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Abstract: The Art of Design | Bjarke Ingels: Architecture | FULL EPISODE | Netflix — Transcript

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0:06[director] Is this going to be a slapstick comedy? Is it an action film?
0:10You know, let's have fun with it.
0:12-Yeah. -We can do anything.
0:13Oh yeah, nice.
0:14So what do you think your movie should be?
0:19All right, it should be like the documentary version of Inception.
0:28[Bjarke] The whole premise of Inception is that, in real life,
0:31you can't really realize the dreams because you have so many constraints,
0:35but whereas in the dream world, they could do all these kinds of things.
0:39And when architecture is at its best, that's exactly what you're doing,
0:43you're coming up with something that is pure fiction.
0:45Then after all the hard work, all the permits,
0:47all the budgeting and all the construction,
0:49it now becomes concrete reality.
0:56[Martinussen] When Bjarke came around,
0:59Danish architecture was somehow sleeping.
1:04We had our heydays back in the '50s, the '60s, the '70s.
1:11We became world-famous compared to how small we are, actually.
1:19At the time Bjarke came around,
1:21people didn't expect anything really to happen.
1:26And I think you could argue that he really made everybody wake up.
1:31[dramatic music playing]
1:35What he was proposing had such a scale and such revolutionary qualities
1:42that the Danes got scared.
2:01[news reporter 1] Bjarke Ingels is having his moment.
2:04[news reporter 2] At just 40 years old, he has established himself
2:07as one of the world's most inventive and sought-after architects.
2:11[news reporter 3] His designs can be provocative.
2:14[commentator] He's transforming the shape of New York as we know it.
2:17[dramatic music continues]
2:47[Bjarke] There's no doubt that in architecture there's this catch-22.
2:51Nobody will entrust you to build a building
2:53until you've already built a building.
2:59This is the Maritime Youth House in Copenhagen.
3:02It's...
3:06I guess it's our first building.
3:09I celebrated my 30th birthday in that space.
3:13It was just completed.
3:16Our practice, Bjarke Ingels Group, or in short BIG,
3:20started 15 or 16 years ago.
3:24Our rise has sort of coincided with the rise of the environmental movement.
3:32So we came up with this idea of Hedonistic Sustainability.
3:35What if sustainability could be part of actually increasing your quality of life?
3:41So I think in this case, it's a beautiful site, but the site was polluted,
3:45because they had been painting the underside of boats here.
3:51A lot of the money in the budget was reserved for digging up the topsoil...
3:56and moving it somewhere else.
3:59So we thought, what if we covered the entire ground with a wooden deck?
4:04Then we can leave the soil as it is.
4:06We put up this sheet.
4:08If you want more program over here, we'll just lift the deck here.
4:11If you want to park some boats here, we store the boats underneath the...
4:16So I think it had this sense of possibility.
4:20These rolling hills next to the sea,
4:23it also somehow inspires movement and playfulness.
4:28We won the competition for the Maritime Youth House.
4:34We found a lot of ways to solve the problems
4:39in a completely unproblematic way.
4:44Even though it's a very small building, with a small budget,
4:47I think it had an impact, and it won a handful of awards.
4:52And I think it showed
4:54that even something that is essentially like a hut for boy scouts,
4:58which is typically more like a barrack building,
5:00like sort of off the shelf, almost like a trailer,
5:04that's what it normally is,
5:06and with the same resources you could get something that was completely different.
5:12I think that definitely opened people's way of thinking about architecture,
5:17what a building could be and what it could do.
5:25[director] So what happened this week?
5:27[Bjarke] Me and my partner here, at the New York office, Thomas,
5:30went to London to Kensington Gardens, next to the Serpentine Lake.
5:36For the last 15 years,
5:38the Serpentine Gallery-- they have been making a pavilion,
5:43the Serpentine Pavilion.
5:45So, in the middle of Hyde Park over the summer,
5:48from June to end of October.
5:54The Serpentine Gallery is almost like an icon
5:58for miniature architectural manifestos.
6:02It's always commissioned to an architect that has never built in England before.
6:07And today, two thirds of the people that design these pavilions...
6:14are Pritzker Prize-winning architects. They're really at the top of their game.
6:19For a comedian, it's like performing at Saturday Night Live or...
