Nuvo Magazine sat down with the Danish-born architect Bjarke Ingels to discuss his much talked about Vancouver House which officially kicked off pre-sales this week. Below, check out some of the highlights, including Ingels' clarification that the "twisting tower" all media outlets have named it to be, doesn't actually twist and how good architecture is like the game Twister:
On how the "twisting tower" doesn't twist: "It's not twisting—it's actually expanding. If you study the plans, there are no curves, no crooked lines, no diagonals. I think when people see it without understanding what it is they see, it looks as if it's twisting"
On rational vs. irrational architecture: "Either it's rational, analytical, and practical, but unimaginative and predictable, or it's spectacular, striking, mesmerizing, but impractical and overpriced. Either beautiful but dumb, or rational but boring. We're trying to use the rationality, the analysis, the practicality, as a driving force for making something interesting."
On how good architecture is like Twister: "In the beginning you have a stand-up pose, but then as you increase the demands, the stand-up pose no longer suffices and you find yourself in back-bending shapes with your face rubbing up against body parts of other players and it becomes fun and exciting. So the trick is to try to solve as many concerns, to address as many criteria as you can, and still hold the project together."
On the reinvention of a neighbourhood: "What we're trying to do here is reinvent the underside of the bridge as an urban canopy, to try to make it a lively place, just like Granville Island has found a way to turn the underside of a bridge into something interesting. In a climate like Vancouver's, having an umbrella over the street is maybe a good thing. It could be the Beach District, a new bustling neighbourhood."
On density and public backlash: "From a social perspective, from a cultural perspective, from an environmental perspective, from an economical perspective, density is simply good. You can do it in really bad ways, and that's maybe where [public anger] comes from. You can make really deep apartments that have no daylight. What we've done here is we've really tried to turn density into the driving force of a desirable neighbourhood."
On BIG's Calgary Telus Sky Tower: "In that sense it's a typical North American corporate core with a sleepy suburb around it. We're just trying to bring some of the residences into the downtown. And we're trying to do it in a way where the building doesn't become a Frankenstein, with a random head put on a random body."
Read the whole thing over at Nuvo Magazine.
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