Nordic Portraits
Nordic Portraits is a series of one-on-one conversations with Scandinavian artists, exploring topics ranging from how they approach their craft through to their personal experiences with success, failure, collaborations, triumphs, setbacks and everything in between. Discover nordic culture through the eyes of its leading artists. Music by Nina Liv. Visuals by Frame CPH.
Nordic Portraits
Bjarke Ingels
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Bjarke Ingels is a world-renowned architect who has spent the past two decades building a reputation as one of the leading forces in the design and construction of buildings globally. In 2005, he founded BIG: Bjarke Ingels Group, which today comprises more than 700 employees and has been responsible for many of the world’s most innovative and striking architectural designs. In addition, Bjarke has published a number of critically acclaimed books and in 2016, was named as one of TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People.
Explore more of Bjarke's work here
Somehow, always the art that moves me is art that expands my perception of the world. It can unlock entire bandwidths that might simply have been ignored by me in the past. And now that I've been awakened, my world is the richer for it.
NPThat was Biaga Ingles, and this is Lord Portraits. Bjaga Ingles is a world-renowned architect who has spent the past two decades building a reputation as one of the leading forces in the design and construction of buildings globally. In 2005, he founded BIG, Biaga Ingles Group, which today comprises more than 700 employees and has been responsible for many of the world's most innovative and striking architectural designs. In addition, Biaga has published a number of critically acclaimed books, and in 2016 was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people. Biaga, welcome to Nordic Portraits. Thank you. Happy to be here. Biaga, I wondered if we could start by going way back to the very early days of you growing up in the northern suburbs of Copenhagen, where a certain kindergarten assistant managed to capture your attention. His name was Saran, and his drawing and storytelling had you captivated. And I just wondered what you remember about him that connected with you so deeply at a young age.
SPEAKER_00No, that's amazing. Uh you did some serious research. But there was actually a CERN. I think I was seven and he was uh seventeen. And he was uh you know, we have this sometimes high school kids get gigs and these kind of daycare facilities. And just because he was he was so good at drawing and he would do these incredibly detailed drawings, but always with the kind of voiceover of him narrating what was going on, and just to sit next to him and watch him draw, and also try to guess what he was about to draw. Like for quite a while, he would almost leave you guessing what is this gonna turn into, and then eventually you started understanding what it was, and then he would also contradict uh the expectations by transforming the drawing in the process, and there was just something magical about this idea that with a pen and paper and a lot of imagination, you could create worlds, and not only does the in this case the drawer have the ability to steer the narration, but the audience with their enthusiasm or with their suggestions could actually have a meaningful influence on what this was turning in to be. So you could spend hours just watching one of these drawings happen, and then one lucky kid would be the recipient of that drawing. So um it kept me going for hours, and I think in that sense, whatever calls your attention is where you end up investing a lot of energy and focus, and I think that basically pushed me in the direction of becoming better and better at drawing.
NPYou said in the past that drawing has been like an anchor in your life.
SPEAKER_00How so? No, it's you know, like when you're a kid and you grow up, and and I have two siblings. My sister was a great musician. I also had five years of piano lessons, and I have nothing to show for it. And uh, and my little brother is sort of the athlete mathematician uh of the uh he was an incredible gambler. He made a fortune on playing poker in high school. So um, and for me it was drawing, so that just meant I didn't really need to prove myself in anything. It was okay because I just knew that my identity was somehow anchored in my ability to draw. I definitely have other skills as well, but it just felt so good to have one superpower that somehow that you could be comfortable with in almost like a home. And by having a solid anchor, you can definitely be a lot more adventurous and try things and fail, and it doesn't matter because your whole identity is not being tested all the time.
