Bjarke Ingels - My evolutionary journey as an architect | Architects, not Architecture.

[Applause] thank you um so uh yeah thanks thanks for for for having me here to talk about um Architects not architecture and um let let's see if it's true if this clicker Works uh I don't think it does actually oh maybe it does uh um um so so uh yeah first of all I I apologize for showing up to a a largely visual audience with a very very improvised uh presentation because like preparing this presentation I realized that more photos exists documenting the first 24 hours of the lives of my two sons than the first

24 years of my life so so it's a pretty uh it's a pretty sort of delicate selection um and and I took the opportunity to reflect on my personal joury Journey that got me uh to to this state to today um so so where to begin um first I thought about coming to America because actually toshiko uh that I'm incredibly sort of EX excited to share the stage with today was actually the first one who who invited me to come to speak at Harvard in 2006 and um I I almost didn't make it to the

to the talk because I was detained at security in the airport uh and and it was because um we had just uh the Friday before we had the opening party of my my new office big Bings group uh and um one of my friends the photographer Peter bull he uh he had just come back from swart uh this Arctic Island where the population of bears outnumber the humans with a factor 3 to one and um as a as a bizarre um token of good luck he gave me a a bare rifle cartridge uh and um

I I I put it in my jacket and forgot everything about it but I was wearing the same jacket when I went through security and and suddenly all hell broke loose and they had to call the police uh and the police officer arrived and he told me that uh the minimum uh sentence for smuggling uh sort of loaded Weaponry through the uh through um through security at the airport was two weeks of of prison uh and and I was like lamenting on the fact that I was going to teach uh at at at Harvard for

the first time is rather big deal for me uh and I I I didn't intend to call toiko and say that I I wasn't going to come because I was incarcerated uh and um and and and finally the the policeman uh sort of told me okay I'm going to keep the bullet uh you you do the lecture and I don't want to see you again and and I I I haven't seen him since uh but but um um but but it didn't start with America so um when uh when sh and I started uh plot

here you're going to see some incriminating photography uh we we uh we ran our office out of a shared flat and we were funding uh this twers office uh with a shared uh uh teaching gig at at the Art Academy in Copenhagen and and we'd already hired our most talented student uh Thomas gusterson who's uh who's who's one of my partners today here in New York uh and um uh we we had um uh we had just won our first competition and uh uh we could already feel the anxiety of the client when they realized

that their jury had chosen two architects in their 20s with no built experience uh so um the night before the first contract negotiation meeting uh I came home we we were painting our new office uh and I came home and there was like two big binders full of like U all kinds of documents to respond to the next day and as the only native Danish speaker because Chan is is Belgian uh I I started sitting down uh at at 1 p.m. uh looking through these binders and I was like way way over my head like

uh I had no understanding even of some of the terms and um suddenly my phone rings and it's Finn nare uh a 36y old architect who uh was working uh for the office that got the second prize in the competition uh and he had been spending the evening sort of pondering over the competition brief and he was like fascinated by uh by our proposal it was like um a kind of circular uh swimming pool turned inside out and he looked my name up in the phone book and I'm the only Bak Engles uh in uh

so so so so he called and um you know with 10 years of experience in my mind he might as well have been the oldest architect on the planet so so I I sort of asked him where do you live no he lived 5 minutes away he like can you come over uh and he did and uh and you know we we ended up sitting on until 3:00 a.m. in the morning and he was like somehow finding all the little uh the little sort of uh traps they had created like they basically wanted to sort

of demonstrate without a doubt that we didn't have the experience to to run this project um he couldn't come with us the next day but but when he came home to his wife my his wife later told me that she she was putting their daughter to bed at 10 p.m. and then then she came down and there was a note that said like I went for a walk and and then she when when he came home uh she woke up and he said like I I think I quit my job to start with these two

