Playtime! Interview with Bjarke Ingels

By Simone Achermann

The future city won’t have to look much different from today’s, but the way we use and move in it has to change. The shift from the monoculture of cars to a set of various ways to move in urban space will play a major role. As will a built environment that is more playful and flexible to our changing needs.

Mobility is one of the big challenges cities are facing today. What is the role of architecture in tackling this?

Architecture, for me, is the science of designing our cities the way we want to live our lives. With architecture, we have the power to reverse the Darwinian concept of evolution: we are no longer forced to adapt to our environment, because our environment adapts to us. Nevertheless, how we shape our physical environment has a great impact on how we live – which makes architecture a key driver for the evolution of society.

Looking at today’s overcrowded, polluted and congested cities it is hard to believe that we humans built them – in order to have a good life.

When judging the mobility infrastructure of contemporary cities, we have to take into consideration that urban space evolves over time. All the means of mobility available have created their own paradigm in the history of a city from narrow streets in the old city districts that allow only humans to pass to wide roads with six car lanes, they have all left a huge impact on the urban fabric. The way our cities look today, however, is largely influenced by post-war urban development, which was almost exclusively shaped by the availability of the car. This is changing today through a more differentiated understanding of urban mobility and planning: we are slowly moving away from the monoculture of cars to a set of different ways to move around – in which walking, biking and using driverless cars will play a major role. Copenhagen is a good example of this development. Since the 1950s the use of bicycles in the city has increased by 50 percent. Traffic lights on highways exclusively for bikes make sure that travelling by bike is safer than it used to be - and faster than by car! As a result, many commuters prefer the bike to the car. The future city, I believe, will not have to look much different from today’s in order to be good to live in. But the way we ‘use’ our cities and how we move in them will have to change.

For the Audi Urban Future Initiative BIG ‘s proposal was a driverless city – not a carless one. Are autonomous cars the answer to urban mobility problems?

We have to criticise post-war city development for prioritising cars over any other means of transport. But there is nothing wrong with the car itself. It’s an amazing tool providing great individual freedom, giving access to sparsely populated areas that can’t be reached by any other form of transport. The car is and will remain a great invention. But if it is the only way to get around, it causes damage. Also, the way we use the car can be radically improved. Most of the time cars are in traffic jams or parked, unnecessarily consuming city space. The driverless car can help us there. We will no longer lose time when driving, we will have fewer or no accidents and we will share the car with others whenever we don’t need it. The most fascinating thing about driverless cars is that they actually combine freedom of individual transportation with the sustainable concept of sharing.

Many of your projects have been dedicated to making suburban areas more attractive. Is this another solution to urban mobility problems – to make the outskirts worth living in?

I believe that the old model of the city as synonymous with its centre makes less and less sense. Five years ago, the world crossed a threshold. More than half of the world’s population lives in cities. But by “cities” we no longer exclusively mean the centre, but also the vast metropolitan regions. Today, the city no longer means the Champs Elysées or Central Park, but the fast and diverse dynamics of different degrees of density and walkability in the various urban fabrics. More and more people live in one city neighbourhood, work in another and go to school in a third. The linear movement from the outskirts to the city centre and back has given way to a multipolar movement in urban and suburban territory. And this will of course decrease our traffic problems by easing the burden on the way into and out of the centre.

Let’s take a look at mobility inside buildings: how can the various ways of movement in offices encourage innovation?

First, it is vital to create space that is as open as possible. The structure of an office building should always facilitate spontaneous encounters with colleagues in order to maximise the exchange of ideas. Furthermore, the building, if the company’s policy allows it, should also be permeable or semi-permeable for its neighbours. This is what we are planning with the Google campus in Silicon Valley. The building is not only designed as an office but also as a neighbourhood. The various open sites allow Googlers and Non-Googlers to walk freely in and around the Campus. This way, the transport of ideas flows in and out without any boundaries. Second, architecture needs to be flexible. As we discussed before, the built environment should adapt to us and not the other way round. The Google Campus consists of block-like structures that can be moved around, offering a maximum of flexibility as the company invests in new product or activity areas.

In designing open and flexible buildings that adapt with time and changing purpose we are imitating the way nature works. In nature, everything is in a continuous process of change, nothing is fixed. Fixed always means a dead end.

The way we move through cities also has a major effect on how we interact with their inhabitants. How can we strengthen social participation through mobility?

One important way is to create various niches in and around work and living space. The so-called in-between-spaces – which are neither exclusively public nor exclusively private – play a major role in this. One example is the 8 House in a relatively new suburb of Copenhagen. For this building, we created a path that extends from the street up to the penthouse. This allows residents to walk and cycle all the way from their apartment to meet their neighbours in the building or on the street. A young girl on the ninth floor, for example, can jump on her bike if she sees a neighbour in the street or can play with a friend on another floor – without ever using an elevator. Another example of in-between-spaces are court scrapers. A court scraper is a mixture between a skyscraper and a courtyard building, meaning you have a skyscraper with a huge courtyard designed as a communal space for 800 apartments. It is a place where you can meet neighbours
and where children can play and leave their toys over night to find them in the same place the next morning. These kinds of in-between spaces are vital to maximise social encounters in neighbourhoods.

Good as urban infrastructure may be, it also needs the inhabitants to change the ‘usage’ of the city to the better.

Absolutely. It has been proven that we humans have the capacity to cause massive impact on a planetary scale. But with great power comes great responsibility—to quote Spider-Man. We finally have to accept that responsibility. However, I believe in a hedonistic sustainability. This is the idea that you can actually live sustainably but also improve the quality of your life while doing so. It is the goal behind many of our projects to show how this could work: with a ski slope built atop a waste processing plant, a factory chimney that blows smoke rings, reminding people of pollution in an artsy way, or with the 8 House, encouraging people to cycle from their penthouse to work. Sustainable life cannot be a punishment, if we want it to work. It must be fun.

Bjarke Ingels is a Danish architect. He is the founder and co-owner of the architectural firm BIG, with offices in Copenhagen and New York. Ingels’ award-winning projects are characterised by the sustainable use of resources and a playful approach to buildings’ potential purposes: they are living space, experience and symbol in one. For Audi’s Urban Future Award, Ingels developed the concept of the “Driverless City”, a futuristic city with vehicles, but without drivers. Ingels is currently working with BIG on the new Google Campus in Silicon Valley, which is designed as both a workplace for ”Googlers” and a neighbourhood for “non-Googlers”.