NEWS

Sales for the NOT A HOTEL Setouchi villas are now open. Located on a 30,000-m2 site on the remote island of Sagishima in Japan, NOT A HOTEL Setouchi brings three villas to the southwestern cape of the island with panoramic views of the Seto Inland Sea.

Each three- and four-bedroom villa has distinct design characteristics that fit into their specific location onsite, referencing the design of traditional Japanese single-story houses and incorporating materials local to Japan – including Japanese black slate, wood, and rammed Earth. The ring-shaped ‘360’ villa is perched at the highest altitude, offering literal 360-degree views of Setouchi’s land and seascape with a central courtyard for privacy. ‘270’ captures a 270-degree panorama of the surrounding archipelago, featuring bathing spaces arranged like floating islands around the pool alongside a sauna and open firepit. At the peninsula’s tip, ‘180’ is the closest to the sea, whose curvature follows the coastal landscape.

Based on a shared ownership model, buyers can purchase a set number of nights at the resort – between 30 and 365 – per year. NOT A HOTEL Setouchi is under construction and is set to open in 2026.

Australian news media The Guardian features the Dortheavej Residences in a story highlighting six social housing projects around the world that prioritizes quality construction, sustainability, and quality of life. Completed in 2018 in Copenhagen’s Nordvest district, Dortheavej offers 66 units for low-income citizens, each with a balcony and floor-to-ceiling windows, allowing plenty of natural light and views of the neighboring green space.

BIG and Japanese hospitality group NOT A HOTEL’s newest project NOT A HOTEL Setouchi officially breaks ground on the remote Sagi Island in Japan. Located on a 30,000 m² site, the resort will bring three villas to the southwestern cape of the island, expanding the luxury hospitality company’s existing portfolio of six resorts across Japan. Mihara Mayor Yoshihiro Okada attended the ceremony to help celebrate the project milestone.

The design for NOT A HOTEL Setouchi builds on the longstanding dialogue between Scandinavian and Japanese design values. The resort weaves through the site like a ribbon, intentionally blending into the natural contours of the undulating landscape and aligning with existing roads and infrastructure. NOT A HOTEL Setouchi incorporates local materials like Japanese black slate, wood, and rammed earth while promoting a deep connection to nature. The property is slated to open in 2026.

At the foot of BIG HQ, BIG’s Landscape team has transformed a former parking area into a 1,500 m2 public park and promenade, inspired by the sandy beaches and the coastal forests of Denmark. Towards the north, native forest trees, such as pines and oaks, create shelter from the harsh winds of the harbour. Towards the south, areas with planting, rocks, and woods support habitat creation for biodiversity. At the heart of the park, tucked away between the trees, a sculpture by American artist Benjamin Langholz titled “Stone 40” will surprise and engage visitors of all ages.

BIG wishes you a happy Juneteenth!

The 76,000-sq-ft National Juneteenth Museum – led by the ‘Grandmother of Juneteenth’ Ms. Opal Lee and designed by BIG in collaboration with KAI Enterprises – will preserve the history of Juneteenth and its legacy of freedom.

Located in the Historic Southside of Fort Worth, Texas, the National Juneteenth Museum will be the epicenter for the education, preservation, and celebration of Juneteenth nationally and globally, hosting exhibitions, discussions, and events about the significance of African American freedom.

Led by BIG Partner Leon Rost – a California native – BIG’s L.A. studio is located a few blocks from the beach within the Santa Monica Central Business District, joining BIG’s global network of studios in Copenhagen, New York, London, Barcelona, Shenzhen, Zurich, and Oslo.

“The search for our new home in L.A. followed the pursuits that often define our work – connection to nature, water, and sky, as well as to city, history, and community. We found it all in this gem, a 1928 building in Santa Monica designed by legendary architect Paul Williams.

As a Japanese Californian I am excited to root BIG on the Pacific Coast. In the city of storytelling, big dreams, and a pioneer spirit, I am certain L.A. will be a fertile frontier for continued experimentation. You could say BIG – though born in Copenhagen – has always been an Angeleno at heart.” – Leon Rost, Partner, BIG

The BIG-designed NYPD 40th Precinct won the Special Award for Innovation in Civic Design in this year’s SARA NY Design Awards.

Located in the southern Bronx, New York, the new NYPD 40^th Precinct Station replaces a station house on 138^th Street and creates a dedicated space for the community, areas for fitness, and training for officers. The 45,000-sq-ft, three-story building includes the first community event space to be located at an NYPD facility, which aims to promote civic engagement and encourage dialogue with the community. The form of the building is derived from its programmatic requirements, where individual volumes contain specific elements of the program, revolving around a 60-ft light-filled atrium.

The Delancey Street Pedestrian Bridge – part of BIG’s East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) project in Manhattan – was installed overnight above FDR Drive in Manhattan, connecting the Lower East Side neighborhood to the East River. The 215-foot long, 125-ton assembled bridge was transported along FDR Drive to its final location using self-propelled modular transporters over a span of eight hours overnight, minimizing traffic disruption. The bridge – the first of three within the ESCR project – is set to open to the public in September 2024.

ESCR emerged from the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s Rebuild by Design competition, which sought to develop innovative design solutions to increase the resiliency of Sandy-impacted communities. Spanning a 2.5-mile area from Montgomery Street to East 25th Street within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 100-year floodplain, the project is designed to protect and improve the resiliency of the large and diverse residential community of 110,000+ New Yorkers – including approximately 28,000 NYCHA residents. ESCR will also offer protection to critical infrastructure – including a major pump station and an electrical substation that powers much of Lower Manhattan – as well as numerous local schools and libraries.

BIG Partner Agustin Perez-Torres spoke about CopenHill at the Reusing Rooftops conference in Barcelona, focusing on how the building not only contributes to the waste management and energy production of Copenhagen, but also offers a recreational space for residents and visitors on its roof. Co-organized by the Mies van der Rohe Foundation during Barcelona Architecture Weeks, the event was a part of a broader initiative to discuss the utilization of rooftops, including an international idea competition to redefine the urban spaces of Barcelona’s Eixample district.

The Plus was named Best New Building at the 2024 BREEAM Awards in Oslo, Norway. Organized by the Norwegian Green Building Alliance, the awards program celebrates projects dedicated to sustainability documented through the BREAAM-certification system. The 7000 m2 factory and visitor center, designed for furniture manufacturer Vestre, is dedicated to the cleanest carbon-neutral fabrication of urban furniture, leading the way for manufacturing facilities and high-efficiency production of the future.

“The Plus has set a new standard for industrial buildings and has become an attraction in the industry and the local area. It is a unique building with a good combination of industry, architecture, and sustainability. They have actively spread the message about the sustainability qualities they have achieved both nationally and internationally, and that they have prioritized sustainability in this project despite a higher cost. The project has had a holistic sustainability mindset that also includes the products that are produced in the building. The Plus has achieved the highest available BREEAM-NOR classification; Outstanding.”, says the Jury.

Bjarke Ingels was a keynote speaker at the annual Art Directors Club (ADC) Congress in Hamburg, Germany. As part of the ADC Festival 2024, the ADC Congress brought together international speakers from science, journalism, business, communication, and technology to discuss how creativity can influence the world and solve challenges.

Bjarke gave insights into BIG’s creative process and idea of ‘Formgiving,’ or giving form to the future, while presenting some of BIG’s work, including Project Olympus, a collaboration between ICON, SEArch+, and NASA to design a lunar habitat set to be the first human foray into extra-terrestrial construction.

