Quotes by Bjarke Ingels

“I believe that architecture, as anything else in life, is evolutionary. Ideas evolve; they don't come from outer space and crash into the drawing board.”

“In the big picture, architecture is the art and science of making sure that our cities and buildings fit with the way we want to live our lives.”

“For me, architecture is the means, not the end. It's a means of making different life forms possible.”

“I think architecture is rarely the product of a single ideology. It's more like it can be shaped by a really big idea. It can accommodate a lot of life forms.”

“Architecture is restricted to such a limited vocabulary. A building is either a high-rise or a perimeter block or a town house.”

“Sustainability can't be like some sort of a moral sacrifice or political dilemma or a philanthropical cause. It has to be a design challenge.”

“In Copenhagen, there's a long-term commitment to creating a well-functioning pedestrian city where all forms of movement - pedestrian, bicycles, cars, public transportation - are accommodated with ...”

“Historically the field of architecture has been dominated by two opposing extremes. ...[A]n avant-garde of wild ideas, often so detached from reality that they fail to become... other than eccentri...”

“Architecture is never triggered by a single event... conceived by a single mind... shaped by a single hand.”

“Ideas migrate, structures grow and concepts develop in a form of architectural evolution.”

“It is through improvisation and adaptation to unanticipated obstacles that we make our biggest breakthroughs.”

“Sustainable ideas crystallize through an immensity of wasted efforts. ...Good ideas are sometimes resurrected from fossils of past evolutions.”

“The work an architect gets to realize... is the result of random opportunities and chance. ...We have to respond to accidental challenges, through opportunistic improvisation, mutation and migratio...”

“What if we could focus on examples where sustainability... increases the quality of life? Where a sustainable life isn't pain—but pleasure!”

“What if we didn't have to adapt our lifestyle to sustainability, but adjusted our sustainable designs to the way we want to live? Instead of trying to change people, we could change the world.”

“We need a new manifesto for hedonistic sustainability!”

“Architecture is most appealing with simple lines and clear ideas. A city... becomes alive when it is rich with experiences and surprises. So the paradoxical challenge is to... create simplicity and...”

“We are preparing to start phase one of our most significant project... the first carbon neutral island in Central Asia. ...BIG has become a sort of urban laboratory where we develop prototypes, bre...”

“Starting with the smallest project that we have created... but maybe also one of the most complex. This is René Redzepi... he pioneered the... regionalistic cuisine with his restaurant Noma... in C...”

“He came to us because he wanted to move his restaurant... to... Christiania, this kind of hippie commune in Copenhagen. It's part of the old fortification... a historical landmark... The hippies in...”