NPWhen you went on exchange as a young man of 18, it seems that your experience in Barcelona was somewhat of an epiphany or an awakening to architecture. Was that the first time you gained an understanding of what architecture was capable of? And what was it about Barcelona as a place that so struck you?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yes. So uh truth be told, I went to uh Barcelona for the first time at the age of 18 as a study trip, but I didn't return as an exchange student until I was 21. But I somehow made the commitment uh already uh at 18 because it was basically like the first month of architecture school, they organized a study trip to go to Barcelona, and this was in uh in the fall of 1993. Barcelona had just hosted the Olympics in 1992. They had made one of the most, you know, Barcelona is probably the one city in the world that really truly managed to harness the power and resource and energy and investment of an Olympics, not to produce an enormous hangover, but actually to fix a lot of things. And I would say in the early fall of 1993, Barcelona was probably one of the most modern cities in the world. It also has an amazing public space. They had done this renovation where they almost like I think they used the term urban acupuncture, they basically just demolished condemned buildings and replaced them with inexpensive public space. You know, a building is expensive, uh, a nice pavement and some trees and a and a cool bench cost almost nothing. So they really levered the increase in quality that comes by making these surgically inserted acupunctural public spaces to raise the value because all the buildings around suddenly they're facing a public space. That means that the ground floors probably lend themselves to become cafes and little restaurants. Uh, suddenly everything starts teaming with life. The value of those buildings go up. That probably means that the owners can start renovating them. And suddenly you create this kind of impact that emanates from the public spaces throughout the city fabric. And finally, of course, I discovered Gaudi and Enrique Miraes, the kind of contemporary Gaudia of the time. And it dawned on me that architecture, because I had almost stumbled upon architecture as the closest thing to uh drawing cartoons that I could find. But now I kind of returned from Barcelona with this awareness that architecture could be magical. It could really be about turning dreams into reality or turning fiction into fact. I actually just met with the chief architect of Cegada Familia uh last week in Barcelona. We have a studio there now, and um, I'm trying to bring him to America for an event. And uh he spent the last 35 years of his life making this incredible marvel of architecture, engineering, design, art come true. And he will probably be the one, I think he's the 10th or maybe 12th, I can't remember, of chief architects that have followed since Gaudi. And he's probably gonna be the one to uh cross the finish line, which is amazing. And even to this day, even though it's one of the oldest building sites I've ever been to, it's probably also one of the most sophisticated. You know, they've gone through so many periods, it'll be almost 150 years when they finish, right? So many periods. Even Gaudi started working with concrete, actually, uh reinforced concrete, and they've actually had to renovate some of that because the rebar is beginning to uh to rust. And now they're actually the latest sections of the spires have been made with pre-tentioned bundles of stone. So actually going back to structural stone. So they started building with stone, then they went through concrete for some decades, and now the last uh element is this kind of ultra-sophisticated new way of building with structural stone. So, in that sense, long story short, Barcelona kind of derailed my original intentions of just spending a few years getting good at drawing buildings and landscapes and then going back to uh cartoons or graphic novels. It derailed that intention and really got me hooked on trying to figure out what kind of a medium, what kind of an art form is this uh this whole architecture thing.