BIG Founder & Creative Director Bjarke Ingels is interviewed for SHARP Magazine’s spring/summer issue of The Book For Men, a Canadian bi-annual publication that covers travel, automobiles, fashion, culture, business, and more. In his interview, Bjarke shares how he first fell in love with architecture and discusses his core philosophies and BIG’s ethos, rooted in oxymorons such as ‘hedonistic sustainability’ and ‘pragmatic utopia.’ The article also highlights BIG’s work in Canada, including Vancouver House, Telus Sky, Habitat 67, and King Toronto – a 16-storey modular residential building with lush terraces that bridge the gap between inside and out.

BIG’s Landscape Partner Giulia Frittoli joined the Urbcast podcast’s landscape architecture series to speak about how to challenge the traditional boundaries in projects. During the interview, Giulia shared her professional journey and BIG’s principles in landscape architecture, emphasizing the importance of understanding context and culture.

The 135,000-sq-ft Robert Day Sciences Center at Claremont McKenna College – one of the top liberal arts colleges in the U.S. – tops out in Claremont, California. The Robert Day Sciences Center will be home to the college’s next-generation Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences, the multi-disciplinary center to advance gene, brain and climate knowledge. Designed as a stack of two volumes, or rectangular ‘blocks’ – two per floor – each pair is rotated 45 degrees from the floor below. On the interior, the volumes are expressed as stacked trusses with floor-to-ceiling partitions providing visibility between spaces. The rotation of each floor creates a central sky-lit atrium at the heart of the building that provides direct views into classrooms and research spaces from all levels.

“The topping out of the Robert Day Sciences Center is a pivotal moment in realizing our Claremont McKenna College Campus masterplan. The building serves as a social meeting place on campus as well as an academic intersection of computer science, data science and life sciences. Its architecture of intersecting volumes of labs and classrooms not only creates a multitude of meeting points and perspectives between student body and faculty, but also allows for the axis of the campus mall to turn, continuing to extend the campus grounds.

The topping out of the Claremont McKenna College Robert Day Sciences Center coincides with the opening of our Los Angeles studio as we continue to grow our portfolio of academic and cultural works along the U.S. Pacific Coast.” – Bjarke Ingels, Founder and Creative Director, BIG

Developed in close collaboration between BIG, Saiful Bouquet, KPRS and Herrick since 2022, the project has grown BIG’s presence and passion for the western U.S. Aiming for LEED Gold, the building will serve a community of 1,400 students and is anticipated to complete in 2025.

The concrete structure of the Cité de l’Innovation has reached its highest point in Paris, France. Set to complete in 2025, the 15,000 m2 multidisciplinary research center will be a significant addition to Sorbonne University’s Faculty of Science, strengthen knowledge-sharing with the wider French society, and support academic scholars in their entrepreneurial pursuits.

Johns Hopkins University held a beam signing ceremony to celebrate its Hopkins Student Center topping out in Baltimore, Maryland. At the milestone event, JHU President Ron Daniels thanked attendees for their contributions to the building, while Rachelle Hernandez, vice provost for student affairs, explained that the building’s completion will make possible many improvements to campus life.

The Hopkins Student Center will form a new social engagement hub for all members of the school community. The 143,000 sq ft building includes spaces for relaxation and socializing, student resources and support, a digital media center, performance space with seating for 200 people, and a dining hall. Located at the intersection of 33^rd and Charles Streets, the Hopkins Student Center will foster greater connectivity between the campus and the neighboring Charles Village community by creating a prominent point of entry.

The Hopkins Student Center is scheduled to open in July 2025.

BIG HQ in Copenhagen has received the City’s highest honor for how the building considers the character of its surroundings and contributes to the urban environment of the city. Anchored in the industrial history and maritime infrastructure of Copenhagen’s north harbor, the 4.880 m2 headquarters is the first realized example of a fully integrated LEAP-design – a collaboration between BIG’s Landscape, Engineering, Architecture and Product designers. The building is designed to achieve DGNB Gold through use of FutureCem concrete, which reduces CO2 emission with approx. 25%, integration of solar and geothermal energy systems, and natural ventilation of the office spaces.

International financial institution HSBC inaugurated its new U.S. headquarters at The Spiral on the west side of Manhattan in New York City, marking its largest U.S. relocation to date. BIG Founder and Creative Director Bjarke Ingels spoke at the celebratory event alongside HSBC Group Chairman Mark Tucker, HSBC CEO for the U.S. and Americas Michael Roberts, Mayor of New York City Eric Adams, Former Mayor of New York City and Co-Founder of Bloomberg L.P. Michael R. Bloomberg, and Partnership for New York City President and CEO Kathryn Wylde. As part of the ceremony, guests placed artifacts unique and meaningful to HSBC into a time capsule, which will be reopened in 40 years to mark the Bank’s bicentennial.

Developed by Tishman Speyer, built by Turner, and designed by BIG, The Spiral promotes a contemporary workplace where nature becomes an integrated part of the office environment and spatial features are adaptable to the changing needs of its occupants. As the tower ascends, each floor’s accessible terrace offers impressive views over Manhattan, the Hudson River, and New Jersey. Select floors offer a double height amenity space and the option to connect adjacent floors via a grand staircase, suggesting an alternative to elevators and encouraging interaction amongst colleagues. The building is pursuing LEED Silver certification.

BIG Founder and Creative Director Bjarke Ingels sat down with Fast Company’s Executive Editor Amy Farley for a conversation entitled ‘The Future of Experiential’ as part of the XP Fronts series during C2 Montreal (C2MTL). In his conversation, Bjarke delved into BIG projects including Gelephu Mindfulness City, VLTAVA Philharmonic Prague, Athletics Ballpark Las Vegas and Zurich Airport Dock A among others.

C2MTL is an annual conference held in Quebec that brings together businesses and creative communities, representing an intersection of commerce and creativity.

BIG’s Founder & Creative Director Bjarke Ingels is featured in the Spring issue of Family Style magazine in conversation with the founders of the Amsterdam-based art studio DRIFT Ralph Nauta and Lonneke Gordijn. During the conversation, the three discuss the intersection of art, technology, and nature in their respective fields, highlighting their shared philosophy of challenging the traditional boundaries of design.

BIG unveils the design for NOT A HOTEL Setouchi, which will expand the luxury hospitality company’s existing six resort offerings across Japan. Located on a 30,000-square-metre site on the remote island of Sagishima, the resort brings three villas to the southwestern cape of the island with panoramic views of the Seto Inland Sea.

The design for NOT A HOTEL Setouchi builds on the longstanding dialogue between Scandinavian and Japanese design values. Expected to break ground later this year, the resort weaves through site like a ribbon, intentionally blending into the undulating landscape’s natural contours and aligning with existing roads and infrastructure. NOT A HOTEL Setouchi incorporates local materials like Japanese black slate, wood and rammed earth while promoting a connection to nature.

“Our design approach for NOT A HOTEL Setouchi wasn’t about imposing our ideas on the site; instead, it involved exploring, observing and understanding the landscape. We envisioned how to best leverage this distinctive and remarkable terrain and fixed upon a design that mirrors the elegance of traditional Japanese architecture.

Japan is one of the cultures in the world where commitment to craft and care for quality remains intact. The honesty and simplicity of the structure and careful choice of materials can be said to have greatly influenced the traditional architecture of Japan and the modern architecture of Denmark. Maybe that’s why when I go to Japan, I always feel like I’m coming home. NOT A HOTEL Setouchi will be an experiment in what happens when the sensibilities of both countries come together – the Danish desire for simplicity and the care and perfection of Japan.” – Bjarke Ingels, Founder & Creative Director, BIG

The Danish King Frederik the 10th and Queen Mary visited Oslo Science City together with Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon to meet with leading researchers in quantum and sensor technology and learn more about the importance of strengthening Danish-Norwegian cooperation in emerging critical technologies.

