BIG: The Latest Architecture and News

BIG’s “unzipped wall,” which served as the 2016 Serpentine Pavilion in London, has been opened to the public in Toronto under the new title “Unzipped.” Having been transported to the city and rebuilt in collaboration with Westbank, new photographs by Derek Shapton show the completed pavilion standing as a temporary place of showcase and events in downtown Toronto.

“Unzipped” is the first Serpentine Pavilion to embark on a multi-city tour of this kind, before ultimately landing in a permanent home on the Vancouver waterfront.

Bjarke Ingels Group has received approval for their King Street West condo community in Toronto. Originally proposed in 2016, the development was made as sets of pixels extruded upwards to create space for housing, retail and boutique offices. The concept was formed to avoid the footprints of heritage buildings that already exist on site. Alex Bozikovic, architecture critic of The Globe and Mail, reports that the development is about to start sales as King Street West pushes past its latest development hurdle.

Bjarke Ingels Group has released new images of their WeGrow micro school in New York. As the first school design of the office-sharing brand WeWork, the project was designed to undo the compartmentalization often found in traditional school environments and reinforce the significance of engaging kids in an interactive environment. The design starts from the premise of a school universe at the level of the child. This first WeGrow project is now open in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood.

Bjarke Ingels Group has built an 80-foot-diameter ORB at the 2018 Burning Man festival in Black Rock City, Nevada. The ORB was designed as an inflated spherical mirror with a steel mast. A series of photos have captured the ORB from both Burning Man festival goers and BIG partner Kai-Uwe Bergmann. As a landmark in The Playa, the ORB conceptually references mother earth and human expression, designed to leave no trace following its deflation.

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The Oakland Athletics baseball team have hired Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), James Corner Field Operations, and Gensler to lead the design process for their new ballpark and surrounding development in California. The new stadium will replace the Oakland A’s existing 51-year-old Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, which the A’s share with the Oakland Raiders football team.

It has been reported by the San Francisco Business Times that BIG will lead the masterplan for the privately-financed ballpark, either at Howard Terminal or near the existing stadium, while Gensler will collaborate on the ballpark design. Field Operations will adopt the role of landscape architect for the development.

Videos

The apple of every athlete's eye, the Olympic Games direct the gaze of the world onto one host city every two years, showcasing the best that sport has to offer across both summer and winter events. In a haze of feel-good anticipation, the general buzz around the city before during the four week stretch is palpable, with tourists, media and athletes alike generating contributing to the fervour. With almost an almost exclusively positive public response (the majority of Olympic bids are met with 70% approval or higher), the Games become an opportunity for a nation to showcases their culture and all it has to offer. At first glance, it's an opportunity you'd be a fool to miss.

Yet as the dust settles, these ‘lucky’ host cities are often left with structures that lack the relevance and function of their initial, fleeting lives. Empty aquatics centers, derelict running tracks and rarely-used stadiums have become as much a trademark of the Games as the Rings, with the structural maintenance and social implications burdening former hosts for years to come. In recent years, fewer cities have been taking part in the bidding process, suggesting that the impact of the Games is beginning to catch up with the excitement. As many as 12 cities contended for the honor of hosting the 2004 games; only two were put forward for 2024/28.

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Since moving to New York in 2010, BIG founder Bjarke Ingels has built an impressive portfolio, from developed projects such as VIA 57 West and The Eleventh to propositions such as West 29th Street and The Spiral.

In a new interview with Louisiana Channel, Ingels steps back from the pragmatism of individual projects, and instead reflects on his view of New York, from multiculturalism and inequality to regeneration and skyscrapers.

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Bjarke Ingels Group’s “The Eleventh” has marked a major milestone, with the first of the scheme’s two twisting High Line towers topping out in Chelsea, Manhattan. New images show construction moving quickly along, with the taller 35-story tower now topped out, and work on the cladding steadily progressing.

The 400-foot-tall structure will twist alongside a second 300-foot-tall sister tower, standing out even amongst notable neighbors including Frank Gehry’s IAC Building, Jean Nouvel’s 100 11th Avenue and Foster + Partners’ 551 West 21st Street.

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Images have been released of the Bjarke Ingels Group-designed plans for Miami's Allapattah neighborhood. First reported by The Real Deal, the development is called the Miami Produce Center. A mega mixed-used complex on stilts, the design was created with Miami Beach developer Robert Wennett. A special area plan filed with the city of Miami shows the design will include office space, education areas, residential units, retail, a hotel and parking spaces. The eight-building complex will cover over 8 acres northwest of downtown Miami.

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The collaboration of Bjarke Ingels Group and Westbank are celebrating two milestones in Canada, as the topping out of their innovative Vancouver House coincides with the advanced construction of their relocated Serpentine Pavilion in Toronto.