NPSo you return to Denmark and complete your studies, and then in the subsequent years start your own studio, Bjage Ingelsgroup or Big. And it seems like from the outset you were doing something very different to what was considered the norm. How would you describe the Danish architectural landscape at that time?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, obviously, uh Denmark is a nation and a culture very well versed in uh design and architecture. You know, just like French people supposedly can taste the difference between different kinds of mineral water, or at least wine. Danes, like your Mr. and Mrs. Hansen, can definitely tell and name the designers of Danish modern classic furniture. You know, the Wiener, the Jacobsen, the Kerholm. Like it people know this by heart. And the funny thing is, like I grew up in a typical Danish home, and I thought it was kind of old-fashioned, but I realized that the Danish old-fashioned, which is basically Barmonsen, Wiener, Jakobsen, uh Kerholm, is very different from the American or even French old-fashioned, which is uh a whole different animal, right? But Denmark had probably at its time, and we're talking um early 2000, basically the turn of the millennium, Danish architecture had probably lost some of its vitality and had degenerated into some kind of a stylized version of high modernism, where it was mostly about the detailing of rather unambitious, you could say boring boxes. And meanwhile, in Holland, which is probably the nation on earth most similar to Denmark, but with some significant differences, where Danes are more fishermen and farmers, the Dutch are for sure merchants. It's a much more commercial, much more in some way, much more cosmopolitan. We're in the outskirts of Europe, they're like in the heart of it, right? And they're like especially Ren Kohlhaas and a group of like-minded architects were beginning to harness the forgotten project of modernism and this idea that you could actually use technology, industrial materials to create the framework for the life you want to live, like uh in a much more blatant way, maybe inspired a little bit by constructivism from the heydays of the Soviet Union, and really use architecture to do something, to create connections, also embrace all the aspects of society. You know, like I like to say that when I was studying architecture at the architecture school, the typical thesis project was to do a refuge for poets on the edge of some kind of pristine landscape. Uh, you know, like somehow projects that were sort of poetical and kind of wonderful, but also weren't really about solving any kind of societal issues. Whereas in Holland they took interest in uh, you know, flood levees and gas stations and parking lots and shopping malls and like all the kind of elements of society that had been abandoned by architecture as being too profane or too mundane, but to actually find meaning in mediocrity and actually find poetry in the everyday. So, so in some way, inspired by that energy, I started sort of addressing some of the things you saw happening in in Denmark. And my my thesis project was actually taking like Udestadt was this incredibly unpopular for a lot of good reasons, by the way. Uh idea of extending the new uh subway into a strip of nature and sell off the lots to fund the building of the subway, some kind of public-private partnership. And um, no one took any interest, but it was clear that it was going to happen no matter what. So I tried to see if you could actually, out of this kind of let's say, mediocrity or generic condition, extrapolate or extract some kind of programmatic alchemy by mixing places for living, places for working, places for parking, places for shopping, places for culture, places for sports, in some kind of alchemical mixture where you create, if not gold, then at least some kind of added social value by bringing all these differences together. Almost like saying where nothing is, potentially everything is possible. So why don't we take advantage of it?
NPBut that takes an incredible amount of vision and courage to break away from the status quo. Where do you think that comes from?
SPEAKER_00I would say in many ways, I I am uh incredibly Danish, and and I and I realized that because I I always felt, of course, critical or somehow in opposition to a lot of the norms. But at the same time, when I moved to New York in 2010, I realized how Danish I truly am. You know, things that we tend to take for granted here, like social responsibility, environmental awareness, were suddenly radical stances in an American context. Just like on the backbone, we would always try to make the public spaces as inviting and engaging as possible. You know, we've created buildings where you can walk and bicycle to the penthouse and down again here in Copenhagen. But in New York, the discussion was always we don't want to make it too inviting because we don't really want people to uh there's an English term for loiter. Loiter, exactly. You didn't want anyone to loiter, which is the exact opposite of how we would think about it, right? But I do think that where a typical mindset tends to be either or, uh I often find that I understand both sides. And in that sense, the one thing that I think permeates all of our work, everything that I've done since I started is maybe this fondness for the oxymoron. The oxymoron, a term that consists of seemingly contradictory or mutually exclusive elements, but that nonetheless works and exists. And when you can find an oxymoron, when you can create an oxymoron, something that embodies seemingly opposite elements, you have a very, very interesting way forward. So in that sense, I think I never joined one of the sides. I always felt that there was actually a third way, and that's why often both sides would see me as part of the opposite side, which is why I very early earned the the moniker provocateur, which I found so uh strange because I was always trying to find a solution because I could really understand both sides, and you and you know, an oxymoron is almost the opposite of a compromise, right? Because a compromise, you could say, is the result where everybody is equally disappointed. Where to me, the oxymoron is where everybody is fully fulfilled, but but strangely, I then ended up almost being sort of seen as part of the other side, uh, which uh which maybe is kind of un-Danish, because like Danes famously in Danish culture, disagreement is almost embarrassing. That's why our political parties always end up cell dividing after a few years, they spin off into two new directions. And at this point, I almost lost track of how many political parties we have, because after each election, one of them is gonna sell divide because of some disagreement. And and I think in that sense, it of course results in uh you know structure of parliament where somehow you gravitate towards the middle, which in many ways seems more productive than the kind of partisan structure of other parliaments. But it is somehow this idea that disagreement is almost embarrassing, and we almost can't be in the same room if we don't basically agree about everything. And I think that's basically where Danish culture, definitely, could learn a little bit from more diverse societies.
