Today we reveal that Bjarke Ingels will be on the cover of the next issue of Surface, with a profile by the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Spencer Bailey, and portraits of Ingels by Andrew Zuckerman. The story explores the swift growth of Ingels’s architecture firm, Bjarke Ingels Group (or BIG), which over the past decade has become known worldwide for its boundary-pushing buildings. Once considered a sort of wunderkind-playboy of architecture, Ingels, now 43, has since matured, with his firm evolving into a dynamic, corporate-scale operation with 12 partners, roughly 500 employees, and offices in Copenhagen, New York City, and London. BIG currently has 50 projects in development, with 20 of them under construction, including the ARC waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen (a tree-filled ski slope and hiking area, to be open year-round, will zag down its facade); headquarters for Google in Mountain View, California, and London (both in collaboration with the British designer Thomas Heatherwick); and a school for WeWork’s new educational enterprise, WeGrow. Bailey tracks how Ingels—through playful, attention-grabbing designs, an affable and alluring personality, and media savvy—has propelled both himself and BIG to become a dominant force. Ingels is, without question, an architect for and of the people, a master of the masses, a designer driving us far into the future.
Be among the first to get your hands on a copy by ordering the issue before April 13.
(Clockwise from top left: Frederiksborgvej social-housing complex in Copenhagen, photo by Rasmus Hjortshoj; the Shenzhen International Energy Mansion in China, photo by Chao Zhang; the Tirpitz Museum in Blåvand, Denmark, photo by Rasmus Hjortshoj; the ARC waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen, photo by Soren Aagaard; the under-construction Maison de l’economie Creative et de la Culture en Aquitaine, or MECA, in Bordeaux, France, photo courtesy BIG; the private dining room at the newly relocated and reopened Noma in Copenhagen, photo by Jason Loucas; Lego House in Billund, Denmark, photo by Kim Christensen.)