6:22It's a stage where the history of the people that have performed there
6:27makes it an honor in itself.
6:34And we met with the co-directors of the Serpentine
6:38and they started the meeting by telling us that the good news was
6:40that we would be designing this year's Serpentine Pavilion.
6:46I guess that was Tuesday and today is Friday.
6:54Without having any sort of design in mind, imagine this sort of logic
6:58where you have some kind of undulation,
7:00so it almost like looks like a marble curtain,
7:03and that's what gives it stability.
7:07Almost like a James Turrell.
7:09That you're inside this weird translucent, undulating slice of marble
7:13and then you're looking up through...
7:15I think with the dome...
7:16I mean, it creates that one experience of being inside,
7:20and it's probably a beautiful optic from the outside,
7:24but that's only that one use.
7:28You're doing an entire building within six months.
7:32Normally a project that goes fast takes six years,
7:35so we're going to try to see how many ideas we can crank out.
7:41I mean, there was something interesting
7:43about like making a wall that morphs to become a pavilion.
7:48You know, it could be a way of making a wall
7:51that creates a cave, and an auditorium, right?
7:56[Thomas] Yeah.
7:58It's more like a magical manipulation of a conventional element...
8:02[Thomas] Mm-hmm.
8:03that then becomes space.
8:07Cool?
8:11[in Danish] Let's do it!
8:18I'm Elisabet Ingels.
8:20And I'm Knud Bundgaard Jensen.
8:26And this is Fidel. He's a Bichon Havanese.
8:30And it's Bjarke who had given him the name.
8:36-He's from Cuba. -Cuba.
8:38We couldn't call him Cuba, because there's a Cuba down the street.
8:44Another dog.
8:45Yeah another dog, and so it's Fidel.
8:51[Knud] He was drawing very much. It was his great interest.
8:58He was considering making comics until 18, 19 years.
9:04[director] What did you think
9:05when he told you he was gonna study architecture?
9:08-Actually-- -It's a family project.
9:12-Yes-- -[director] So explain.
9:15We told Bjarke, "You can later try making comics,
9:20you can later get a job at an advertising bureau,
9:25but I think that you should study architecture."
9:34[Bjarke] I went to Architecture school in Barcelona.
9:37I wanted to use some of the first years
9:39where you get some basic education in drawing to become a better cartoonist.
9:45You end up in the school, you want to figure this thing out.
9:49So I went through this sort of intellectual, serial-monogamy,
9:53falling in love with one architect. then the next, and next...
9:56And it completely warped my idea of what architecture could be.
10:03And that was definitely the year where I became the person I am today.
10:07Getting out of Copenhagen, living in another city, speaking another language.
10:11And finally, dropping out of school,
10:14starting my own company in Barcelona with some friends.
10:18It was also clear that when I returned to Copenhagen a year later,
10:22with sort of a Spanish suntan,
10:25I was a completely different person
10:28and could somehow do things and be credible making statements
10:33that would have been unimaginable the year before.
10:38[Bjarke on video] The qualities of the spaces and the indoor climate
10:42doesn't come from the machine room,
10:44but from the qualities integrated into the architecture.
10:52Rather than architecture without architects,
10:55it's sort of engineering without engines,
10:57or Functionalism 2.0.
11:03We started our company without any clients.
11:07But after a very long and winding road, we finally ended up building a building.
11:12The VM House.
11:16My name is Per Høpfner. I am a developer.
11:19I meet Bjarke, first time in 2001.
11:23He said, "We are a new company, architect company,
11:26we are so fucking good, and we are very creative,
11:30and we are so bright, and we can build very, very cheap."
11:33"Okay, how cheap?" "Oh, you can't imagine."
11:37Immediately, I like him.
11:39[upbeat music playing]
11:43[Høpfner] And at that time, there was nothing here in this area.
11:45And if you should attract people, it should be very cheap,
11:50and there could be something special.
11:53[Bjarke] We designed these buildings for pioneers.
11:59We got permission to make the apartments 30% deeper,
12:04and we made sure that each apartment had a double-height space.
12:11For every three floors, there was only one central corridor,
12:17so that, instead of having a corridor at every level that you had to pay for,
12:21we boiled it down to every third level, so we could get great efficiencies.