NPIt's a profound concept. And of course, you've also spoken in the past about this notion of hedonistic sustainability. An oxymoron, exactly. Can you share an example of how that looks in practice?
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, but you can say hedonistic sustainability, you can also say utopian pragmatism is a sort of oxymoron. I think, I mean, the first time I realized that there was something such as hedonistic sustainability was when we did the Copenhagen harbor bath. Investments had been made in uh surface water sewers drainage. It sounds very boring, but but essentially rather than letting all of the port areas or the stormwater overflow and wash into the port, which makes the port water dirty, to drain it into the drains and into the sewers. And to everybody's surprise, in just a few years, that meant that the port water of Copenhagen became so clean that you could swim in it. And our first project in 2001 was essentially to uh create the Isensburger Harbor Bath that extended the life of the city into the water around it. And and by the way, something that we had nothing to do with apart from designing the bath. Like uh the investments in drains had been done uh way before. But it became so blatantly obvious when everybody, like when the Copenhageners didn't have to drive for hours to get to Norscheland, uh North Sealand, but could literally jump in the port in the middle of the city. And it became so clear that a clean port is not only nice for the fish, it's amazing for the people that inhabit it. An environmentally progressive city is not only nice for the environment or important for the environment, it's incredible for the people that inhabit it. And it suddenly dawned on me that maybe instead of the whole discussion about sustainability had to do about sacrifice or how much sacrifice are we willing to endure? Like how much of our quality of life are we willing to sacrifice to afford being sustainable? No, what if it's like the sustainable city is much nicer? So why don't we have a sustainable city than an unsustainable one? What would be more magical than a city where it's so clean you can swim in the port? And that just told me that maybe sustainability could be a design challenge, a design opportunity. And maybe the way you win the battle is not by scaring people into submission, but by actually seducing them into wanting uh what's good for them and what's good for the planet.
NPYou mentioned earlier that you were dubbed the provocateur or contrarian or however people might define it, and you have, with these bold projects and radical approach, garnered your fair share of critics along the way. I just wondered, as a creative, how do you deal with criticism? Is it something that you always take on board or are you careful to qualify it? Do you have a small select team of people that you trust to give you good input? Because presumably you have to be rather robust and resilient to stay the course and realize these projects in the face of what I'm sure is many setbacks along the path.