two new guys from scratch um so Finn is is another one of my partners uh uh that I've been working with uh for the last 25 years but but the but the story of plot and the story of big is very much a story populated by the body of work so to go through that story in the absence of of of the projects would be a little bit like walking blindly through the last quarter of of a decade so um I came to think uh no the water cult house I did manage to sneak in

a few pictures uh so so I came to think of a conversation I had uh with the with the king of B Bhutan this this Christmas he he's a young man who was uh handed over the throne by his father in his early 20s uh and over the last year he became a very dear friend of mine um and he told me about the four phases of Life uh the first phase the the the first quarter of your life you grow you learn and you become who you are the the second quarter you build your

platform in life you assemble your team and you own your craft uh the third quarter you use that platform to give the world what you have to offer and the fourth and final quarter you come to terms with the inevitable so uh I was born in 1974 I turned 50 this year which is why I need notes to remember and I need glasses to to see what I wrote um but um so I'm roughly half through through the Journey uh uh pending of course dietary and and lifestyle choices uh but that means that I can

speak with experience of the first two quarters and can share some of the questions and doubts I have about the third quarter that I'm about to begin but given the time constraints uh uh today I'm going to focus on the first quarter so so basically my personal evolutionary Journey up until the foundation of plot in the beginning of of 2000 so so probably the least documented part of my uh my formation as an architect um and I thought the the logical place to begin would be with my first memory uh um uh my first memory

I'm sitting in the back of my grandparents Moors minor 1000 uh on on the Checker blanket in the back uh I'm with my sister and my grandparents uh we're driving along the beach in amama the kind of the island that constitutes half of Copenhagen it's the sort of the Lesser half on the wrong side of the tracks or the wrong side of the port um and I I don't have any concept who my grandparents are except that there are like these very loving people and and important people in my life at at the time and

um we we drive to this modern building uh tall ceiling large Windows uh floor to floor to ceiling glass uh and when we look out we can see airplanes uh and suddenly the most beautiful woman I've ever seen shows up and she's like smiling and laughing and she picks me up and kisses me and I realize this is my mother uh and and I I've since learned and understood that when I was two uh my parents went on a one- month trip around the world and they left me and my sister with my grandparents and

and when they left me I I couldn't say a word and when they came back a month later I would not stop talking um so as as I you know I came to to the theory that as I developed the ability to speak to to put words together to convey meaning and to receive and store meeting I I I somehow also developed Consciousness uh so maybe no coincidence that the kind of emotional impact of being reunited with my parents uh combined with this kind of Newfound faculty of communication and thought has led to the formation

of of my first memory a memory that as it happens took place in one of the most modern buildings in Copenhagen in 1976 uh the BAM lton uh terminal uh in uh in uh at sis um when I was three uh my house burned down to the ground uh it was a 1960 cigar box um the oil heater uh malfunctioned and and the uh and the whole place was swallowed by fire but by a miracle my sister and I had the night before begged my parents to stay with with my grandparents uh and and we

were spanned the the nightmares that since then haunted my my parents for for decades uh uh and as a result I was completely unfaced by the whole thing um the the most memorable thing was actually um oh yeah there you have the most beautiful woman in the world that uh but um the the the the roof was gone from the house and and only the walls were standing so almost like a maze uh with without a ceiling and and the rain had covered the Chevron floors uh in in water soaking them so they inflated and

they created they started buckling out of the ground and they created this kind of Timber Dune landscape roughly the the head height of of a three-year-old so the fire had almost transformed my childhood hone into this kind of fairy tale landscape of of Hills and Valleys uh yeah you're going to see a lot of weird photos um when when when I was five I started kindergarten uh at vbec public school um and at the daycare after school school there was like this young assistant s who would Mesmerize all the kids by sitting all day H

and and making drawings for us and telling stories of of what he was drawing and and and more than anyone I was captivated at this kind of magical ability to to turn uh a blank P piece of paper with gray crayons into this kind of treasure chest of uh of of the imagination so I'd almost say like my favorite days were the days when my mom would pick me me up uh very late uh because I would be the last kid in in school and I would end up sitting the last hour alone with s