12:28The beautiful thing is that at this point, we hadn't built as much as a dog house.
12:38[Høpfner] And the day we started to sell here,
12:41we have sold 110 flats for one Sunday.
12:51[Bjarke] It created a lot of noise.
12:56[Høpfner] And I can tell you one thing.
12:58A lot of his colleagues, they don't like him.
13:01And they don't like him because they've been so successful abroad.
13:06It's not usual for a Danish architect company to make money.
13:13[Bjarke] We were definitely seen as being alien in a sort of Danish context.
13:18And it is a culture where difference, or disagreement is almost embarrassing.
13:28How's it going?
13:29-[woman] Hello, happy New Year! -[Bjarke] Happy New Year!
13:31You never left the office?
13:35[all laugh]
13:40Yeah.
13:42[speaking Danish]
13:44[Bjarke] Because the time schedule is so compressed
13:46for the Serpentine Pavilion,
13:48we have to make decisions absurdly fast.
13:51We have been keeping a series of ideas alive.
13:56For a while we had three, then we boiled it down to two.
14:01And I think we are looking at this idea of a wall
14:04that is made out of fiberglass bricks or blocks.
14:07And then you're almost pulling it apart, like a zipper,
14:11so that it becomes undulating landscapes on the exterior,
14:15like a valley and a hillside.
14:16And then on the inside, it creates this crevasse, or canyon, or cave.
14:23So try to place this...
14:28-[colleague 1] This one is lower. -[colleague 2] That one should fit, yeah.
14:31That's kind of nice.
14:34[Bjarke] There's no doubt that the wall looks very good, right?
14:37[colleagues] Yeah.
14:38[Bjarke] And it feels very comfortable.
14:41It's the kind of shit we do.
14:44And I think it's also the one we have developed the furthest.
14:48There's a couple different ways we can put it together.
14:52I have a feeling that we could do this and it would be a great success.
14:57Yeah.
14:58There's almost nothing that wouldn't be cool about it.
15:01Maybe we should just do it.
15:03[all laugh]
15:10[Bjarke] The way you realize your wildest dreams
15:12is actually one step at a time.
15:15[fast-paced music]
15:19The master plan of this whole neighborhood
15:22was basically saying to build a stack of apartments
15:27and then a big box of parking behind.
15:34So we got this idea: What if the parking fills the entire site?
15:38And then instead of having a vertical stack of homes,
15:41they become houses with gardens,
15:44like a giant staircase covering a big sort of mountain of parking.
15:51What we see here is all the sun-facing gardens,
15:56where each home has a garden
15:59that is roughly the same size as the apartment itself.
16:02And then they sit on this cave full of cars.
16:09The underside actually becomes
16:11the front door of the homes of people arriving
16:14so we made the underside very, very colorful.
16:22Whenever we design homes,
16:26I'm also thinking about myself: What would I think would be amazing?
16:31And I think in this case, it's almost like realizing a dream
16:35that an apartment block doesn't have to look like a big, boxy slab.
16:38It could be like this sort of man-made mountain.
16:47You don't have to choose between building a parking structure
16:50or an apartment building.
16:51You don't have to choose between a house with a garden
16:54or having a penthouse view.
16:55You can actually have both.
16:57And once you force these sort of seemingly mutually exclusive concepts together,
17:02you actually get a new hybrid that somehow ends up looking different
17:07because it performs differently.
17:16I think The Mountain is a quite good example of pragmatic utopia
17:19in the sense that it's done within one city block,
17:24so it becomes a very pragmatic realization of something utopian
17:29but, like, one block at a time.
17:35When I think just that The Mountain is here,
17:38it means that there is another way, there is another possibility.
17:41And therefore it makes the utopia more possible.
17:47And that's what we mean with Yes Is More.
17:52At that point, I'd never really written it down,
17:56so it existed in the form of lectures, verbal tradition.
18:00[inaudible dialogue]
18:01Yes Is More is presented in the form of a comic book.
18:06It's not like you have the text first, and then you get the pictures.
18:10You have the things intertwined so it becomes more conversational.
18:15So then of course, in retrospect,
18:17it feels quite logical,
18:18because I wanted to become a graphic novelist
18:20and I kind of deviated from that trajectory at some point,
18:24it's kind of a return to home.