SPEAKER_00No, exactly. And and I think um you can say like there's all kinds of criticism, right? And maybe just first of all, the way the way we work, the way we design, uh, is actually that we have critiques. Uh so we meet with each other and our collaborators and you know, our clients, city architects, etc. And we basically criticize the work we have achieved so far. So critique is the fundamental act of designing that you try to see how can it be better, you try to sort of turn devil's advocate on the proposition. And by actually playing around, by criticizing heavily our own work and each other's work, um, the quality of the work increases, the project matures. Sometimes it's like a gradual evolution, and sometimes you have like almost catastrophic moments where you do a 180 and you realize it's in a completely different place. So, in that sense, there wouldn't be great design without great criticism. Secondly, of course, the the criticism needs to be well informed, and to some extent, well-intended. It doesn't necessarily, you know, even not well intended criticism can be productive, but it has to be well informed. And very often, especially in the world of social media, there's like an enormous amount of wrong information and also sort of poorly formed, poorly informed opinions that that you essentially just Ignore. However, I would say the role, and you can say, like when you are younger, up and coming architect, and no one really gives a shit, then you uh go into the cultural section of the newspaper, typically the third section, and uh the third section is subjects like sunny journalism, what you could call puff pieces, sort of everything is nice because nothing really matters. I'm not saying this is my opinion, but um that's somehow how it is, right? So then as you um graduate through life and you start having more impact, more notoriety, then you somehow migrate into the first section, the grown-up section, with politics, economics, uh, etc. And there the tone suddenly gets incredibly harsh. And uh there was definitely a kind of growing up that had to happen. And I think in my case, my arrival into the first section of the news uh was when in 2020, like basically a month before COVID, um, I was in the north of Brazil. I met with the Minister of Tourism and Culture. I presented an insight on what's happening in North Brazil, one of the most economically challenged parts of the world, but also with some of the most incredible biological resources in terms of biodiversity, the Amazon, incredible dunes, wetlands. Uh, it's a stunning part of the world. And they were suffering from um slash and burn agriculture, poverty, and were maybe about to make some short-term decisions about putting ugly high rises on the beaches. And I was making this presentation in the line of hedonistic sustainability that actually to preserve the value of the biodiversity and the landscapes they have, and to resist conventional development would be their greatest value proposition. In a way, what would have most ecological value would also have the most economic value. That was the thesis. And it was anchored in various reference projects and our journey through the north of Brazil. And then um the next morning, the Minister of Tourism and Culture says, like, we would actually love to bring you to Brazilian so you can show this to the president. Because we think there's some really interesting points here. And I thought this is an amazing opportunity to influence the democratically elected leader of Brazil. And I did it. And we were promised 15 minutes. We ended up having like 50 minutes. It was actually a great conversation with a whole cabinet of people, and it results in um it results in a photo where I'm standing next to uh President Jair Bolsonaro, one of the most controversial presidents that that I didn't elect, uh, but the Brazilian people did. But I did take the opportunity to speak my mind to him. And that photo was quickly cropped. It was like maybe 12 people on the photo. It was cropped down to me and uh Bolsonaro standing next to each other. Uh, it looks like we're sort of in a lineup for a free kick in football because uh we're both sort of holding our hands in front of our crotches, and it created this kind of drama with no one having any interest in where was this photo taken? What was the nature of the meeting? It was just all kinds of uh crazy speculation stated as if it was fact about me being incredibly engaged with uh with the president of Brazil. So um, and I started thinking, should I have refused to take the meeting? Should I at least have refused to take the photo? Like, you know, what should I have done? What was there to learn? And maybe I should just step away a little bit and just make some nice little cultural gems here and there. Uh but at the same time, I was also thinking, like, um, if if you do have something to say, and I do think that it would have been valuable if a point of view like the one I presented had informed some of uh Bolsonaro's policymaking, at least that of his cabinet. So shouldn't I actually welcome these opportunities to actually have what I would see as a positive influence on, in this case, the fate of the Brazilian Amazon? And I and I concluded that probably I should. So maybe I shouldn't be limited by whatever uninformed, ignorant criticism anyone could make about me, but I should at least make sure that when I expose myself to such criticism, that I do it for all the right reasons. So I think in that sense, the kind of energy and antagonism, even if it is very often remarkably uninformed, even from legacy media, it does at least force you, before you expose yourself to the risk, to be certain what are your motives for this? What are you trying to achieve? Is it is it actually valuable and and is it for all the right reasons? So in that sense, it yeah, it can it it forces you to audit and edit your intentions and the change that you potentially can have in the world. So ultimately a good thing, but it comes in the form of something very stressful and sometimes very uh unpleasant.
NPWell, what you talk about there is very much speaking to something that you've articulated in the past, which is the importance of leading with your heart. How have you been able to keep that as a focal point, given that you're leading such a big company with so many demands? How do you stay in touch with your own heart and be guided by your real intentions?