uh and and sort of dive into all the drawings and it could became clear that my love for drawings ex exceeded that of my of my fellow classmates and and I think it kind of gave me um an anchor in life um because it meant that I was I never had to compete with anyone not in sports or in school or life because I knew that my gift my destiny was in drawing uh where I was unlike unlike anyone else um and it also opened my eyes to uh to graphic novels uh um and of

course like a passion that has influenced not just my my childhood but also my uh my my career but but but I also sort of discovered you know the French and the Belgian belgians Frank toi Shan Shiro and his Al ego uh Mobius um and and and then sort of as I grew up I I discovered the the Italians Liberator and and miloa and ugoat and and finally the the dark realism of of Frank Miller in in the dark night and and and and Sin City um and and and back then I I would spend

hours in the local bookstore uh when my mother was doing the shopping perusing uh the graphic novels making sure that the uh the shop attendant wouldn't notice that I was trying to read all the graphic novels without actually buying them uh and once in a while when I had saved up enough money I would make a sort of very well researched choice and and buy uh buy one of them um but the disappointment would never fail because the actual Story Once I finally got to read it could never live up to the imagin wonders of

only looking at the imagery somehow the the imagination the expectation of not fully knowing outshined the reality uh every time uh when I was 15 uh I went to uh public high school in in hop um and each year you had to do a mini thesis uh the final year I wrote my thesis in political science which was my major uh and this was January 1993 uh Co harand bontan had just published the bonland report where she coined the term sustainable development uh and it was clear that the world was about to mobilized in the

face of oncoming environmental disaster um uh global warming and the whole in the ozone layer were competing to be the most scary dystopian vision of of the future uh and I I chose to follow up on on un's environmental conference in Rio in 1992 to understand and this was my title environmental policy and action at the global Regional National local and individual level probably one of of the least elegant titles ever U but nonetheless it gave me a timely Insight uh in um in the state of the planet in early 1993 uh and as you

as as you know today the O the whole in the ozone layer actually started closing it self as soon as we stopped using Freon as uh as propellants and in aerosols uh but we are still only getting started to deal with with with climate change so so I basically left University left for for University fully ver in uh in in the in the condition of the of of the climate crisis um and of course this kind of attention to climate ended up also in ining uh our work and and and how we sort of approached

the the the the projects in in high school uh a friend of mine introduces me to William Gibson's Neuromancer uh and I never had great interest in in science fiction or or fiction for that matter because I always thought that there's so much interesting real knowledge in the world why would you waste your time reading something that people just made up for fun so but I found in in Gibson's Neuromancer Trilogy and and all the subsequent words is one of the few authors where I read everything he wrote the wisdom that he's captured better than

anyone else um the idea that the future is already here it's just not very evenly distributed the the idea that today holds the traces of tomorrow somewhere in Labs or on laptops or in the model workshops Design Studios are the prototypes that will constitute the World of Tomorrow so Gibson was almost like an archaeologist digging for the future in the present uh and my my passion for science fiction led me to discover uh Ian M Banks uh Kim Stanley Robinson actually my my my claim to fame is that I am I am mentioned in New

York 2140 because Kim stany Robertson refers to bak's wall uh the the the the dry line to protect Manhattan from the inevitable flood and and in the book it only delayed the inevitable flood with a few decades um and uh and eventually uh uh Philip K dick and and I think Philip K Dick's definition of of Science Fiction beautifully explain why as a J or a creative experiment science fiction transcends the bound boundaries of literature and is very relevant for for Architects he said uh science fiction is not a story from the future although it

often happens in in the future uh it's also not a Space Opera although it often takes place in in space uh it's the sto it's a story where the plot is triggered by some form of invention or often it's a te technological invention but it can also be a cultural social environmental uh political Innovation and the story unfolds as a narrative pursuit of the potential consequences cascading from one this one invention and and not only the writer but also the reader can speculate along and and sort of explore this this idea and uh and essentially