18:28[Martinussen] The book very rapidly gave him the position as a rising star.
18:33He was... Suddenly, he was there. And quite massive.
18:39Which changed the culture of young architects.
18:46Bjarke took up the idea of, I think, asking the Danes:
18:52what is it actually that we want to do
18:54from having had this spectacular tradition?
18:59How can we be revolutionary,
19:01but in such a manner that you would not forget your tradition?
19:06So for instance, the building that we are standing in right now
19:09is actually a building which is, in itself, a merger.
19:15[Bjarke] The 8 House.
19:18[digital music plays]
19:21500 homes, shops and offices and kindergartens.
19:25Classic apartments and more town houses.
19:28And we've actually created a giant mountain path
19:33with an ADA-accessible slope.
19:35So it sort of becomes like a three-dimensional community.
19:40I like big ideas and the BIG Group when it makes a big building,
19:44that's just for me.
19:46[laughs]
19:51We feel like we are living in a village.
19:55We have the beautiful rooms in common where we make parties and eat together,
20:01and a path that you can walk.
20:03The children out here, they really enjoy it,
20:07and I can see it from our balcony.
20:10It's just beautiful to see.
20:15[Bjarke] In the big picture, architecture is the art and science
20:18of creating the framework of our lives.
20:21And the buildings that we built, they either open possibilities
20:25or they hinder encounters or connections.
20:32With the 8 House, it really has become a three-dimensional community
20:35and you can see it in the people living here.
20:38There are so many initiatives, a lot of the people know each other.
20:43[in French] Gabrielle? How's it going?
20:44[laughs]
20:47[in French] Is that beautiful Hélène?
20:50[Gabrielle] Good to see you!
20:51[both laugh]
20:53Actually the funny thing is Gabrielle and I and her husband were doing...
20:59I think you were both students at the time.
21:01-Yeah. -Or--
21:02-Interns, yes. -Interns.
21:03So we were working on our first book and exhibition,
21:07so we were doing sort of 24-hour work days--
21:11-Yeah, Yes Is More! -for a month and a half.
21:15So we ended up resulting in this amazing comic book and exhibition,
21:21but also I think that was actually the time
21:23when we suddenly noticed that they were hanging out more and more,
21:26even after the deadline was over.
21:28Exactly.
21:29Yeah, so Hélène is a little bit part of BIG as well, yeah.
21:35For sure.
21:37And one of the smallest BIGsters. Okay.
21:46[Rice] Bjarke started off doing sort of affordable housing.
21:50And he was so young, by the standards of a world-renowned architect,
21:56that he had to go from being a scrappy, young architect
22:01to a large-scale, almost corporate firm.
22:05And he's had to ramp that up very, very quickly.
22:09[Bjarke] Some of the criticisms have been that our buildings are too cheap,
22:12but that's because, honestly, they have been cheap buildings.
22:17But somehow we manage to turn that into architecture
22:20that actually points in new directions, opens up new possibilities,
22:24but in a field where there is almost zero innovation.
22:30The Maritime Museum, is our first museum.
22:34That has found much more universal praise simply because it's a museum
22:38and therefore it came with the budgets where you can do a little bit more.
22:45[Rice] He wants to do everything.
22:47He wants to build 1,000-foot skyscrapers,
22:50I think he wants to build, you know, museums,
22:53I think he wants to build football stadiums.
22:56The issue is he doesn't feel that he needs to make a choice.
23:00[church bell rings]
23:05[piano music playing]
23:08[Høpfner] Danes hate big scales.
23:12But Bjarke brought in the big scale.
23:17And they were very skeptic and, I would say, quite hateful.
23:26[Knud] There were one or two old professors at the School of Architecture
23:33that were very skeptical and critical.
23:38It is easy to understand if you consider how young he was.
23:47[Høpfner] He never follows the rules.
23:49And a lot of my fellow developers said, "Per, how can you build with this guy?"
24:01[Bjarke] Whenever we talk about architecture,
24:03and whenever people have opinions about architecture,
24:05the most typical argument is:
24:08something is bad because it doesn't fit in.
24:11[piano music continues]
24:15And maybe in Copenhagen, if you would look out,
24:18you would think that it's red brick and red tiles.
