File:Descending. bjarke ingels group, BIG, bighouse or 8-tallet, copenhagen 2006-2010 (4586495670).jpg

bighouse or 8-tallet, housing and offices, ørestad, copenhagen, denmark. architects: BIG, bjarke ingels group, 2006-2010.

ørestad represents some of the worst planning in northern europe since the fall of authoritarian communism. everything in it was wrong: the huge houses, the crane track urban spaces, the separation of functions. and yet every local architect played along and built their own version of the acontextual big box.

bjarke ingels even built three, but he and his offices BIG and PLOT have in all three projects engaged critically with the deadening surroundings by turning the urbanism inward and each time creating a complex weave of functions and spaces within the perimeter of their site.

but I repeat myself.

I still have my doubts about the size of the thing. why should the hard-won lessons of late modernism not apply to BIG? yet, even if this house looks like nothing you've ever seen before, moving around its ramps and stairs offers all the excitement of great architecture. we spent hours there.

our final descent revealed how much bjarke and his crew have made of the edge condition. the open land in front of the house is protected and the view south continues all the way to the northern coast of germany.

what is more, the route we had traversed which so radically opens up the housing block is the best medicin I have seen so far against the medieval closing off of new buildings and institutions, against the world of gated communities, walls and moats being offered by other architects. instead, bjarke ingels gives us optimism and a novel take on nordic humanism. in ørestad, everyone is waiting to see if he will succeed. if you have the opportunity, get out there now and make up your own mind.

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