BIG*

Have contemporary theoretical frameworks contributed to a sublimation of individual or factional architectural practices?

“Architecture is the art and science of continually refurbishing the surface of our planet so it actually fits the way we want to live”¹, however, science is a regime of discourse within which resides the implicit (and unaccounted for) acceptance of origins.

In dismissing movements like phenomenology and post structuralism as being “highly incomprehensible...highly irrational”² Bjarke falls back on many of the modernist devices and preconceptions, most notably that of scientific legitimisation and anthropocentric inclinations. He rejects single ideologies while subscribing to scientism. It may be asserted that Bjarke is an environmental modernist**. This assertion is possible when examining the parallels between Bjarke and say, Corbusier; both ideologies are contingent on science and both are informed by the most pressing social developments of their age, for Corbusier the industrial age and the machine, for Bjarke the environment and global warming.

The incorporation of an environmental consciousness into BIG’s designs is not to be confused for a theoretically progressive approach to design. BIG’s Zira island (Fig 1) is an example of the Atlantian Utopianism which results from a stoical imperative on the master-plan. The island is the inevitable result of a modern approach, it is the closed system of the utopian fetish. If post-modernism is an “incredulity regarding metanarratives”,³ the architectural equivalent would have to be the masterplan. Other projects that reflect this are the Carlsberg Campus (Fig 2) and the Danish super harbour proposal (Fig 3).

BIG are most successful in their medium scale developments where they capture a playfulness in paroxysmic gestures that are lost in larger scale proposals. One obvious example of this is in their ‘mountain dwellings’(Fig 4) where a combination of clever ideas interact seamlessly throughout the building. This comes with the recognition that “Building services today are essentially mechanical compensations for the fact that buildings are bad for what they are designed for—human life.”⁴

*BIG-the acronym for Bjarke Ingels group could just as easily be substituted for Bjarke as he is such a dominant figure. For this reason I have only decided to refer to BIG when discussing projects or the studio collective.

**(environment here carries all possible connotations)

1. http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20100113/bjarke-ingels
2. http://blog.ted.com/2009/10/30/qa_with_bjarke/
3. Lawrence Cahoone, From Modernism To Postmodernism (expanded second edition), Blackwell, 2004
4. http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20100113/bjarke-ingels