SPEAKER_00And I I think um I think, of course, as you grow and evolve, also as an organization, you constantly encounter that you need to add a little more structure. And I've always tried to resist it. In some way, I had the idea that once you write something down, it's already dead. Uh, I don't know that that's true anymore. But uh in the beginning, I was definitely resisting. Like anyone who tried to give me some structured advice would say you need to have some company values, a mission statement, a vision statement, you need to make some five-year plans. And the first five years, it was clearly impossible to do either of that. And then, of course, then I realized once you've existed for five years, you start actually being able to imagine another five years because you know what five years is. And in that sense, we slowly started trying to crystallize who we are and how we see the world and how we see our role in the world more and more. But I think always try to leave things as open as possible because the future is very open-ended and incredibly hard to predict. So you don't want to limit future outcomes to your best guess right now because you have very limited information about what's coming down the line. So, in that sense, to be incredibly thoughtful and not over-prescriptive about who and what we are. And then I would say at the end of the day, you know, the intellect is an incredible tool. But it is a tool, it's not the truth, but it's a way to create clarity, it's a way to analyze, to dissect a problem into its constituent parts, it's a way to create an overview. But in the end, when it becomes time to take a decision, you have to take it from somewhere else. Whether it's the gut, the heart, whatever. I think by now there's even scientific proof that your biome in your actual gut has a lot of direct channels through your nervous system to actual decision making. So this idea of trusting your gut is more than just a metaphor, it's also a biological fact. And I think in that sense, just to remember, it's almost like when you look at it etymologically, that you can use words. And words are essentially phonemes that relate to a certain grouping of meaning. And you can make a sentence by stringing these phonemes, these words, together, and it communicates something to a person reading or listening to it. But you have to remember that words are to reality or to meaning what Lego bricks are to reality. And if you are an incredible Lego builder, you can definitely make a compelling model of a T-Rex skeleton or uh the Eiffel Tower, but it won't be a T-Rex skeleton and it won't be the Eiffel Tower, it will be an incredibly brilliant Lego model, and in the same way, the most eloquent, most poetic, most aphoristic sentence is not equal to its underlying meaning, it is the best approximation you could achieve with the toolbox of words that we have been given. And some people are masters at this, and we call them poets or writers or philosophers. But um just to always understand that our intellect, the work that we do, it's not a process where there is an automatic outcome, and you can just start the process and then trust the outcome. You always have to evaluate, assess critically the outcome, and you have to make uh some choices from the heart or the gut or wherever that authority resides.
NPBut is it not hard to continuously question or reassess your assumptions this far into your career when you've experienced so much success?
SPEAKER_00Ah, but I think um Darwin has taught us that uh life is always evolving, the world is always evolving. Things that were very true 25 years ago might not be true today, or things that were impossible 25 years ago might not be impossible today. So, in that sense, I'm seeing that we do still sort of revolve around a lot of the same fundamentals. So you can say like a lot of the questions remain the same, but the possible answers are not. And also new questions, new conflicts, new challenges arise that require new answers. So the subject matter is constantly renewing itself. Even an interesting uh example, like one of our first projects ever was this project called Better Cheaper Housing, where we got the idea to use greenhouse construction because we realized how inexpensive greenhouses are, because you it's a building type that you use to make square kilometers of tomato fields or tulip fields. So it's highly optimized at scales that dwarf you know human architecture. So we thought we could build incredibly inexpensive greenhouses, and inside them, we could use stick-built timber construction, but suddenly inside, even though you're building in Denmark, you suddenly have Spanish climate. That's why you can grow tomatoes in a greenhouse in Denmark, like you can outside in Spain, because you have a much milder climate. It's dry, it's much more temperate, you don't have the freezing temperatures, and you don't have the howling wind and the slush and the rain. You also get dry construction, so you can build much more effectively. You don't have to stop when it's snowing or raining. But of course, it was a it was a radically different way of living. You had much more volume, you had this kind of strange winter garden around the homes, and the homes were built out of wood. All of it, I think we made a very, very compelling case. It was a two-stage competition. We ended up getting a second prize. So acknowledging all the technical creative brilliance, but probably a bit too far-fetched. Um, today, 25 years later, we've somehow resurrected some of those ideas, and we're incredibly close to realizing not just one, but actually