24:21Six stories, end of story, pitched roof.
24:26But when you think about the things
24:28that people really associate with Copenhagen,
24:30that the Copenhageners think are unique to their city,
24:33they always think about those historical spires.
24:38If everybody followed the rules, Copenhagen wouldn't look like Copenhagen.
24:45And I think it's going to be interesting to see, like how...
24:50what's going to happen with Danish architecture,
24:53but, of course, we also kind of migrated to America.
24:57[upbeat music playing]
25:08The city is an experiment and Manhattan is the perfect example of that.
25:14It's about accommodating diversity.
25:19And after five years at BIG, we were in a pretty good spot,
25:24but New York felt like it could be a real adventure.
25:31[Knud] It was a great opportunity.
25:34He needed more space
25:37because he wanted to make big architecture.
25:45[Bjarke] Things that evolved in one context
25:47suddenly find their true potential when they move into another context.
25:53To begin with such a big canvas
25:54like a city block on the waterfront of Manhattan,
25:59this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, we cannot mess it up.
26:13The Courtscraper is this hybrid
26:15of an American skyscraper and a Copenhagen courtyard.
26:20[Martinussen] When you get into that league, everything changes.
26:23New York is the city of the world, so it can't get more wild.
26:34[Bjarke] There was a certain energy and pioneering
26:36and maybe I just felt like feeling that energy again.
26:49The Royal Parks are our landlords and this is their beautiful park
26:54and they stipulate that the architecture
26:59cannot come within three meters of the tree.
27:02Now that of course is not a problem in principle,
27:05but it is a problem in practice.
27:06So the question is, is this three meters?
27:09This is like, one, two, three. In my mind, we can nudge it.
27:16-I think we can nudge it a meter over. -You think a whole meter?
27:20Yeah.
27:21So you need another meter?
27:23I think if we just--
27:24And then we don't take it a meter away from the fence?
27:26Take it a meter away from the fence and move it closer to the signature line.
27:30But the other thing that I am seriously curious about
27:33is actually when you're standing here
27:35and you imagine that you would basically take the two yellow outlines
27:40and literally flip them,
27:42and I think we simply turn the other way.
27:45-And then we move it-- -So it comes out...
27:47It grazes the path
27:48and then the entire hill is gonna be in the sun, which is also nice.
27:51-Perfect, lovely. -That could be nice, it's so exciting.
28:07[Bjarke] The Serpentine, right now, is massively under construction.
28:13Fiberline, the company that makes the boxes,
28:16is plowing ahead and is shipping the first shipment to go to London.
28:28Obviously we don't have any wiggle room from the beginning.
28:31So we're now finding ways to catch up.
28:39The beauty of it is you can take a single material,
28:42a single technique, a single idea,
28:44and you can make very clear statements,
28:48undiluted by those thousands of constraints and compromises
28:52and negotiations, which take so long.
28:58Over the last 15 years, we've completed 12 or 13 buildings.
29:05But right now, we have 17 construction sites.
29:12Right where this new green promenade touches downtown,
29:17it's going to create a new urban oasis,
29:19which is going to become our new neighborhood.
29:21[inspirational music playing]
29:34In our work, Yes Is More.
29:38We try to come up with this inclusive approach to architecture,
29:41of getting everybody's input to the extreme,
29:44where suddenly it becomes the driving force.
29:49We're not gonna stop
29:50until we have incorporated every single concern, no matter how small.
29:53[inspirational music continues]
29:56This obsession about making everybody happy
29:59becomes a recipe for making something that is really extraordinary,
30:03because it has to perform in so many different ways.
30:11These buildings become like interesting scales in your own life.
30:16You have to ask yourself:
30:17is this going to be worth the next seven years of my life?
30:20And if you're not realizing a dream, then seven years is a really long time.
30:28[man in Danish] Some things are missing. That's one thing.
30:30There are things that aren't placed right, either.
30:34[Bjarke in Danish] How wrongly are they placed?
30:36[man] It touches, so that there isn't room...
30:41-[Bjarke] Oh, funny. -Look.
30:44[Rice in English] Is he doing too many projects at once?
30:47Is he spread too thin?
30:50If you're the architect who says yes to everything, including every commission,
30:53do you, at some point,
30:55have to start making compromises in your vision?