I believe that our best work as archit happened when we managed to ask one question modify one of the Givens and suddenly the design process becomes the design exploration of all the cascading consequences of that one single altered fact so um when I leave high school at the age of 18 uh I know I want to become a cartoonist but there is no cartoon Academy in coob Haagen so I end up enrolling in the Royal Danish Art Academy School of Architecture uh my professor and personal Mentor becomes yens Thomas anell he turned communal housing uh

Pioneer uh and and he was like full of absurd but also great statements like uh it doesn't matter what it costs as long as it looks cheap uh and uh and and he he he opens the semester uh with a speech saying that he doesn't care what we learn at school he he doesn't care if we read this or that or if we acquire this or that skill he says all we have to promise him is that when we leave the school we will leave with something at heart because it doesn't matter what you can

do if you don't know what you want to do with it uh and the Art Academy at the time was was was so free that it was free from classes and it was free from grades essentially all you got was a key card to the buildings and a library card uh and that basically gave you 24-hour access and all the books at at your disposal and in a way my curriculum became the reverse engineering of different Architects Heritage by simply tracing all the footnotes in all the interviews and all the essays so I I randomly

end up discovering Le via remas VIA s via benan ble so you can say my academic traj jeory becomes like serial monogamy that I fall deeply in love with the work of of an architect I dive as as deeply as possible until the Deep Dives sends me to discover their influences their past loves um and and when I tell people that I I started studying architecture um The Exchange often uh goes like this so I say architecture and they say ah actor and then I say no architecture and they say ah okay architecture uh then

perhaps you can tell me why all modern buildings are so boring uh and I and I gradually realized that my new profession has not managed to capture the imagination of of contemporary culture uh on uh on the first month of architecture school I go to Barcelona and I fall in love with the city I fall in love with gudi I fall in love with miras KC Bui and I basically had no idea that architecture could actually be this free and expressive uh the roofscapes of gaudia like inhabitable graphic novels rather than the framework of fiction

they constitute the framework of our lives and I decide that I want to return to to the CD and three years later I do uh at the age of 21 um this is my little brother by the way uh and and it's kind of fun because like he's 11 years younger than me so he was almost more like a son than a than a brother to me and and H and I constantly confuse the name Jacob with the name Darwin and the name Leo even though that Jacob by now is like 37 years old and

and Darwin is five and Leo is is four months uh basically because I I think they sit in the same place in um in the heart um so when I mov to Barcelona I end up living with a philosopher who introduces me to um delers and and and guavi N uh Manuel delanda uh Charles Darwin and and Del's encouragement to speak and write like a foreigner in your own tongue becomes exacerbated by the fact that I'm actually learning Spanish at the time uh a Latin language that is quite different from my native Danish which is

Germanic and in root U so the fact that I have to struggle to formulate the simplest sentences ends up being an asset rather than a handicap because it allows me to to that I have to understand things at the most fundamental level because everything has to be distilled into first principle or Essences I can't just skate over things that you can do when when when your language is second nature and um I'm I'm also isolated uh I'm also isolated from my native habitat in in 1996 there were no cheap uh uh flights uh there were

no free Zoom calls and my father who was an optic fiber uh uh engineer uh he was the only person I knew in the world who had an email address uh so as a result I was effectively isolated from communicating with anyone uh except my dad uh and I I believe somehow that each time you change your environment it offers you the freedom to involve in leaps your friends and family of course is is your greatest source of love and and strength but they also keep you in place they've known you forever and their expectations

and their preformed ideas of who and what you are will keep you in that place so when I arrived in Barcelona people saw me uh and met me with fresh eyes free of expectation or Prejudice and when I returned to Denmark a year later I could return as who who I had become while I was away and the separation left an opening for my friends and colleagues and teachers to meet me a new on a trip to to San Sebastian a friend of mine gives me Dr kin's uh Generation X so it's it's an amazing