a handful of these kind of experimental multifamily homes where a community in mass timber villages inside this kind of warm coat. And actually, when you look, I'm looking out the window here, you can see in Copenhagen, people are beginning to build with timber construction, they have to build these enormous tents to keep the timber dry while you're building. You get that tent from the greenhouse, of course. And also, we can reach life cycle analysis of the carbon footprint embodied and operational carbon footprint combined, that are absurdly low, like below uh two kilos per square meter. So just suddenly something that was too radical, too outrageous 25 years ago, suddenly, because the environmental agenda has changed, comfort around building with wood again has changed, LCA issues are becoming much more present in people's minds. Suddenly, uh what was like too avant garde to almost be taken serious suddenly could actually be a valid answer 25 years later. So, in that sense, I do think that the constantly evolving spirit of the time, the changing climate, the actual climate, but also the economic climate, uh, the social climate, all of those changes suddenly mean that we're never practicing architecture in the same place because everything is always changing.
NPI've heard you speak in the past, Biaga, about how science fiction has provided a huge inspiration for you. I was just curious what else from the world of art fuels your inspiration and how you synthesize that into your practice as an architect.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I would say like um in terms of art, it's uh it's interesting. I've been uh I just submitted for print the last issue of uh Domus 2025, where I've been the guest editor for for 10 issues. Um, which I have to say is there is a reason that being uh an editor of a magazine uh is a full-time job because it is a full-time job. And Domus is this 98-year-old Italian architecture art and design magazine founded by Gipponti. So it's it's some big shoes to fill. And we chose the subject of materialism, trying to sort of, in a way, recuperate materialism from being associated with this kind of negative connotation of empty consumerism to maybe uh reminding people of a fundamental worldview where our society has been shaped by the materials we've known how to harvest and source and manipulate to create the world we want to live in. So we went through this chronological journey from stone, earth, wood, glass, etc. etc. And ending up with recyclate is the last issue that we just put on the streets. Recyclate is the material, it's the noun that describes material that results from a process of recycling. So a kind of umbrella term. But um as part of it, we've always like included a handful of artists that are somehow practicing within this material framework. And and I think it's interesting that somehow always the art that moves me is art that expands my perception of the world. So it can be a piece of music that uh attunes your ear to sounds that you might find disharmonious or even noise, but suddenly, through the intervention of the composer or the musician, it somehow heightens your sensibility, it opens your awareness to the beauty of those sounds. And the same can be true for storytelling, for photography, for painting, sculpture. Because what's true is that after you've been exposed and affected, you can no longer look at the world or listen to the world without having now expanded your perception of the world to include the potential beauty or harmony in those visuals or in those situations or and those sounds. So I think in that sense, that is definitely a role that art plays for me is that it can simply make my world bigger, it can expand my perception, my senses of the world, and make it richer. It can unlock entire bandwidths or parts of spectra that might simply have been ignored by me in the past, and now that I've been awakened, my world is the richer for it. It sounds almost spiritual. It is somehow like you can say, I've also had this kind of experience throughout my life, and I'm 51 now. But there's definitely been these kind of moments of leaps. Um my first year in Barcelona when I was 22 was such a leap, and there's been a handful of leaps, but like moments where you somehow yeah, it's it's as if you stumble upon an ore of nourishment, richness, uh intellectual, artistic, philosophical wealth, and it just opens a whole avenue, and suddenly, because like sometimes you think, ah, I've seen it all, blah blah blah, and all that sort of you can go a little bit sort of within the same, and you feel it's a little depleted, then maybe you start like going a little bit into entertainment or whatever, like yeah, and then suddenly you can strike an or, and then suddenly you are sort of amazed at how uh how rich and wonderful and abundant the world is again. And often it can be exactly the encounter of a philosopher or or an idea or some kind of a practitioner that that expands your mind, and suddenly you see something, you discover something that you actually had no idea existed, or you've actually maybe been coexisting with it for so long it just didn't really uh register as if it didn't exist. Just like clearly, even in physics, massive parts of the universe are somehow, you know, the term dark matter is this idea that there's an enormous amount of matter that that does exist, but it's somehow unavailable to us. The same is true in in our everyday, there's always so much out there that we just simply don't register, and when we suddenly do stumble upon it, it uh it's opening a a world in front of us.