30:58Do you start repeating yourself?
31:03[podcast host 1] Should we take a look at what some people think of Bjarke?
31:06[podcast host 2] Let's hear it.
31:07[podcast host 1] "BIG's projects all repeat similar traits:
31:10stacked, banal glass volumes with roof gardens,
31:13cheaply made for developer satisfaction."
31:15Another comment is:
31:17"BIG sucks. My nine-year-old does more interesting shit in Minecraft."
31:23[Rice] The issue is he can sort of freely take
31:25from all sorts of aesthetic traditions
31:28and create things that are aesthetic promiscuity.
31:32In that he can, to put it crassly,
31:34market in a way that's elegant, innovative and fun.
31:43[Bjarke] If you go beyond indifferent,
31:46you will awaken a response in both extremes, right?
31:54Especially in the age of the internet.
31:57If you read the comments on blogs as if they are valid criticisms,
32:03then you're going to have a rough time.
32:07I really grew a thick skin.
32:13When you're doing something like this,
32:15even though it's carefully crafted,
32:17and premeditated and discussed and designed and tested,
32:22when you see it, it has to feel effortless.
32:26-[man in Danish] This is the bar. -That's the bar?
32:28[man] So these gratings are going in afterwards.
32:30[Bjarke] The bar up there, right?
32:33It will be quite cool with the gratings.
32:35[laughs]
32:36[Bjarke in English] All the things that end up
32:38becoming the values that somehow define you
32:40are all the things you take for granted, right?
32:46I grew up in a tiny house with a giant garden.
32:53It's not my self-image to be an environmentalist
32:55and it's not my self-image to be a social activist.
32:58But you can't see the forest for all the trees.
33:04This is due west.
33:06So the sun actually sets, and that means that the last 30 minutes before it's gone,
33:13or let's say an hour,
33:14you have two shadows on the walls in the back
33:17because the sun is there above the trees, and it's also right there below the wheat.
33:23And both suns throw shadows,
33:25so you have this amazing moment where the sky has two suns.
33:29Or at least the view has two suns, which is quite nice.
33:34And then actually another funny thing, in the winter, the water freezes.
33:39And suddenly the lake, which was normally the end of the garden,
33:43became this public square
33:45where every single kid, touching on the lake from all sides,
33:49would come and ice skate.
33:51So just like this interesting idea that maybe just the seasonality of things,
33:56or that suddenly something that was a barrier became a meeting point.
34:04What changes over time is that naïveté fades away,
34:08but it's replaced by another kind of confidence
34:12that will make you better at seizing the moment
34:16and grasping what's important.
34:20Okay, let's-- let's sit down.
34:22[director] Doc, anything else?
34:25My mom has made, like, 500 meatballs.
34:27[laughs]
34:31-[knocks] -[dog barks]
34:32[Knud in Danish] Do we have microphones on?
34:35[Bjarke in Danish] Yes, but I don't think they will use them.
34:38[Knud] Can't you ask him to shut up?
34:41[all laugh]
34:42[Bjarke] Oh, Fidel. Can you shut the fuck up, dear Fidel?
34:53[Bjarke in English] There's a sense it's hard to make it in your own village,
34:56but if you go to the big city and make it there,
34:59then, "Ah, it's one of us. He did it."
35:05I think we also changed people's mindset of what's possible,
35:10so I think Copenhageners got used to more crazy ideas,
35:15so when we actually presented
35:17the idea of putting a giant ski slope on the roof of a power plant,
35:21I think it was in an environment
35:23that we had already influenced a little bit over the last decade,
35:27so that it was receptive to that kind of thinking.
35:37We felt that we could propose something seemingly insane
35:40and actually get away with it.
35:43Copenhill.
35:45A waste-to-energy power plant that has a giant public park on the roof
35:49where you can ski.
35:53It's the tallest and biggest building in Copenhagen.
35:58It's, again, this idea of environmental thinking,
36:00that if you have a power plant that is so clean
36:03that you only have a little bit of CO2
36:06and a little bit of steam coming out of the chimney, but no toxins,
36:10you literally have clean mountain air.
36:15And instead of having to be far away from it, you can enjoy it.