Since 2021, BIG has worked on the 1.4 million m2 extension of the Oslo Science City aimed at creating a physical framework for Norway’s innovation environment of estimated 150,000 scientists, students, entrepreneurs that will contribute to the country’s transition to renewable energy.

Together with Lonestar Data Holdings, BIG designed the Freedom Payload data center, which will travel to the Moon with Intuitive Machines on a NASA CLPS mission. As the first 3D-printed data center, the Freedom Payload can store up to eight terabytes of data and will be entirely solar powered and naturally cooled. Illustrating BIG’s ethos of giving form to the future, it is designed to feature the profiles of two NASA astronauts – Charlie Duke and Nicole Stott – whose faces will cast changing shadows on the Moon throughout the lunar day (14 Earth days) for thousands of years to come. As the first physical data center located off-Earth, this signifies the initial step in space becoming a recognized home for data management.

Italian news media la Repubblica has published a guide to the best design spots in Copenhagen, highlighting BIG’s 8 House and Copenhagen Harbor Bath, as well as naming waste-to-energy plant CopenHill and urban park Superkilen “iconic examples of modern architecture and urban space”.

Ms. Opal Lee is one of 19 people to receive the United States’ highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by U.S. President Joe Biden. Educator and civil rights activist Ms. Opal Lee is known as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth” for her efforts to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. “We’re a better nation because of you,” Biden told Lee at the ceremony.

Declared a federal holiday in the U.S. in 2021, Juneteenth commemorates the Emancipation Proclamation’s enforcement and the liberation of the enslaved both in Texas and throughout the United States, which happened on June 19, 1865.

With Ms. Opal Lee at the helm, a new National Juneteenth Museum, designed by BIG and Kai Enterprises, will open in Ms. Lee’s hometown of Fort Worth, TX, and will be dedicated to preserving the history of Juneteenth and legacy of freedom.

At this year’s iF Design Trend Conference in Berlin, BIG Landscape Partner Giulia Frittoli gave a lecture titled “Social Nature – Designing Cities for People and the Planet”, speaking about how BIG’s planning approach is inspired by the interplay between built and natural environments. The conference, themed “How can design help drive the transformation towards a future worth living?”, brought together designers and industry experts to learn about global and interdisciplinary design trends and their significance for the future. The conference further marked the launch of iF’s yearly trend report, to which Giulia contributed with her insights into the drivers that will shape our urban environment in the coming years.

BIG Founder & Creative Director Bjarke Ingels is the feature cover story in the U.S. edition of Business Traveler’s May issue. Throughout the in-depth piece, Bjarke talks about the early days of BIG and delves into a wide range of the firm’s projects, from some of the earliest – CopenHill and LEGO House – to some of the current and most recent – The Spiral and Zurich Airport Dock A.

“…There’s a culture among the [BIG] team of alignment—we all have a similar way of looking at the world. Every project needs to fulfill someone’s dream, but that doesn’t have to always be my dream, although it’s always my job to make sure we are free to pursue it, no matter who suggested it.” – Bjarke Ingels, Founder & Creative Director, BIG

Together with Core Studio at Thornton Tomasetti and McNeel Europe, BIG’s Design Technology team co-hosted the annual AECtech+ in Barcelona, an event exploring the latest developments in technology. Senior Computational Design Specialist Anders Holden Deleuran delivered a workshop on the untapped potential of GHPPython components, followed by a lecture by Design Technology Manager German Otto Bodenbender on how BIG deploys computational design across architectural projects.

The weekend concluded with a 26-hour hackathon at the BIG Barcelona office, inviting programmers, developers, engineers, and enthusiasts of all levels to collaborate, and brainstorm new ideas.

BIG and By & Havn marked the completion of the lighthouse on the tip of the Sundmolen pier, bringing the public spaces surrounding our Copenhagen headquarters one step closer to realization. The event featured a lantern workshop, live music, and speeches before watching the lighthouse light up for the first time together with neighbors and residents of Nordhavn. In June, BIG will inaugurate the public park surrounding the Copenhagen HQ, designed by BIG’s Landscape team.

BIG in partnership with BNIM and the University of Kansas School of Architecture & Design unveil a new mass timber building for learning and collaboration, titled the “Makers’ KUbe.” Along with housing studio space, the KUbe will also serve as a teaching tool, showcasing sustainable practices through its mass timber diagrid design and is developed through collaboration with the school’s 1,300+ students, faculty and board. 

The 50,000 sq ft, six-story Makers’ KUbe features a distinct timber diagrid frame – engineered by structural engineer StructureCraft – optimized to reduce material and carbon-intensive concrete. The Makers’ KUbe will connect to the existing Marvin and Chalmers Halls via winter garden bridges, consolidating all of the school’s programs into these three buildings.

“Our design for the consolidated design studios at KU seeks to deploy all aspects of the profession in three distinct interventions: preservation, adaptation and new construction. The Makers’ KUbe is conceived as a showcase in timber tectonics, traditional joinery, robotic manufacturing and sustainable materials. The timber bones of the building are exposed by stripping away all applied finishes – elevating structure to expression. A single staircase doubling as convenience stairs above and fire stairs within ties all student spaces together from park to attic.

The building serves as a living curriculum, revealing all function, technology and structure as tangible elements for the students to appreciate and critique – learning solidified into built form.” – Bjarke Ingels, Founder & Creative Director, BIG

BIG NYC Associate Dominyka Voelkle was a spotlight speaker at Facades+, the premier conference for high-performance building enclosures, hosted by The Architect’s Newspaper. Voelkle spoke at the NYC and Nashville events about the process for designing and building The Spiral as well as Google Gradient Canopy and CapitaSpring, and answered questions from the crowd.

Located on West 34th Street between Hudson Boulevard and 10th Avenue, The Spiral neighbors the elevated High Line and Bella Abzug Park on Manhattan’s west side. The tower visually extends the landscape of the nearby High Line Park up and around The Spiral’s exterior, allowing access to green outdoor terraces from each of the building’s 66 stories. The Spiral is pursuing LEED Silver certification and was named the world’s Best Tall Building in its category by The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat at the organization’s annual conference last year. The Spiral is BIG’s first completed supertall and first completed commercial high-rise in New York.

The Ski Journal and photographer Kari Medig visited CopenHill for a story about its skiing facilities and how an otherwise piece of social infrastructure has become a recreational hotspot in the city of Copenhagen.

“I was struck by how many people enjoyed a space normally designated for shedding weather or hosting the occasional birds nest. While the major industrial operation burned in the bowels below, this place was so incredibly, well, alive. Hedonistic sustainability indeed.”, Kari Medig concludes.

BIG designs installation for Interni Magazine’s city-wide exhibition in Milan, Italy during Salone del Mobile titled ‘Cross Vision’. Developed by BIG’s product design team in collaboration with German car manufacturer Audi, the installation is inspired by the symmetry of the Piazza del Quadrilatero courtyard, and conceived as two intersecting walls of mirrored steel, dividing the courtyard into four individual spaces. Each space represents a thematic cornerstone of the installation: the Community space for socializing and connecting with visitors, the Knowledge area where an amphitheater will host talks during the design fair, as well as the Innovation and Performance area which showcase Audi’s light design and their newly launched car, the Q6 e-tron.

The Spiral is named best office/retail/mixed-use project by Engineering News-Record in their Best of the Best Awards 2023. The Spiral, located on Manhattan’s west side, is one of 20 projects recognized by ENR editors and roughly 100 construction industry members who judged contest entries.

To commemorate the win, ENR featured The Spiral in its March issue as well as in an awards ceremony held in New York City on April 11.