book where he describes the mindset of contemporary Western culture anchored in his experiences from the Pacific Northwest um like a pop artist of literature he would select seemingly mundane elements out of the everyday and Elevate them to extract meaning the idea that you could find meaning in the mundane or beauty and mediocrity was a great Revelation to me um you know at at the Art Academy Architects would typically design artist residences on edges of cliffs in beautiful nature like Little Gems adorning stunning Landscapes uh and here comes Douglas kand reminding us that life is actually

what happens when we're busy making other plans and the world we live in is the the world we live in while we're busy dreaming of of somewhere else and through uh through uh uh Douglas kand I also discover an an interview I I I actually managed to become really good friends with Douglas because I I made a shout out to him in in a in in a in a room in Vancouver which is where he's from and and the next day I um and I I I I I confessed my love for his books and

the next day I Reed an email from dolas inviting me for dinner the next time I'm in town so I I I definitely encourage everybody to to always always say who you admire because uh they they might be listening and this is William Gibson who who also lives in in Vancouver so so through uh uh uh Douglas kand I uh I I discover an interview that Douglas did uh with uh with I'm Kus and I'd already stumbled upon colar in many times of course but I but I always found the aesthetic too awkward the collage

likee character uh maybe too unresolved in a way but now I see it again and I see something else I read Delirious New York one of the most brilliant books I've ever read uh each sentence is essentially like an aphorism so saturated with meaning uh I managed to uh find the the last first edition of SML excel in a bookstore in Amsterdam uh I dig through the DVDs at the Barcelona Library uh where they had uh videotaped uh old lectures with with REM explaining his Urban projects um explaining how analysis can be in creative process

and and how different societes processes uh shape the city so frustrated with the classes that I have in Barcelona with miras uh I I I feel the intellectual discourse in this case uh it was gor and the Society of the spectacle is used in an almost ornamental way um to attach words to forms that are otherwise unrelated uh and in my frustration I find a group of like-minded German Swedish and danish Architects and students uh and we submit a competition proposal for the master plan of a new neighborhood in in Copenhagen University in The Hectic

process of um uh of of the deadline we end up discarding uh one of the main boards the one containing the master plan itself uh uh it simply was too ugly and and we make a statement about how the plan is never seen it's the concept and ideas that it contains that will shap the neighborhood and I I make little cartoons depicting the life in the city um we almost murder each other in the process of submitting I swear I'm never going to work with these people again uh Against All Odds we are chosen for

the second round and we given the dizzying sum of €70,000 which was practically the national budget of Denmark at the time to submit stage two um in our isolation in Barcelona we can actually maintain the illusion that we are real Architects doing real work uh we rent the space underneath the roof Terrace of mirah's old office uh the tension in the group only gets worse uh and when we finally lose the second round it feels like a pardon rather than a punishment um and and actually out of the original uh uh group uh one became

an academic one became an exhibition designer one became a filmmaker uh and Frederick became a comedian um uh when uh uh when I return to Copenhagen uh I'm on fire it it feels like the penny has dropped it feels like my 22nd year in Barcelona was the year I became who I am uh there's only one path ahead of me I have to go and work with with M coas so I spent uh the whole Christmas uh making my portfolio and and anyone who's ever made a portfolio knows that it's this kind of excruciating process

of making like work you did four years ago look like uh it's actually good uh um and uh from the credit Pages uh of El croi I know the names of of some of the main people at at Oma so uh when I show up on announced uh the 2nd of January uh in the reception I I mentioned uh Kristoff cornar uh no one knows where he is and I later find out that he had actually abandoned om that Christmas to never return uh so in my second attempt I mentioned Gary Bates uh and he's

there and he shows up uh he's annoyed uh he doesn't recall having ever spoken with me which he makes very clear and it's also true because we never spoke uh uh and he says you you know you can't come here without an appointment and he grabs my portfolio and he starts criticizing it uh but he also starts inquiring about the work and eventually he he sends me off with the job to start February 1st um and uh uh on on my first day of of work I I'm sent to the model shop to help on

