4 Short Films Highlights Trailblazing Architecture of Bjarke Ingels Group

As part of Design Is Human week, MA presents a series of four short films and clips highlighting the trailblazing architecture of BIG. Bjarke Ingels also appears in the Kaspar Astrup Schröder film, MY PLAYGROUND, which debuts in Atlanta at the Plaza Theater (details at bottom) as part MA’s collaboration with Objective Cinema.

Bjarke Ingels started BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) in 2005, after co-founding PLOT Architects in 2001 and working at OMA in Rotterdam. Through a series of award-winning design projects and buildings, Bjarke Ingels has created an international reputation as a member of a new generation of architects that combines shrewd analysis, playful experimentation, social responsibility and humor.

MTN-MY PLAYGROUND
Loop City
XPO Bike Tour
8 House

Sponsored by AIA Atlanta Chapter




Loop City Rendering, courtesy BIG

Loop City

7 minutes
The industrial areas in the Copenhagen suburbs are next in line for urban development. A new light rail is planned to interconnect 20 development zones with a total area of 11 Km2, the size of the entire inner city. BIG propose to turn the light rail line into a spine of dense urbanity with a series of peaks at the stations.

By combing the rail with strategies for energy exchange, waste management, water treatment and electric car stations, the infrastructure could become the base for a new sustainable ring of development around Copenhagen, and an artery of true urbanity pumping life into the heart of the suburbs. At certain points the rail becomes a building itself almost like a Roman aqueduct passing through the suburbs, at other points it forms small pockets of urbanity around the stations.


courtesy BIG

BIG propose to upgrade the planned light rail by extending it to form a regional ring around Oresund connecting similar development areas, and creating a new 50 year development perspective for a cross border between Sweden and Denmark. Where the Finger Plan from 1947 was about connectivity from suburb to center, the Loop City is linking a string of highly differentiated urban nodes universities and working spaces in a center-less metropolitan region around a blue void. This ring, comparable in size to San Francisco Bay area, has enough development areas to contain the growth of the region the next 50 years, and could become a model for sustainable, dense and super recreational development of the region.





Danish Pavilion, World Expo Shanghai 2010, image courtesy BIG

XPO Bike Ride

3.5 minutes
Bjarke Ingels, takes us on a bike ride tour of the Danish Pavilion. BIG reintroduce the bicycle in Shanghai as a symbol of modern lifestyle and sustainable urban development. The Danish Pavilion and the entire exhibition can be experienced on Danish designed city bikes that are free for the guests to use. The building is designed as a double spiral with pedestrian and cycle lanes taking you from the ground and through curves up to a level of 12 meters and down again. In this way you can experience the Danish exhibition both inside and outside at two speeds — as calm stroll with time to absorb the surroundings or as a bicycle trip, where the city and city life drift past.





BIG’s MTN vs Parkour, courtesy MY PLAYGROUND

MTN (Mountain)- MY PLAYGROUND

4.5 minutes
MY PLAYGROUND is a film by acclaimed Danish film-maker, Kaspar Astrup Schröder about the popular extreme sport Parkour. The goal of Parkour is to move through urban space in as little time as possible. In this short film, BIG’s award-winning architecture, MTN (Mountain), is featured “guerrilla style” in Parkour fashion.

The Mountain Dwellings are the 2nd generation of the VM Houses - Same client, same size and same street. The program, however, is 2/3 parking and 1/3 living. What if the parking area became the foundation of the homes - like a concrete hillside covered by a thin layer of housing, cascading from the 1st to the 11th floor? Rather than doing two separate buildings next to each other- a parking and a housing block - BIG decided to merge the two functions into a symbiotic relationship. The parking area needs to be connected to the street and the homes require sunlight, fresh air and a view, thus all apartments have roof gardens facing the sun, amazing views and street parking on the 10th floor. The Mountain Dwellings appear as a suburban neighborhood of garden homes flowing over a 10-story building - suburban living with urban density.

8HOUSE

15.5 minutes, English Subtext
8HOUSE is located in Southern Orestad on the edge of the Copenhagen Canal and with a view of the open spaces of Kalvebod Faelled. It is a big house in the literal sense of the world. A house offering homes in all its bearings for people in all of life’s stages: young and old, nuclear families and singles, families that grow and families that become smaller. The bow-shaped building creates two distinct spaces, separated by the center of the bow which hosts the communal facilities of 500 m2. At the very same spot the building is penetrated by a 9 meter wide passage that connects the two surrounding city spaces: The park area to the west and the channel area to the east. Instead of dividing the different functions of the building- for both habitation and trades- The apartments are placed at the, while the commercial program unfolds at the base of the building. As a result the different horizontal layers have achieved a quality of their own: The apartments benefit from sunlight, fresh air and the view, while the office leases merge with life on the street.

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MY PLAYGROUND Premieres in Atlanta

Atlanta Braces For Parkour as MY PLAYGROUND comes to the Plaza Theater

MA in special collaboration with Objective Cinema presents Danish film maker Kaspar Astrup Schröder ‘s new film MY PLAYGROUND, a documentary on movement, tricking, freerunning and parkour, and its relation with the urban spaces. The documentary features Bjarke Ingels and scenes with parkour masters Team Jiyo and interviews with urban planners, local politicians, architects and philosophers.

MY PLAYGROUND
Saturday, July 23
7:30pm
Plaza Theater
1049 Ponce De Leon Avenue NE
Atlanta, GA 30306

Admission $8 cash/ $9 credit. To reserve tickets early, email