Partner and Head of BIG Landscape Giulia Frittoli spoke at the annual, international New European Bauhaus Festival in Brussels, Belgium in a panel discussion on challenges and opportunities in transforming the built environment alongside Ciaran Cuffe, Member of the European Parliament and Rapporteur for the Energy Performance in Building Directive, Ireland, Matti Kuittinen, Associate Professor of Sustainable Construction, Aalto University, Johanna Pirinen, Senior Vice President, Stora Enso, Bent Madsen, President, Housing Europe, and Andreja Kutnar, Research and Director, InnoRenew CoE.

In a separate lecture and together with Mikel Landabaso, Director of Fair and Sustainable Economy at the Joint Research Center, Giulia also presented BIG’s design for the new Center in Sevilla, Spain, which will be the headquarters for the European Commission’s team of 400 researchers and support staff.

A Brief History of the Future, a six-part docuseries from PBS focusing on our futures and how we can reimagine them, features BIG’s Founder and Creative Director Bjarke Ingels in an episode dedicated to shaping tomorrow through the built environment. In the show, Bjarke talks about how design shapes our future, using Copenhagen as an example of a place made healthier and happier through urban planning. Bjarke also walks the audience through some of BIG’s designs for a reimagined way of living, including Oceanix, a resilient and sustainable floating community.

A Brief History of the Future explores the possibility of a better future through the insights of a wide range of individuals, including French President Emmanuel Macron, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, sailor Dame Ellen MacArthur, musician Grimes, climate scientist Catherine Hayhoe and football player Kylian Mbappé.

BIG teamed up with structural engineer and builder StructureCraft to unveil a mockup of the new University of Kansas School of Architecture and Design building at the 8th annual International Mass Timber Conference in Portland, Oregon. The full-scale, structural mockup features part of the building exterior’s glulam diagrid achieved with 100% wood connections.

BIG LA partner Leon Rost also spoke at the conference about the use of mass timber in higher education projects, noting the University of Kansas School of Architecture and Design and the Johns Hopkins University Student Center.

The BIG-designed UAE Pavilion at the International Horticultural Expo in Doha has won Gold in the Best Self-Built Pavilion category at the closing event of the 2023 Expo. Selected from the 77 participating countries, the pavilion was honored for its alignment with this year’s theme “Green Desert, Better Environment”, as well as its innovative landscape design, thoughtful plant species selection, use of sustainable materials, guest experience and engaging environmental programming.

The pavilion’s design is inspired by the resilient Ghaf tree and its complex root net, creating a cell structure featuring rammed earth walls, wooden beams, and palm leaf roofs. The structure encompasses 32 gardens of indigenous species, including a total of 6,609 plants with groupings of edible plants, fruit trees, medicinal plants, flowers, spices, shrubs, grasses, industrial plants, and perennials.

BIG welcomes Archi-Tech Network, a collective of practicing architects sharing knowledge around the intersection of Architecture, Technology and Entrepreneurship, for a tour of the firm’s office in London, which opened in 2016. The tour, led by Archi-Tech’s Founder Oliver Thomas, showcases BIG’s London space, architectural models of BIG LON projects, the VR room and the model shop. Following the tour, Oliver sits down to delve into Design Technology and BIM practices at BIG.

BIG’s Founder and Creative Director Bjarke Ingels and Associate Jeremy Alain Siegel speak to Razia Iqbal on BBC World Service’s The Cultural Frontline radio show about Manhattan’s flood defense project. Razia begins the episode at VIA 57 West before meeting Bjarke and Jeremy on Manhattan’s East Side to experience the coastal work firsthand. The episode ends at the BIG NYC offices with a discussion about Bjarke’s life and career.

The BIG-designed East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) project emerged from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Rebuild by Design competition, which sought to develop innovative design solutions to increase the resiliency of Hurricane Sandy-impacted communities. The 2.5-mile project area is located within the FEMA 100-year floodplain on Manhattan’s East River coastline and is designed to protect and improve the resiliency of more than 110,000 New Yorkers, including approximately 28,000 NYCHA residents.

The BIG-designed Qianhai Prisma Towers won the Diamond Supplier Award at the Supplier Conference this month, hosted by SZ Metro at the Chunquan Cultural Arts Center in Shenzhen, China. The conference convened over 500 high-quality suppliers spanning the ‘Metro and Real Estate’ industry chain to collectively envision a new era of high-quality development. The conference theme, “Empowering Initiatives, Unlimited Possibilities”, sought out to acknowledge outstanding contributions over the past year. The Qianhai Prisma Towers were recognized as one of four Diamond Suppliers – the top tier – underscoring the project’s exceptional performance and unwavering commitment to excellence in collaboration with Shenzhen Metro.

The two ‘leaning’ towers, featuring a 300m2 tall residential tower and a 250m tall office tower, will complete the new Qianhai Bay development, solidifying Qianhai’s position as the burgeoning financial and cultural center of Shenzhen. Expected to begin construction in 2025, the project will be BIG’s second in Shenzhen following Shenzhen Energy Mansion’s completion in 2017. 

The Gastronomy Open Ecosystem has won the Advanced Architecture Award, presented at the 2024 REBUILD Conference in Madrid, the largest innovation forum driving construction industry transformation through digitalization and decarbonization. The project was recognized for how it envisions a meeting point between culture, gastronomy, and the city.

Conceived as an architectural extension of the dramatic landscape and cityscape of San Sebastian, Basque Culinary Center’s new innovation hub will bring together food start-ups, researchers, and chefs under one roof to advance the art and science of gastronomic innovation while offering new public spaces, plazas, and parks.

BIG designs the new Marengo Multimodal Transport Hub in France’s fourth largest city, Toulouse. The 12,000 m2 hub will act as a link between the city center, the UNESCO-listed Canal du Midi, and the Périole neighborhood, uniting railway, metro and bus under one roof.

Located adjacent to the city’s central station, the building is characterized by a wooden structure and rose-colored, crystalline roof, referencing the city’s traditional use of the “foraine” brick. From the main entrance canopy, the structure gradually rises in a sloping movement to pull daylight down to the hub’s lowest levels, accommodating comfortable and safe navigation for travelers throughout the day.

The building is set to attain Silver Occitanie Sustainable Buildings certification, along with the Biodiversity Effinature and HQE Infrastructure certification.

BIG’s Founder and Creative Director Bjarke Ingels presented at the India Today Conclave 2024 in New Delhi. During his talk – which focused on conscious urbanism and designing a mindful city – Bjarke highlighted the Plan for the Planet initiative and BIG projects including Project Olympus and the Gelephu Mindfulness City in Bhutan.

The India Today Conclave is India’s most well-known global thought platform. The event aims at charting a bold new future through free and honest exchange of ideas amongst global minds.

Our masterplan for Aarhus Harbor in Denmark has been named Best Urban Regeneration Project at this year’s MIPIM Awards ceremony in Cannes, France. Selected by votes from the jury and MIPIM delegates, the project is honored for its physical and economic revitalization of the area, consideration of heritage preservation, sustainability, access, and integration of the project in its environment and community.

Tasked to transform a formerly industrial harbor into a vibrant neighborhood on the waterfront of Aarhus, we collaborated with Gehl Architects to create the framework for public life first, leaving plots for residential developments to be shaped by the life that preceded them. Today, a public promenade activates the entire waterfront, zig-zagging along the pier and defining a series of new public spaces on land and on water.

The masterplan includes the BIG-designed Aarhus Harbor Bath, Aarhus Theater, Kampanilen, AARhus Residences, the Beach Huts, the Urban Life huts, the Scandic wellness hotel, as well as SLETH’s Karréerne.

In a series of announcements at this year’s South by Southwest Festival in Austin, TX, construction technology company ICON and BIG unveiled CODEX, a digital catalog of 3D-printed homes. The catalog features five ready-to-print home collections each based on a different program, with over 60 designs across a range of price points.