the competition model for the IIT Student Center uh I I don't leave the office for another 72 hours uh uh the design is a sort of deconstructed me uh and uh I meet this young kid uh his name is uh sh Smith uh he's orchestrating all the little resing gem pieces that populate the open plan of the building uh and it's obviously my my future co-founder of plot um and it becomes the beginning of a great and impactful personal and and professional uh uh friendship uh uh I later work on the design of the SE

library and I meet bead shink uh another dear friend and partner of mine today who I started the the New York office with um two and a half years later sh and I quit to start plot and by doing so we initiate the second quarter of my journey one that I'll save for another talk um I I do realize that stopping here is a little bit like like the experience I had in 2021 when I went to the premiere of Dune and and and when when when you know when he finally meets the freman the

movie ends uh but if if nerve can do it so can I uh uh but maybe just to sum up um big in a in a single sentence uh we're here today to give form to the Future uh and and as I've explained many times the Danish word for design is form giving because when you design something you're giving form to that what that which has not yet been given form in other words you're you're giving form to the Future and and I believe that our work has been one long Pursuit and Reconciliation of seemingly

contradictory elements into new hybrids uh the architectural pursuit of oxymorons starting with our first discovery of holistic sustainability when we opened the harbor bath our first project in in 2001 we were watching the copenhageners jump in the clean Port rather than driving for hours to get to the beaches in the north of Copenhagen and we realize that the sustainable city is not only better for the environment it can also be much more enjoyable for the people that live in it hedonistic sustainability and and essentially we've pursued oxymorons copen Hill is a power plant that's so

clean that you can ski on the roof and climb the facade the the eight house is a is a hybrid between a city block and a and a and a a mountainous neighborhood SLI house is a courtyard where the courtyard is actually a marina in the port of Amsterdam uh uh the CTS scraper is a hybrid combining the social space of the Copenhagen Courtyard with the density and verticality of an American highrise chisos is a bridge and a museum and a sculpture and a Sculpture Park and finally this the spiral combines the premodern zigurat with

the kind of glass um modern monolith of uh of modernity and and as we've evolved from a Duo to a partnership to a team of 700 people we've gone through a similar Evolution as an organization to what I've gone through as an individual before uh uh I started it and and maybe just to conclude I I just celebrated the 50th birthday of my partners uh David Sal and the 60th birthday of Fin and and when I I I toasted for them uh I realized that I've known them exactly half my life and um and we

just opened a building uh in in the port of Copenhagen uh that we built for ourselves it sits in a public uh Park we've we've designed around it and and actually today uh the American Artist Benjamin langos just finished installing his sculpture that's going to be ready for when the park opens this summer and and when we opened it last fall it gave me this Sensation that we have graduated into like what started as an augmented individual essentially into a creative movement that that I feel like could play a role in giving form to our

future uh uh for for a long time so so in any way to to conclude you can almost say that when I was a kid I drew with crayons and watercolors uh and at the Art Academy I had to learn how to draw with rulers and and hardlines so I lost some of the feeling I had with the crayons but I gained a new world of possibility to construct multi-point perspectives and measurable isometrics Then I then I got a computer and I learned to draw with a mouse and I lost the tactility of the drawing

but I gained a new world of possibilities with 3D models material mapping daylight settings uh texture and space and today I draw with people I have 700 brilliant beautiful people to work with I've lost the control of all always holding the crayon myself but I've gained a world of possibility by engaging with all these powerful thoughtful sensible sensitive uh forgivers and for the next 25 years we will formulate together what will be the gifts that we have to offer the world now that we are here [Applause] finally always when when thinking of you so someone

has someone has the the feeling that you are always on the run always busy always time is tied does it feel that way for you you that you are always in the Run uh I mean I mean of course there there is a few things to do and and I have to say that uh uh having having two boys has definitely not cleared up my calendar uh but um I think um I I I think I I function quite well with the idea of being fully present in the moment in the situation at hand and

