Danish architect BjarkeIngels Named One of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential

Danish architect BjarkeIngels of architecture studio BIG, has been listed as one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2016. “Bjarke is the first major architect who disconnected the profession completely from angst,” writes Rem Koolhaas, Ingels’s former boss at OMA. In an introduction to the young architect. “On the contrary,” says Koolhaas, “he is the embodiment of a fully fledged new typology, which responds perfectly to the current zeitgeist.”

Ingels worked for Rem Koolhaas at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Rotterdam from 1998 to 2001, before founding PLOT with Belgian architect (and OMA colleague) Julien de Smedt. In 2006, the two parted ways, and Ingels went on to form the massively successful BjarkeIngels Group (BIG), which has since grown to more than 300 employees.

The recognition from TIME complements what has already been an impressive list of achievements for a year that has barely started. In 2016, BIG has been invited to design the 16th annual Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in 2016, and has proposed an unorthodox building compared to “an unzipped wall”, and has just about completed VIA, a giant residential tetrahedron that is its first building in New York. The firm has also announced the completion the Honeycomb building in the Bahamas, and been commissioned to design the new stadium for the Washington Redskins.
The TIME 100 List is not known for regularly honoring architects: in 2015 and 2014, none were included in the list. In 2013, the list included Chinese architect and Pritzker Prize winner Wang Shu.