Within CODEX, BIG designed the Storm and Fire homes, with design elements that mitigate damage and loss due to hurricanes and wildfires; the TexNext collection, which reinterprets four beloved Texan housing typologies; and House One, a three-bedroom home that celebrates indoor and outdoor living within the Exploration collection.

Every home in CODEX is designed to be printed using ICON’s newest advanced material, CarbonX. When paired with ICON’s wall system and robotic construction methods, the CarbonX formula is the lowest carbon residential building system ready to be used at scale. New collections will continue to be added to CODEX, which aims to be the most extensive digital catalog of buildable home designs in the world.

Construction technology company ICON unveiled a series of new projects at this year’s South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, including the new AI architect Vitruvius. Leveraging advanced AI technology to harness expertise from top architects, Vitruvius offers a cooperative home design process that is finely tuned to understand building and design requirements.

To help introduce Vitruvius to the audience alongside ICON’s CEO and Co-Founder Jason Ballard, BIG’s Founder and Creative Director Bjarke Ingels spoke on-stage about AI and the future of architecture.

“In my mind, the future will be designed by both human and artificial designers. There is no better way to contribute to the future than by spending energy, attention and investment into educating the designers that will give form to the future – whether human or artificial. By opening up Vitruvius to all of you and the world today, we are essentially starting what I believe will be a lifelong education of the artificial architects of tomorrow.” – Bjarke Ingels, Founder & Creative Director, BIG

Domus features the Tirpitz Museum in an article about the history and benefits of underground architecture, emphasizing the minimal effects on microclimates and reduction of the ecological footprint.

Located on the shorelands of Denmark’s west coast, the Tirpitz Museum is a cultural complex transformed from a historic WWII concrete bunker, seamlessly embedded into its surrounding landscape and acting as a gentle counterbalance to the dramatic history of the site.

Architectural Digest features the Kaktus Towers and El Cosmico in their report on how they anticipate the architecture discipline to develop in 2024. Emphasizing the continued importance of public and shared spaces in our societies, Kaktus Towers’ integration of in- and outdoor communal areas throughout the two towers is highlighted as an example of how design can strengthen social cohesion in residential projects.

El Cosmico, the hotel and campground in Marfa, Texas, is featured as an example on how 3D printing is making its way into large-scale architecture. Developed in collaboration with ICON and Texas-based hotelier Liz Lambert, the project features 3D-printed structures including domes, arches, vaults, and parabolic forms.

BIG’s Founder and Creative Director Bjarke Ingels spoke at Architects, not Architecture’s New York Edition event alongside architect Toshiko Mori. Bjarke spoke about the experiences that have shaped him and his career, including his personal evolutionary journey within the first quarter of his life, from his first memory to the opening of his first architecture firm PLOT.

Architects, not Architecture was founded in Hamburg in 2015 to host events that invite well-known architects to talk about themselves rather than their architecture practices. They speak about their path, their influences and experiences, and dive deeper into their intellectual biography, shedding light on the enormous influences that are normally left in the shadows. Over the past 10 years, there have been more than 75 AnA events in 12 different countries, with over 200 world-renowned architects gracing the AnA stage.

BIG and HNTB unveil a design for the Athletics Major League Baseball team’s new ballpark on the Las Vegas Strip. The 33,000-capacity covered ballpark will sit on nine acres between Tropicana Avenue and Reno Avenue. The project builds on a longstanding collaboration between BIG and the Athletics, dating back to a different ballpark design presented in Oakland, California in 2018.

The new ballpark’s roof is accentuated by five overlapping shells resembling baseball pennants, paying homage to the sport. For players, these arched “pennants” will attenuate direct sunlight glare while welcoming indirect natural light through northern oriented clerestory windows. The domed ballpark is also designed to feature the world’s largest cable net glass wall. The structure’s exterior metal cladding shimmers in the natural daylight and reflects the surrounding Las Vegas lights at night.

“Our design for the new Vegas home for the A’s is conceived in response to the unique culture and climate of the city. Five pennant arches enclose the ballpark – shading from the Nevada sun while opening to the soft daylight from the north. A giant window frames a majestic view of the life of The Strip and the iconic New York New York hotel skyline. All direct sunlight is blocked, while all the soft daylight is allowed to wash the field in natural light.

The resultant architecture is like a spherical armadillo – shaped by the local climate – while opening and inviting the life of The Strip to enter and explore. In the city of spectacle, the A’s ‘armadillo’ is designed for passive shading and natural light – the architectural response to the Nevada climate generating a new kind of vernacular icon in Vegas.” – Bjarke Ingels, Founder & Creative Director, BIG

The new home for the Athletics has an expected opening date of spring 2028.

ELLE Decor Japan has published an article highlighting a selection of BIG’s projects, focusing on how they interpret local history and culture while integrating new technologies. The article features 13 projects, including the waste-to-energy plant CopenHill in Copenhagen, the “floating” Sluishius residences in Amsterdam, and BIG’s first supertall The Spiral in New York.

Douglass Alligood, Partner in BIG’s NYC office, is named to the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows, AIA’s highest membership honor.

The AIA fellowship program was developed to elevate those architects who have achieved a standard of excellence in the profession and made a significant contribution to architecture and society on a national level. The achievement is attained by less than three percent of the architecture profession.

Douglass Alligood is a planner and architect with over 40 years of experience working across a range of projects including commercial towers, cultural institutions, education, health science, sports facilities, residential and master planning. Currently, he is leading the design for the National Juneteenth Museum in Fort Worth, Texas and is also working on the Athletics Ballpark in Las Vegas. Since becoming a Partner at BIG in 2021, he has focused on increasing the firm’s technical expertise in the functional aspects of design and building performance. Douglass has been a volunteer and appointed member of several community planning groups, including the non-profit Urban Design Forum and The National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA). He also mentors young professionals and architecture students.

BIG welcomed 150 industry peers at the Copenhagen HQ for a conference on “Nordic Design Excellence”. Organized by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the world’s leading resource for professionals in design, construction, and operations of tall building and future cities, the program included a keynote speech by President of CTBUH, Anthony Wood, and presentations by Anne Skovbro, CEO at By & Havn, Morten Kirban Rix, Project Director at Incuba, Sonja Stockmarr, Global Design Director at Henning Larsen, and Brian Yang, Partner at BIG, among others.

BIG designs this year’s visual identity for annual design festival in Copenhagen, 3daysofdesign. Centered around the 2024 theme “Dare To Dream”, the identity uses 3D-modeled renderings to form furniture and clouds connected by a staircase to embody the spirit of imagination, collaboration, and optimism.

In a story about the city of Bordeaux in France, National Geographic Spain highlights cultural center MÉCA as a new architectural icon of the city. Centrally located between the River Garonne and Saint-Jean train station, MÉCA creates a frame for the celebration of contemporary art, film, and performances, cementing Bordeaux as an epicenter for culture.

Fort Worth-based Burlington Northern Sante Fe Railway, operator of one of the largest railroad networks in North America, makes a naming-rights gift of $2 million toward the construction of the National Juneteenth Museum in the Historic Southside neighborhood of Fort Worth, Texas.

The gift comes on the heels of significant donations including Fort Worth City Council committing $15 million to the project, as well as the state of Texas and Bank of America each donating $1 million. So far, the organization has raised over $30 million of the $70 million total that it seeks.

The 50,000-square-foot National Juneteenth Museum, designed by BIG, will be the epicenter for the education, preservation and celebration of Juneteenth nationally and globally, hosting exhibitions, discussions and events about the significance of African American Freedom.