fully absent everywhere else at the same time so that so that in a way I I don't have a hard time switching uh which means that I I I don't get stressed um if I like down I fall asleep like uh so in that sense uh I I I think I think it works but even yeah I haven't seen interviews or rarely interviews of you complaining about about how it is how it works with being an architect but now Ry no it's clearly a self-inflicted wound right so um what do what what do you feel

the biggest pressures uh come from or what makes you feel the biggest pressure uh uh I think at the end of the day uh you do uh you are you are probably uh your own harshest critic and in in that sense I think the the like in in in in some way you can say that the the the work you do is is is almost like um is um a logarithmic uh curve Rising towards um a a vertical tangent which is which is the perfect perfect building perfect idea perfect concept perfect execution Perfect Details it's

never reached and and you'll never reach it right but um but but somehow the the thrill and frustration of of of trying to get there is is is really the reward and um and and I would always say that um those those moments where an uncrackable nut suddenly opens up and and you sort of see that this this is the project that's uh that's the the greatest drug uh on Earth always when when when thinking of you and thinking of how the office has been yeah okay you are 50 but it's still still 50 in

for an architect is is Young you're still young B don't worry I am 49 by the way yeah this year at some point I'm in my late 40s but uh Wonder um uh oh I had the question I forgot it but what yeah yeah yeah um what's what do you feel is the biggest price that you have to pay to be Bak but because it should it's not that easy I mean that all the whole process that has been done during those decade Decades of work of projects traveling big practice big stress everything so I

don't know you no like I I think um maybe one thing that I've uh been struggling with uh lately and I think it's something that comes at the end of the second quarter right at the beginning of the third is that your self-perception never changes right so in in the beginning uh and I I I really understand when you see some of these photos that when when we started there was like a lot of attention uh associated with our youth right and and somehow in your mindset and toshika will testify to this I imagine you

never really changed uh like of course you you you you you learn a lot you uh discover things you didn't know but somehow your your your perception of yourself is is pretty constant uh I would say in my case since I was 22 but the world starts seeing you uh differently and and in the beginning they're rooting for the for the young Challenger uh but eventually they start like booing at what they see as the establishment and it's not because you've become settled or established or even sort of uh you know tired of mind it's

just simply that you've been around around for 25 years uh and and I think that and I mean it's almost like I I I came to understand that you know in in the dark knight uh the the Nolan movie uh twoof face says like you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself turn into a villain and and I and I always thought that it was this idea that power corrupts or whatever but I think it's it's more true in general that just simply by being in the game for a long

time like uh you you you uh you are perceived as establishment and and and we are 700 people so we and we and we do have a body of work so in that sense there is some kind of tuning of your of your self-perception and and I think there's um I I I think there is a lot of harsh uninformed opinions that you also have to look learn to take at a certain distance and and I think eventually I I think the the harshness of the criticism isn't bad per se even if it is often

very uninformed but at least it obligates you to be extra thoughtful and careful about your motivations and about your uh your actions and and then you just have to forgive the the ignorant uh that that that that they don't know and they speak before they think right but um but but I think that's that's been a journey that uh has taken a little bit of effort because it requires that you simply look upon yourself in a in a different way my I wonder if other Architects kind of took you to side like Ras if you

me like oh now you you get into the somehow The Establishment I'm going to tell you a couple of things that might happen to you you know that at the beginning like you say you're young doing great projects people celebrate you but at some point people start to be uh skeptical right at some point like piano said the world will never forget you for for having an early career so uh there there is something uh no but I I I could definitely use um a one-on-one with the with with with some of the the Legends

yeah and I mean yeah that was that a whole topic but something that I wanted to ask you regarding the process of of B Engles and and big architects is that it you also faced moments where it was not easy at all and um I mean like with moment you had to uh hire the CEO Sheila uh trying to help to to to run the business a bit better and so Sheila say soard quoting her he turned she turned idealism into a good business and you say about her that where Architects are typically over overly

