censorship but basically when it when it um when it came out in in Denmark that we were going to move the mermaid uh the the Danish nationalist party which is this sort of anti-immigration anti- almost anything party uh they H they tried to pass a law against moving the mermaid um and for the first time I was invited to speak at the national

Parliament um and it was kind of interesting on the same day uh from 9 to 11 they were discussing the bailout package like how many billions were we going to invest in Saving the Danish economy then they had a 30-minute recess and then from 11:30 to 1:30 they were discussing whether or not to send the mermaid to China um but sort of to conclude if you wouldd like to see the mermaid next year from uh from May to December um don't come to to Copenhagen because she's going to be in Shanghai uh if you do

come uh you'll probably see an installation by this guy um iway way he's promised to make like an art installation for the six months she's gone uh or if this if the Chinese state intervenes it could be a panda sort of uh sitting on the stone um it's a it's it's currently uh under construction um the the next story like I'd like to uh to tell um is actually um starting sort of in my own in my own house this is my house uh this is my apartment uh um and the view from my apartment

overlooking this sort of landscape of triangular balconies uh our client quickly called them the Leonardo decaprio balconies um they have this sort of effect that they they transform the South facade of the building into a social space that sort of on a nice summer day you'll actually get to meet all the young ladies in a sort of 10 meter radius around your apartment um they called the VM house because like uh we basically distorted a a square block so that all of the apartments have straight views of the surroundings instead of looking straight at each

other um this used to be the view from my apartment um it was a place where um our client um bought the site uh and said that he wanted to uh to do a combination of a of 10,000 square meters of apartments and 20,000 square meters of parking and we thought like rather than doing like a big stack of Apartments looking at at a big boring block of parking um perhaps we could sort of turn all the apartments into pin houses put them on a Podium of cars and because Copan is completely flat if you

want to have a nice south facing slope with the view you have to do it yourself so we sort of tilted the site uh then we cut up the volume so we wouldn't steal the view from uh from my apartment um and and essentially the parking occupies all the deep space sort of beneath the uh the housing and then on top you have sort of um the sort of nice layer of apartments that combine sort of all the splendors of a Suburban lifestyle a a house with a garden but with a penthouse View and a

sort of dense Urban location so this is our model uh this is what it looked like last year um and essentially the the apartments form the roof of the parking uh they are accessed with a single diagonal elevator it's a standard product from Switzerland because in Switzerland you have a natural need for diagonal elevators um and the parking rather than being this sort of close phobic space where especially women might be afraid of parking is transformed into this like generous open space we call it sort of a a Cathedral of car culture um and sort

of the the outer facade of the uh of the project is uh is basically the the parking facing the city uh and since we wanted to make it naturally ventilated not spend any energy on on on pumps and uh and and fans it needed to be perforated um so it could breathe U naturally and we found out that uh by by changing the the the size of the holes six different sizes up to three centimeters in diameter we could actually turn the entire facade into a gigantic rasterized image uh and because we always refer to

the project as the mountain uh we ended up commissioning this sort of Japanese Himalaya photographer um that has actually transformed the entire North facade of the building into this sort of gigantic Urban artwork and and finally sort of if you continue back into the the galleries uh you you go into the the apartments it's almost like traveling into a parallel universe from the colors and the cars you have this sort of south facing Urban Oasis your wood floor continues outside and as you sort of continue out you go into the garden and the grass and

and all the rain water that is falling on the mountain is actually collected in a big water tank uh and in dry periods it's sort of naturally uh circulated so that in one or two years the entire Mountain should turn into this sort of gigantic sort of Cambodian Temple Ruin completely covered in um in green sort of um I like this that it looks like a hundred of these guys like jumped over the canal and climbed up to the 10th floor like the sort of mountain of of Suburbia um the last thing as sort of

to conclude is sort of um as an architect you might be sort of interested in in various sort of ideologies or or big ideas but you you never have like the political power or the financial resources to realize any of your Visions so you always depend on sort of the chaos of the world or like the decisions of others to to realize your ideas one sort of uh typical example is that um last summer we were so lucky that we we want a competition to design a Scandinavian National Bank uh we even sort of designed

the the the the the office of the director of the bank this is him when he was still smiling um so when we want the comp comptition we were like extremely excited uh unfortunately it was the National Bank of Iceland um um but uh at the same time we actually had a visitor from uh from aaban uh one of the Ministers of aaban came to to Denmark we showed him around and he really liked the mountain and he really liked the idea that you could actually make mountains out of architecture so um he told us

that the capital of aaban called B is this sort of bay overlooking an a desert island uh where that would be perfect for for human life but the president had never opened it for development because um he was afraid that some kind of wall of mediocre high-rises would ruin the the view of the Caspian Sea from the entire city so he said that since aaban is known as the Alps of Central Asia could we perhaps make an urban development that would sort of recreate the Silhouettes of the seven most significant mountains of aaban so um

we um like it was kind of a crazy megalomaniac idea so we we totally liked it uh so I'm going to finish by showing this small movie explaining the project and um and we quite often make these little films about our work but we always argue for very long what music to to put on the on the video uh but in this case it was like a really obvious [Music] choice so uh so basically basally Baku is organized like this sort of Crescent Bay overlooking the island of zura um ah excellent thanks um and uh

our basic task was to um sample the seven most famous mountains of aaban and reinterpret them into these sort of functional Urban structures uh sort of suited for uh for human life uh we would then sort of plan them on the island around a Central Valley of of a green Park and because the island is a piece of desert it has no water it has no plants it has no energy it has no infrastructure we decided to consider the entire Island an ecosystem so basically using uh wind energy to drive desalination uh plants delivering fresh

water using the thermal properties of water to heat and cool the buildings using the sun to heat the heat the water for for for human use and finally sort of organically cleaning uh the waste water instead of putting it into a sewer we made these like root Zone Gardens that would sort of gradually filter the the water through the landscape and would actually increase the amount of water gradually turning the desert into a green Lush landscape so you can say where sort of um Urban Development is quite often happening at the expense of nature here

it would actually create the nature um and also the these sort of um Mountain uh neighborhoods or or or buildings they don't only look like mountains they also operate like mountains in the sense that they sort of they create sort of shelter from the wind uh they accumulate the heat of the Sun sun and they collect all the uh all the rainwater so um after after 6 months of of planning we uh we presented the the project to the president uh and um uh sort of before the summer we actually signed the contract for the

master plan and and the three first mountains so through this sort of a process of sort of you can say sort of architectural evolution of ideas uh the mountain in Copenhagen has turned into the the Seven Peaks of aaban uh which is going to be the first sort of neutral Island in in Central Asia thank you