NASA is looking for four participants to live in the BIG-designed Mars simulation, Mars Dune Alpha, for one full year in preparation for human exploration of the planet. This is the second of three missions in NASA’s CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) program, in which four volunteers will live in the 1,700-square-foot habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The ground mission will begin in spring 2025.

Mars Dune Alpha, 3D-printed by construction company ICON and designed by BIG, features private quarters for each volunteer, with dedicated workstations, medical stations, food-growing stations and shared living spaces. Life in Mars Dune Alpha will resemble the expected experience for those living in a future Mars surface habitat, complete with the typical environmental stressors of the planet as well as limited resources.

In an article exploring sensory environments created through architecture and art, ArchDaily includes The Sphere, a scenography installation designed by BIG Products for Danish music trio WhoMadeWho. The article describes the scenography as an example of interdisciplinary collaboration with architects playing a pivotal role in enriching public life and fostering meaningful connections.

Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet is featured in an article by Tatler Asia detailing its design and visitor experience.

“The living museum in Le Brassus, Switzerland fully expresses the manufacturer’s boundless creativity in the art and science of watchmaking, housed in an impressive modern building flanked by a traditional Swiss house and the leafy Risoud Forest,” writes reporter Brian Cheong.

Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet is a spiral-shaped pavilion, reminiscent of the spring in a timepiece movement, entirely supported by curved glass walls. The contemporary spiral flanks the original workshop where the Audemars Piguet story began in 1875 and where an earlier version of the museum was housed from 1992 to 2019. The vernacular architecture of the historical building has been fully recovered based on a thorough study of archival materials.

Partner João Albuquerque gave a lecture at the opening of this year’s Madrid Design Festival, speaking about BIG’s design philosophy and practice. Under the theme “Redesigning the World”, the city-wide design festival brought together nearly 700 designers, specialists, and researchers in the Spanish capital to address how design can develop solutions to the complex challenges our societies face.

BIG unveils the design for Freedom Plaza, a plan for a new civic and cultural hub along Manhattan’s East River. Designed by BIG and developed by Soloviev Group and Mohegan Sun, Freedom Plaza sits on a waterfront site south of the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan’s Midtown East neighborhood. The development will bring a 4.77-acre public waterfront open space designed by OJB Landscape Architecture with an in-park Museum of Freedom and Democracy, two residential towers with much-needed affordable housing, two hotels including New York’s first Banyan Tree, retail and restaurants. With a below-grade gaming area connected to the hotels, Freedom Plaza is one of several projects vying for three downstate gaming licenses in and around New York City.

“When Le Corbusier, Niemeyer and Harrison designed the UN Secretariat Building, they grafted an oasis of international modernism onto the dense urban grid of Manhattan, creating a park on the river framed by towers and pavilions. Due to the nature of the work of the UN, access to that park – although open to all nations – remains necessarily restricted, for good reasons.

With our design for Freedom Plaza, we continue to build on these architectural principles by uniting three city blocks to form a public green space reaching from 1st Avenue to the East River overlook, creating a green connection all the way to the water’s edge.

Bookending the park are two pairs of towers, joined at base or top and each framing a corner plaza: one showcasing the life of the city and the other forming an urban gate from the city to the upper park and East River beyond. Balanced on a perch overlooking the river, the Museum of Freedom and Democracy neighbors the towers and celebrates the origin and evolution of one of the most impactful inventions of mankind and our continuous struggle to build, maintain and protect the institutions that uphold it.

We are incredibly honored and thrilled to be part of the team that can envision a new major public space in this great city, to contribute to the iconic skyline of Manhattan’s riverfront, and to imagine the architecture of the museum celebrating one of mankind’s greatest inventions: Democracy.” – Bjarke Ingels, Founder & Creative Director, BIG

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung spotlights the Kaktus Towers in Copenhagen. The two residential towers of 20- and 22-storeys contain 495 apartments and are designed to accommodate tiny living with compact homes and spacious, shared amenities.

Situated within a web of movement, the towers feature a 150-meter-long high line-esque public park, planted with native trees, shrubs, and grasses. At the base of the towers, a plaza with a café, gym, and staircase leading up to the park is located, connecting to the stream of pedestrians emerging from the train station on the northern side of the towers and the local shopping mall towards the south.

Japanese design magazine Casa BRUTUS features the new Copenhagen HQ for an article focusing on lighting design and how it can transform spaces. Delving into the lamps incorporated in the headquarters, the article showcases designs from the BIG product design team’s previous collaborations with Italian lamp manufacturer Artemide, including La Linea, Alphabet of Light, and Stellar Nebula.

BIG wishes you a joyous and prosperous Lunar New Year! 龙年快乐!

BIG’s Product design team has designed a collection of faucets named DÉCA for TONI Copenhagen. The faucet is the company’s first new design addition since 1940 and named after the Latin word for ‘ten’ as a direct reference to the faucet’s unique ten-edge-grip.

“The DÉCA family is a set of sculptural objects which can be stacked vertically or horizontally to form a simple composition. Rooted in the idea of creating a contemporary design, DÉCA is a one-hand-operational fixture that challenges how a fixture looks, feels, and operates.” – Jakob Lange, Partner & Head of BIG Products

Bjarke Ingels is the featured guest on the first episode of architecture podcast Ecogradia’s fourth season, wherein Bjarke talks about “how form-making will unlock the power of architecture.” Bjarke deep dives into BIG projects CopenHill, Toyota Woven City and OCEANIX City in the broader contexts of hedonistic sustainability, sustainable architecture, future and modular cities, and the role of design in solving the climate crisis.

The TURN System is highlighted in Dezeen’s article about reducing dependency on single-use plastics. The article dives into the importance of designing for human behavior when addressing plastic waste and uses TURN as an innovative example of this.

Designed by BIG’s product design team, the system consists of reusable cups, return bins and on-site washing facilities, and has prevented over 44.2 mt of plastic waste just in the last year through partnerships with Starbucks, Live Nation, Oak View Group and Pepsi among others.

Bjarke Ingels spoke at the Center for Architecture and Metropolitan Planning in Prague as part of their Urban Talks series, marking the opening of the Prague Tomorrow? The Vltava Philharmonic Hall exhibition, which showcases the detailed architectural study of the future national concert hall in the Czech capital.

Beyond becoming the home of the world-class philharmonic orchestra, the Vltava Philharmonic Hall will serve as a public urban space. By raising and lowering the corners of the building at multiple touch points, a series of grand public plazas will become a new symbol of inclusionary architecture, welcoming a multitude of Prague’s vibrant urban life to flow across, around, through, under and over the new concert hall.

Biosphere wins the Best Hospitality Project in Architecture at the 2024 Créateurs Design Awards, a peer-to-peer award program highlighting extraordinary work in architecture, interior- and product design, photography, journalism, and curation.

Located in the Swedish Lapland, Biosphere is the eighth room at the renowned TreeHotel, known for its broad variety of cabins, with each having a distinct identity responding and interacting with the surrounding forest. Enveloped by 350 bird- and bat houses, the Biosphere cabin aims to decrease the downward spiral of the bird population in the region while providing guests the opportunity to experience birdlife in close proximity.

Architectural Record features BIG’s Park Rise residences in an article exploring reimagined infrastructure. Ellinikon Park Rise sits within Europe’s largest urban regeneration project, the Ellinikon Masterplan, and will bring 88 homes to the little Athens neighborhood. The building is designed to reimagine the classic Greek column with its concave façade, and will provide future residents with their own private terraces as well as access to a shared garden, extending the vast Metropolitan Park to create an outdoor oasis.

