Netflix and Build: “Abstract: The Art of Design”
As part of a new Netflix documentary series on design, Bjarke Ingels dives into his firm’s projects and process.
Morten Germund/Netflix
Architects can be just as susceptible to the lure of binge-watching full seasons of programming as everyone else, and there’s a new reason to pull an all-nighter with Netflix’s release of a new documentary series, Abstract: The Art of Design, tomorrow. The eight-episode season charts the creative processes of eight designers from a range of disciplines, with Danish architect Bjarke Ingels headlining the episode on architecture.
Episode four traces the growth of Ingels’ firm, Bjarke Ingels Group(BIG), from an upstart practice in Copenhagen, Denmark, to a sought-after architectural juggernaut with offices on both sides of the Atlantic. At age 42, which is relatively young in a profession that sees its most renowned practitioners hit their stride around the time that most people are retiring, Ingels has amassed an impressive collection of competition wins, commissions, and accolades. The 45-minute episode of Abstract was directed by Morgan Neville and follows the six-month, inception-to-completion timeline of BIG’s 2016 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London, punctuated by site visits to early works such as the Maritime Youth House and the Mountain, both in Copenhagen, and construction tours of New York’s VIA 57 West and Copenhagen’s Amager Resource Center (both of which won citations in ARCHITECT’s 2015 Progressive Architecture Awards).
The Ingels episode continues themes that BIG has developed in lectures, publications, and exhibitions, such as “hedonistic sustainability” and “pragmatic utopia.” Ingels talks about hybridizing seemingly incompatible ideals, aided by diagrams and fly-throughs, in a manner that is relatable. “An apartment block doesn’t have to look like a big, boxy slab,” he says. “It could be this sort of man-made mountain. You don’t have to choose having a house with a garden or having a penthouse view. You can actually have both!”
Read the full story at Architect Magazine.