BIG Time, the film about Bjarke Ingels, in cinemas now!
Bjarke Ingels, pushed by his parents into studying architecture, went on to join Rem Koolhaas's office before founding the practice PLOT with Julien de Smedt. Together they designed the first housing projects that launched the architect onto the international stage. Bjarke Ingels and Julien de Smedt then went their separate ways, and Bjarke created Bjarke Ingels Group, better known by its acronym, BIG.
Beyond the boldness of his projects, the Danish architect stands out for the way he communicates. He began by staging the design process itself, as in the video below of the 8 House, which you can see here as completed. True to his boyhood passions, he then published the comic-book-style monograph Yes Is More, which became a worldwide bestseller and was translated into several languages.
BIG has the image of a "successful" practice: the one that created a ski slope on top of a waste-to-energy plant, that will deliver the research centre for the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, and that is behind the EuropaCity project, the first version of which was unveiled in detail, as an exclusive, on Actuarchi.
Today, we are being offered a new side of Bjarke Ingels: that of a man born in 1974, who was followed for almost seven years by the director.
In this film, directed by Kaspar Astrup Schröder, the filmmaker follows Bjarke Ingels as he sets out to conquer America. This American adventure is not without consequences: when Bjarke is no longer working in Europe, things start to go wrong at the Copenhagen office.
The film avoids the tempting trap of showcasing his projects. Instead, it focuses on the man. We discover another side of him: someone who sacrifices his private life to his ambition of offering quality spaces to everyone.
The film immerses us in his moments of happiness as well as his difficulties: clients frightened by his daring choices, which struggle to find technical solutions; the headaches that followed his head injury; and the threats from lawyers, as the architect does not always follow the recommendations of the brief. The finalist architects for the MECA in Bordeaux must remember this well!
You can book your seat now, but be warned: it is showing only at the MK2 Beaubourg!