NPJust as we draw to a close, Biaga, you alluded to the fact that you recently turned 50. If we were to propose that that marks the next chapter or the second half of your career, has your motivation or purpose changed over the years? Or is it the same today as it was when you started big?
SPEAKER_00Um I think definitely in the beginning. In the beginning, you You have sort of what feels like an infinite amount of capacity, but uh almost nowhere to channel it. So uh you are somehow constantly trying to be put to good use. You're trying to qualify for someone to entrust you with somehow showing what it is that you can do. And and in that sense, it's probably not a coincidence that my first book in the form of a graphic novel was called Yes Is More. Uh, because I just felt that by saying yes to all these different, even the boring commissions, like a parking lot with some apartments next to it, could suddenly turn into a mountain of houses with gardens. So this idea of inclusivity, uh engagement, saying yes. And I would say probably the in the second half, I've now assembled a team of far more than 500 architects. We can we've worked together for like a quarter of a century, and we're being entrusted with um difficult and and amazing tasks. Anyway, like we're finally there where we're beginning to get all the all the opportunities we always dreamt that maybe one day we could. So I think at this point it's really less about raising your hand and getting to the board, if you say that in in English schools, it's more about actually really focusing on the challenges that we've been entrusted with, and then to make sure that we that we really focus on making sure that all that trust is rewarded with making sure that all the values, all the knowledge, you could say even all the like kind of life wisdom that we've accumulated somehow is used to enrich what we end up doing now that we finally have the opportunity to do it. And part of that is of course to start to discriminate more about what merits our attention so that we can be fully present in the responsibilities we take upon our shoulders. And then I think secondly, or in extension, maybe like I would actually say that it was somehow my first year of being 50 that I became, I served as the guest editor of Domus, which has been enjoyable because I've been able to reach out to architects, designers, artists that I love and admire, often from a distance. Sometimes I've met them, but now I've at least I've met them through this process and point to their work and also explain why to me that's very meaningful and important work. And I just know that had I been given this opportunity 10 years ago, I would have been incredibly tempted to to uh ram our own work into uh to the magazine. But now, actually, um with some mixture of satiation and I don't know, experience, maybe wisdom, but probably satiation as the most important term. I have so much enjoyed pointing the light at the work of others and in a way try to highlight the similarities or or at least the things that I admire about what they do, not that it's necessarily the same as what we're trying to do, but but somehow it's in alignment, even if it's a radically different stance, it somehow points towards a future that I would like to be part of. So, in that sense, where you can maybe say the first half of your career, you're trying to sort of highlight your uniqueness in an attempt to get a gig. But maybe now uh I am maybe more interested or fascinated by the by the similarities in order to maybe paint a much bigger, more holistic picture of where we could all be heading or going.
NPWell, we look forward to seeing how this new perspective plays out in terms of your work in the years to come. Biaga, I just want to thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts on your career and your life with us today. It's been a pleasure. Nordic Portraits is a series by me, Ben Catford. The music was composed by Nina Leal and the visual identity by Copenhagen Bass Studio Frame. To learn more about today's guest and all the others from this season, visit Nordicportraits.net. You can also follow us on Instagram and remember to rate and subscribe on iTunes so we can get the word out. Thanks for listening.