The two BIG-designed structures, located on opposite coasts, have both been recognized for their architectural innovation. The LEED-Platinum Vancouver House was awarded the World Architecture Festival’s Future Building of the Year in 2015, while the “unzipped wall” is the first Serpentine Pavilion to embark on a multi-city tour of this kind, before ultimately landing in a permanent home on the Vancouver waterfront.

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Videos

Bjarke Ingels and Jakob Lange have launched an Indiegogo fundraiser for an 80-foot-diameter ORB to be constructed for the 2018 Burning Man festival at Black Rock City, Nevada. Scaled at 1/500,000th of the earth’s surface, the reflective sphere sits “at the axis of art & utility, capturing the entire Black Rock City in an airborne temporal monument that mirrors the Burning Man experience to the Burners as single beings in the midst of an intentional community."

As well as acting as a wayfinder for navigating The Playa, the ORB sits as a tribute to mother earth and human expression, designed to blend with its surroundings during the night, and leave no trace following its deflation.

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Bjarke Ingels Group’s LEGO House and DISSING + WEITLING’s Bicycle Snake have been recognized by the 2018 Danish Design Awards, an initiative which “highlights the impact and value of design, celebrates companies and designers across the country and showcases the difference their solutions make to industry, everyday life, and society at large.”

The LEGO House was victorious in the “Feel Good” category, while the Bicycle Snake was awarded the “Icon Award.”

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One year after the launch of Resilient by Design's Bay Area Challenge, led by TLS Landscape has presented the final nine design concepts. The Bay Area Challenge launched with a call to action to "bring together local residents, community organizations, public officials and local, national, and international experts to develop innovative solutions that will strengthen our region's resilience to sea level rise, severe storms, flooding, and earthquakes." The idea formulated as a “blueprint for resilience” that can be replicated and utilized locally and globally. Other urban challenges will also be addressed, including housing, transport, health and economic disparity as a means of not just protecting the current regions, but strengthening them.

The elite, collaborative teams include world-renowned designers like BIG, Mithun and HASSELL+.

Read on for more about each of the final design concepts.

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Photographer Aldo Amoretti has captured new images of one of 2018’s most awaited projects, as the BIG designed Amager Bakke Waste-to-Energy Plant takes shape in Copenhagen, complete with an SLA-designed park and ski slope. The images show to the completed power plant, which opened in March 2017, while work progresses on the 170,000-square-foot (16,000-square-meter) park and ski slope that will cap the scheme.

Initially master planned by BIG, the unique design seeks to reclaim a typically unused element of a building for the public through the introduction of the nature-filled program. During summer months, the SLA-designed rooftop activity park will provide visitors with hiking trails, playgrounds, fitness structures, trail running, climbing walls, and of course, incredible views. In the winter, the park will be joined by over 1,640 feet (500 meters) of ski slopes designed by BIG.

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WeWork has announced that Bjarke Ingels will be its new Chief Architect. Ingels, who has taken the architecture world by storm since founding BIG in 2005, will continue in his role as Founding Partner and Creative Director of his firm, however in his new role at WeWork he also "will offer his insights and ideas to extend and help us push the boundaries of architecture, real estate, technology, and design," explained WeWork today in a press statement.

In recent years, it seems like Bjarke Ingels has been everywhere you look; he has been profiled by The New Yorker, was named one of TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people in 2016, has given TED Talks, and featured in countless other documentaries, videos, and articles (yes, including many on ArchDaily). But there is one place he hasn't yet appeared: on the cover of Surface Magazine. Today, with the launch of Surface's May/June issue, that changes.

"When The New Yorker published Ian Parker’s 11,000-word story on BIG’s rise in 2012, I knew Surface should put a pause on any major coverage, at least for several years, just to see how the firm’s story would evolve," says Surface editor-in-chief Spencer Bailey to explain the magazine's apparent omission. "I think that inkling was right: BIG has grown to five hundred employees, twelve partners, and three offices, with twenty projects under construction and fifty in development. His clients include Google, WeWork, and Audemars Piguet. There’s so much to unpack now."

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The shortlist for a new landmark project in Melbourne has been announced, comprising award-winning global architects such as Bjarke Ingels Group, MVRDV, and OMA. For the “Southbank by Beulah” mixed-use development, the shortlisted architects will engage in a design competition working in collaboration with local Australian firms, each producing a design proposal for Melbourne’s BMW Southbank site.

With an end value in excess of $2 billion, Southbank by Beulah will be the first large-scale private project adhering to the Australian Institute of Architecture guidelines, while the design competition will be chaired by a jury of seven regarded individuals from academic, architectural, property and government sectors.