BIG and NOT A HOTEL reveal a first look at their new collaboration in Japan. The lush and tranquil southwest cape of Sagi Island overlooking the Seto Inland Sea is reminiscent of the captivating beauty found in Japanese landscape paintings. The sculptural precision and simplicity envisioned by hospitality group NOT A HOTEL draws on influences from both Japanese and Danish architecture, and looks to spark a dialogue between the two.

The New York Times, along with major publications Bloomberg, Vogue and Condé Nast Traveler, name Quito, Ecuador as a top travel destination for 2024, noting BIG-designed projects in the design-oriented city, such as the IQON and EPIQ towers.

“When the brand-new 14-mile Metro line in Quito, Ecuador’s high-altitude capital, becomes fully operational this year, its 15 stations will connect the city from north to south, making it easier for travelers to explore — from the exquisitely preserved churches of the UNESCO-listed historic center to modern districts flaunting avant-garde towers designed by the likes of Bjarke Ingels and Moshe Safdie,” says the New York Times.

Partner and Head of Landscape Giulia Frittoli is featured on an episode of Urbanistica – Cities for People, a podcast exploring urban planning, architecture, and innovation. In the episode, Giulia speaks to host Mustafa Sherif about BIG’s masterplan for Toyota Woven City, and how the masterplan is dedicated to paving new paths for urbanity.

Elle Decor Italy’s selection of the most anticipated architectural projects of 2024 includes the BIG-designed One High Line in New York City.

Steps from New York’s High Line Park on Manhattan’s west side, the two towers at One High Line connect as they rise 300 and 400-feet in the sky. At the base, the two towers pull away from each other and the neighboring buildings to maximize urban space and views. The twisting geometry at the corners of the towers reduces the overall bulk of the buildings and creates additional separation between them.

“The sculptural form is a direct response to the site’s historic industrial heritage and contemporary architecture. It is the means, not the end. The resulting architecture merges the past and present of Chelsea into a new hybrid identity.” – Bjarke Ingels, Founder & Creative Director, BIG

Happy Holidays from BIG! Here’s to a bright, peaceful, and prosperous 2024.

In the 116th National Day address to an audience of 30,000, His Majesty King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck presented his vision for a new economic hub in Bhutan, the world’s first carbon-negative country. Located in the town of Gelephu in Southern Bhutan, the 1000+ km2 masterplan titled ‘Mindfulness City’ developed in collaboration with Arup and Cistri is informed by Bhutanese culture, the principles of Gross National Happiness index (GNH), and the country’s strong spiritual heritage.

Designed by BIG’s Landscape and Urban Design Team, the masterplan aims to lay the foundation for the country’s future growth, creating opportunities for the Bhutanese people through investments in green technology, education, and infrastructure. The masterplan includes a new international airport, railway connections, a hydroelectric dam, public spaces, and a language for local building typologies.

“The Gelephu Masterplan gives form to His Majesty’s vision to create a city that becomes a cradle for growth and innovation while remaining founded on Bhutanese nature and culture. We imagine the Mindfulness City as a place that could be nowhere else. Where nature is enhanced, agriculture is integrated, and tradition is living and breathing, not only preserved but also evolved. Shaped by waterways, Gelephu becomes a land of bridges, connecting nature and people, past and future, local and global. Like the traditional Dzongs, these inhabitable bridges turn into cultural landmarks, doubling as transportation infrastructure combined with civic facilities. Among these, the Sankosh Temple-Dam embeds the city’s fundamental values into a cascading landscape of steps and landings, that like a 21st century Tigers Nest will be a manmade monument to the divine possibility of a sustainable human presence on earth. Turning engineering into art and turning the forces of nature into power.” – Bjarke Ingels, Founder and Creative Director, BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group

Amidst the holiday season in New York City, artist Bruce Munro’s Field of Light opened to the public on the Freedom Plaza site. Field of Light, situated between 38th and 41st Streets east of First Avenue, features 18,750 low-light, fiber-optic stemmed spheres that illuminate with a slow, subtle change of hue. Guests are invited to walk the winding path through the ethereal painted landscape framed by the city’s skyline and East River waterfront.

The immersive installation was organized by The Soloviev Group, the developer proposing the Freedom Plaza development on the previously vacant six-acre site. Designed by BIG, Freedom Plaza is slated to include a publicly accessible greenspace, hotel and residential towers, a museum, retail, and a below-grade gaming area.

Field of Light is set to be open for one year.

Forbes Czech Republic visits the Copenhagen HQ and interviews Senior Architect Jan Magasanik about BIG’s design of the Vltava Philharmonic Hall in Prague. In the interview, Jan speaks about BIG’s practice, and describes how the new national concert hall will aim to become a focal point for the city, cementing Prague’s reputation as a European cultural capital.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has chosen 3D-printing technology company ICON among fourteen partners to build a framework for lunar architecture. The LunA-10 Lunar Architecture Study will run for seven months with the aim to “create a framework for interoperable commercial lunar architecture that will help to guide lunar research and investment over the next ten years.” 

As longtime partners, BIG and ICON have collaborated on projects both on Earth and in space. BIG worked with ICON to design Project Olympus, a lunar habitat intended to be built from lunar regolith using ICON’s 3D-printing technology. The habitat is designed to accommodate four astronauts for a period of up to a month at a time. BIG and ICON also collaborated on Mars Dune Alpha, a structure simulating life on Mars to facilitate future long-duration, explorative science missions, which is now housed at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX.

BIG Founder and Creative Director Bjarke Ingels joined Kathryn Murdoch and Ari Wallach, executive producers of the upcoming docuseries A Brief History of the Future, for a panel discussion hosted by Alan Henry at LiveWIRED in San Francisco. The trio gathered to discuss the idea of “protopias” and how the future can be reimagined using new technologies.

Bjarke will be featured on an episode of A Brief History of the Future, which follows thought-leaders working toward solving some of humanity’s greatest challenges by exploring innovative ways to think about the future. It is set to premiere on April 3^rd, 2024 on PBS.

LiveWIRED brings together leaders, innovators, creators and educators from tech, science, business, culture, politics and more to learn about today’s – and tomorrow’s – biggest tech trends, innovations and challenges. This year, WIRED celebrated its 30th anniversary at the event by showcasing the people, platforms, technologies and ideas that inspire.

Architectural Digest France includes BIG’s The Twist and Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet on their list of the 13 most impressive architectural museums in the world. 

Completed in 2020 for the namesake watch manufacturer, the Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet forms a spiral-shaped pavilion reminiscent of the spring in a timepiece movement, entirely supported by curved glass walls and offers visitors a unique opportunity to delve into the history of the craftsmanship. 

The Twist is situated in the Kistefos Sculpture Park and conceived as a beam, warped 90 degrees to create a sculptural form within the park and connect the two riverbanks: a museum, bridge and sculpture in one. 

As part of its year in review, Dezeen listed The Spiral as one of the top ten skyscrapers as well as one of the top ten architecture projects in the U.S. completed in 2023. As BIG’s first supertall, The Spiral neighbors the elevated High Line and Bella Abzug Park on Manhattan’s west side, extending the parks’ green space up and around its exterior in a spiraling motion towards the sky.

“The Spiral punctuates the northern end of the High Line, and the linear park appears to carry through into the tower, forming an ascending ribbon of lively green spaces, extending the High Line to the skyline. The Spiral combines the classic Ziggurat silhouette of the premodern skyscraper with the slender proportions and efficient layouts of the modern high-rise. Designed for the people who occupy it, The Spiral ensures that every floor of the tower opens up to the outdoors, creating hanging gardens and cascading atria that connect the open floor plates from the ground floor to the summit into a single uninterrupted workspace. The string of terraces wrapping around the building expands the daily life of the tenants to the outside air and light. As the trees and grasses, flowers and vines have taken root over the last two summers, The Spiral is slowly becoming an ascending ribbon of green wrapping around the entire silhouette of the tower – like a 1,000-foot-tall vine at the scale of the city’s skyline,” says Bjarke Ingels, Founder and Creative Director, BIG.