optimistic Sheila has a healthy skepticism and my question is do Architects have too much idealism and forget about the proper way to run a business sometimes but some we see that around quite often I mean I mean of course it uh that definitely happens I mean I think like in a way you need you you need the the business to be healthy in order to be able to uh you know provide for the office so because and you need the people to help you do the work right but but I think often what also happens

so you can see there's definitely uh endless examples of Architects going bankrupt but there's also endless examples of uh of Architects going corporate and you always have to remember why you started the studio and you didn't start the studio uh to make money because um there are definitely careers where there's a more direct path to uh to that you started the studio because you had dreams of of of giving form to the Future right so so in that sense I think I've I've always kept it very clear that we make architectural decisions in the company

of course it it needs to it needs to run and it needs to endure so so we can be around but um and and I actually I would say the few times we've tried to make business decisions they actually turned out to be bad business and and and and not great architecture and actually whenever we really invest like for like uh two years ago I I in a sort of realizing that I was reaching the end of my 40s I I I finally confessed a kind of bucket list of a series of projects that I

I would want to do before I die uh and it was a very Bal list uh you know uh Concert Hall operah House Airport uh Library uh uh National Museum and uh and and in making that list I I also um suggested that we would be willing to risk uh 25% of our uh of our annual earnings in over investing in securing these uh these jobs simply by putting more energy into it more more more people U more more investment uh and simply by making the choice we never ended up over investing that much but

maybe we over invested 5% instead of 25% but Simply Having said out loud what the ambition was and by throwing resources and focus after it we ended up actually ticking every single box on the on on the Bucking list in in two years after 20 years of trying right so in some way I do think that when we lead with our hearts and as Architects that's when we make uh the best business sense my question was more that's very interesting but my question was more focused on it feels like sometimes AR tend to have problems

by delegating some task at the uh having an an a business ring a business r a practice because that takes a lot of time of the creative time no for sure no like but I actually like so um Sheila was actually my my second hire as uh uh I I I I started hiring uh a a CFO before her um for two years uh and and by delegating all of the finances to him and and trusting a lot I uh the the company almost ran into the ground until I realized that uh that that he

actually didn't have things under control so there's also the thing about delegation uh is that it's not a question of just simply handing it over and closing your eyes it's actually thoughtfully and wisely uh handing on it's a bit like when when you uh it's a bit like raising a child in in a sense that if you if you just like like let the the child run on the beach it's going to drop right but uh so so you have to be quite thoughtful about making sure there's support enough and eventually uh it uh it

it runs on its own so um but but for sure like uh during plot and the first five years of U or five years of big I I was um maybe three years of big I was I was the CEO myself and it was definitely not my dream to uh to run a company I wanted to uh uh you know design buildings last question and with maybe with a very short answer it's going to be an easy one problem um what does B love to do when it's not working or thinking about architecture um I

mean I actually realized that a lot of my the influences that ended up in my my talk uh were not architectural but actually from uh from the world of fiction I I think that's a huge huge resource like in in some way I I until I turned 30 I never spend time on fiction because it was like wasting your time on on stupid that someone made up and after my 30s I I really uh came to see it as an incredible and almost infinite resource right uh because essentially architecture is turning fiction into fact but

but I but I would say that maybe the last five years uh a substantial part of my time actually goes with uh with with Darwin and now Leo um because that that's been maybe the the the the greatest GI just to add a little bit what too said I always thought it was an eological misnomer that we use the the word love for like I love my I love my wife I love my girlfriend I love my children I love my parents because clearly they're not the same meaning right except when I had uh Darwin

I realized and now again with Leo that the love apparent feels for his or her child is exactly the kind of warm passionate love that you feel for you know when you are the most in love with with your with your with your girlfriend and and and it sounds wrong uh but it isn't yeah I mean kids are your your brother right no no exactly it's a um V thank you a lot for for the talk we are going to have now a break for about 20 minutes thank [Applause] you