One of the best parts of spending this semester in the city is the access to lectures, exhibitions, and events happening at the great architecture and art institutions around the city. A couple of weeks ago, The New School hosted a lecture by Bjarke Ingels, of the world-renowned architecture firm BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) and a few of the AAP NYC Masters students attended. Almost every architect or architecture student you meet has heard of Bjarke Ingels, but opinions of him are extremely polarized. Each person, it seems, has a strongly formulated opinion of his work, and of him. To be honest, I thought I had a clear opinion as well, and so I saw the lecture as an opportunity to give him a chance to defend himself, so to speak, against this opinion (of which he knows nothing and cares even less, I’m sure). Listening to the way in which he spoke about his firm, about his work, and about his philosophies about architecture, proved to be nothing short of impressive. I may not agree with all of his aesthetic judgments (example: Superkilen, a park in Copenhagen), but I greatly admire his stance on social issues and the idea that architecture is a way in which people can engage in and address these issues (example: Superkilen).
Bjarke Ingels
(photo by Luke Erickson)