36:20[in Danish] It's quite amazing that this will be the children's hill.
36:24It begins all the way up there!
36:26[builder 1 in Danish] It's high up, even though it's the children's hill.
36:28[builder 2 in Danish] Yeah, that's right.
36:29It's too cool!
36:36[Bjarke in English] Of course you can say
36:37you put an Alpine ski slope on the roof of a building.
36:40It's a building, it's not a mountain.
36:44I think, to my relief, it feels much more like being on a mountainside
36:50than being on a roof.
36:54This is around 130 feet and the top is 300.
37:07The elevator arrives there so that when you come out,
37:10you have almost like a flat area here.
37:14And then you sort of...
37:18Then you just take off.
37:24I think a project like this can be sort of a beacon in showing the world...
37:31clean tech presents almost utopian possibilities.
37:35And I think the Steam Ring is a powerful symbol of exactly that.
37:44The chimney, instead of being a symbol of pollution,
37:47it becomes a celebration.
37:51We've worked with Realities United to design the chimney
37:55so that it puffs rings of steam.
37:59And it's also like somehow, like, when you start this kind of journey,
38:02it's, like, you know what's important for you...
38:06but you don't necessarily know where you're going.
38:10But you know that, if you make the decision
38:14based on these things that you know matter to you,
38:17wherever you're gonna end up, it's where you need to go.
38:23Of course, I couldn't have predicted this when we did this,
38:27but they're definitely sort of a similar spirit.
38:32[director] Where's the Maritime Youth House from here?
38:35It's basically like...
38:38You can see it where the trees are, exactly.
38:41And then you can see...
38:44the Mountain and the VM are right there.
38:50[director] What about the chapel?
38:52That's right there.
38:59This is probably the most spectacular toilet experience
39:02you can get in Copenhagen at this point.
39:04[laughs]
39:12You can take things that are considered infrastructure:
39:16highways, bridges, power plants...
39:18and crossbreed it,
39:21so that it actually has positive social and environmental side effects,
39:26like the power plant.
39:29Those combinations are very powerful because it's taking a very strong force,
39:34which is necessity, utility,
39:38and giving it poetry and possibility.
39:45There's something there that can be taken much further.
40:10-[photographers chattering] -[cameras clicking]
40:22[Peyton-Jones] For Bjarke to have achieved this incredible prominence
40:26at 41 years old
40:27is nothing short of extraordinary.
40:30Because in order to do that, an architect has to have built.
40:37[Bjarke] There is this kick of seeing a completely novel thing come to life.
40:43[clapping]
40:44Thank you.
40:46It is such a tremendous honor to play in the middle of a royal park,
40:49and especially since it's the Serpentine Pavilion...
40:53[director] Are you surprised by how far your son's gone?
40:55And how quickly he's done it?
40:58Yes. Frankly speaking, we had not expected that.
41:03[laughs]
41:04It's... special.
41:09We live in a time where we need to pull all disciplines
41:12to address the big questions of the 21st century.
41:14And Bjarke never really shied away
41:16from really addressing topics which are found beyond architecture.
41:22[Bjarke] I am longing to discover things that I hadn't even thought about.
41:28There's this real genuine moment of immaculate inception,
41:32where you're sort of...
41:35"This is brilliant. I never thought about this before.
41:38This would be amazing. It's beautiful."
41:40And two seconds after,
41:41you can't think of the world without thinking of this being a part of it.
41:45[piano music playing]
41:50From Tribeca, it will appear like a vertical village of singular buildings,
41:54each tailored to their individual activities,
41:57stacked on top of each other, forming parks and plazas in the sky.
42:01[piano music continues]
42:32[Bjarke] I like this idea about architecture being a way
42:37to manifest your dreams into the real world.
42:44It's almost like a shaman with brick and mortar.
42:49That is the true power that we as humans have.
42:53We actually have such a massive impact on our environment.
42:57So now that we have this power,
42:59we can either use it to create a nightmare or we can use it to realize our dreams.
43:06And, of course, the latter is much more interesting.
43:13[director] Do you dream of buildings?
43:15I never dream about my work, actually, interestingly enough.
43:19[director] There goes the end of the documentary.
43:21[Bjarke laughs]
43:24[director] Cut!
43:25[upbeat music playing]

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