Danish supply chain company Dymak’s new HQ breaks ground in Odense. The 2800 m2 building is designed by BIG LEAP – our in-house Architecture, Landscape, Engineering and Product Design teams – and set to achieve DGBN Gold and Heart Certification.

Characterized by a circular shape and a grid-like facade, the building references the Danish architectural tradition of half-timbering. The facade consists of a series of 44 radial cross-laminated timber frames, topped with an undulating roof covered in PVCs, which are angled for harvesting solar energy throughout the year and to reduce noise pollution for the open-air courtyard at the heart of the HQ. The courtyard draws the surrounding nature into the HQ and doubles as an amphitheater for informal meetings and social events.

GQ Japan interviews Jakob Lange, Partner and Head of BIG’s Product Design team about BIG’s furniture collection for BoConcept, Nawabari. In the interview, Jakob dives into the inspiration behind the collection, collaborating with the Danish interior brand and how BIG merges architecture and furniture design.  

Major Australian publication The Australian highlights Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet and the neighbouring Hôtel des Horlogers in a feature story on the museum and hotel in the Vallée de Joux, Switzerland.

Located among the historical complex of workshops and factories in the village of Le Brassus, the Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet is a spiral-shaped pavilion that opened in 2020, reminiscent of the spring in a timepiece movement, entirely supported by curved glass walls. The addition of the zig-zagging Hôtel des Horlogers came to fruition just one year later, opening its doors in April of 2021.

For Sébastian Vivas, heritage and museum director at Audemars Piguet, the design fits with how he sees the museum and hotel – as a “living” experience: “Watchmaking is a living industry, connecting the past with the future. For our watchmakers, it is extremely inspiring to work in workshops surrounded by the masterpieces of their predecessors. For our visitors, it is key to be in contact with the artisans because our crafts are based on the transmission of know-how, passion, the [sharing] of ideas.”

Architectural Digest released its AD100 list for 2024, including Bjarke Ingels Group. AD100 is Architectural Digest’s annual selection of 100 creatives that represent today’s top talents in interior decoration, architecture and landscape design. For the 2024 edition, Architectural Digest highlights BIG’s first completed supertall tower, The Spiral, which debuted earlier this year in Manhattan, as well as BIG’s new offices in Barcelona and Los Angeles; IQON, the residential tower in Quito, Ecuador; and Wildflower Studios, the film studio in Queens, New York, built in collaboration with Adam Gordon and Robert De Niro that is slated to complete next year.

BIG NYC Partner Martin Voelkle sits down with USModernist Radio host George Smart for episode #329 of the architecture podcast. In the episode, Martin discusses his early days at BIG, the growth of the company and his journey to become a partner at the NYC office. Martin also breaks down some of BIG’s most notable projects and his involvement in BIG’s residential projects, highlighting the firm’s work with 3D printing construction company ICON to design and build habitats both on Earth and on the Moon.

BIG establishes a permanent presence in Oslo, Norway, led by Architect Viktoria Millentrup to be closer to collaborators and partners. BIG has completed several projects in the country, including The Plus, a BREEAM Outstanding-certified factory in the forest of Magnor, The Twist, a contemporary art museum in Kistefos, and Oslo Science City, a 1.4 million m2 innovation district.

BIG signs the Reduction Roadmap, a call to action for the Danish building sector to align all building industry actors with commitment to the Paris Agreement. Launched by Effekt, Artelia and Cebra, the Reduction Roadmap has been signed by 400+ companies, organizations, and municipalities and is developed in cross-sectoral partnerships with advisors, research institutes, architects, and NGOs within the building industry.

In a new documentary entitled “The City is Mine”, Korea’s regional broadcasting network KNN explores European cities to draw inspiration from for the redesign of South Korean coastal city Busan. The documentary visits Copenhagen to interview BIG Partner Catherine Huang and Associate Jinho Lee and highlights projects such as Superkilen, CopenHill, Copenhagen Harbor Bath, and Urban Rigger. 

The programming and development of Aarhus Ø’s Bassin 7 pier has been awarded the City’s highest honor for its exceptional attention to scale, architectural quality, and contribution to the built environment.

Asked to masterplan the entire island on the decommissioned pier in 2013, we worked together with Gehl Architects in designing the public spaces first and turning the leftover areas into plots for commercial and residential developments, secondly. Today, a public promenade activates the entire waterfront, zig-zagging along the pier and defining a series of new public spaces on land and on water.

Of the realized projects from the masterplan, SLETH’s residential project Karréerne as well as BIG’s Kampanilen and the Urban Life Huts are emphasized for how they consider the street level and frame a comfortable public space with views of the city, and shelter from the wind.

In its motivation, the Head of the Jury, City Architect Anne Mette Boye, further stated: “The work has been consistently and carefully done to develop the area over time as a welcoming destination for the residents of Aarhus as well as visitors. It is a great example of urban development where architectural approaches to buildings and urban spaces come together harmoniously. Even on a rainy November day, there’s a vibrant urban life.“

BIG’s Founder and Creative Director Bjarke Ingels was invited to speak at Stanford University’s School of Engineering and Doerr School of Sustainability in California for the inaugural Shimizu Distinguished Lecture. He spoke to attendees about BIG’s Plan for Planet initiative and how a carbon-neutral planet could be achieved, while addressing the fundamental challenges of modern living.

The Shimizu Distinguished Lecture series focuses on construction, sustainable design, architecture and related fields, and is supported by the Shimizu Corporation, which enables Stanford’s Civil & Environmental Engineering department to promote international collaboration between academia and industry by welcoming visitors who make distinctive contributions to civil or environmental engineering.

Forbes features BIG’s 8 House in their guide to experience the best of Danish design in Copenhagen. Completed in 2010, the mixed-use development combines three different types of residential housing as well as 10,000 m2 of retail and offices, organized around two smaller, more intimate courtyards. The complete structure is connected by a continuous green promenade and cycling path running from the ground to the 10th floor, which merges the calmness of suburban life with the energetic community of a big city.

BIG’s Product Design team has designed ‘The Sphere’, a stage installation for the Danish music trio WhoMadeWho’s world tour, which kicked off in Istanbul last month. Suspended above the stage, a 3.50-meter-large inflatable orb is used as a projection surface to create a three-dimensional audiovisual experience for the audience.  

“The WhoMadeWho scenography draws inspiration from our previous ventures into inflatable creations, like SKUM and THE ORB. With maximum visual impact, the inflatable sphere serves as a canvas for captivating three-dimensional video projections, elevating the concert experience to a new level.” – Jakob Lange, Partner & Head of BIG Products, BIG 

A recent Dezeen article reveals new images of the nearly completed exteriors of One High Line, located in Manhattan’s West Chelsea neighborhood. BIG’s twisting towers occupy a full city block between the High Line Park and the Hudson River, and are in good company near residential buildings by Jean Nouvel, Thomas Heatherwick, Zaha Hadid and Renzo Piano.

“The whole philosophy is that from this point of departure, the two towers tried to be good neighbors to each other,” Ingels told Dezeen. “It requires certain adjustments of proportions; those proportions trickled down and end up creating all these moments.”

The sculptural geometry of the two towers at One High Line is a direct response to their dense context. At the base, the two towers pull away from each other and the neighboring buildings to maximize urban space and views. The twisting geometry at the corners of the towers reduces the overall bulk of the buildings and creates additional separation between them. The façade design is inspired by the punched windows seen in the historic warehouses of the Meatpacking and West Chelsea neighborhoods.