Floating cities, the LEGO House and other architectural forms of the future | Bjarke Ingels

My mom has always reminded me

that I have the same proportions as a LEGO man.

(Laughter)

And she does actually have a point.

LEGO is a company that has succeeded

in making everybody believe that LEGO is from their home country.

But it's not, it's from my home country.

So you can imagine my excitement when the LEGO family called me

and asked us to work with them to design the Home of the Brick.

This is the architectural model -- we built it out of LEGO, obviously.

This is the final result.

And what we tried to do was to design

a building that would be as interactive and as engaging and as playful

as LEGO is itself,

with these kind of interconnected playgrounds on the roofscape.

You can enter a square on the ground

where the citizens of Billund can roam around freely without a ticket.

And it's probably one of the only museums in the world

where you're allowed to touch all the artifacts.

But the Danish word for design is "formgivning," which literally means

to give form to that which has not yet been given form.

In other words, to give form to the future.

And what I love about LEGO is that LEGO is not a toy.

It's a tool that empowers the child to build his or her own world,

and then to inhabit that world through play

and to invite her friends to join her in cohabiting and cocreating that world.

And that is exactly what formgivning is.

As human beings, we have the power to give form to our future.

Inspired by LEGO,

we've built a social housing project in Copenhagen,

where we stacked blocks of wood next to each other.

Between them, they leave spaces with extra ceiling heights and balconies.

And by gently wiggling the blocks,

we can actually create curves or any organic form,

adapting to any urban context.

Because adaptability is probably one of the strongest drivers of architecture.

Another example is here in Vancouver.

We were asked to look at the site where Granville bridge triforks

as it touches downtown.

And we started, like, mapping the different constraints.

There's like a 100-foot setback from the bridge

because the city want to make sure

that no one looks into the traffic on the bridge.

There's a park where we can't cast any shadows.

So finally, we're left with a tiny triangular footprint,

almost too small to build.

But then we thought, like,

what if the 100-foot minimum distance is really about minimum distance --

once we get 100 feet up in the air, we can grow the building back out.

And so we did.

When you drive over the bridge,

it's as if someone is pulling a curtain aback,

welcoming you to Vancouver.

Or a like a weed growing through the cracks in the pavement

and blossoming as it gets light and air.

Underneath the bridge, we've worked with Rodney Graham

and a handful of Vancouver artists,

to create what we called the Sistine Chapel of street art,

an art gallery turned upside down,

that tries to turn the negative impact of the bridge into a positive.

So even if it looks like this kind of surreal architecture,

it's highly adapted to its surroundings.

So if a bridge can become a museum, a museum can also serve as a bridge.

In Norway, we are building a museum that spans across a river

and allows people to sort of journey through the exhibitions

as they cross from one side of a sculpture park to the other.

An architecture sort of adapted to its landscape.

In China, we built a headquarters for an energy company

and we designed the facade like an Issey Miyake fabric.

It's rippled, so that facing the predominant direction of the sun,

it's all opaque;

facing away from the sun, it's all glass.

On average, it sort of transitions from solid to clear.

And this very simple idea without any moving parts

or any sort of technology,

purely because of the geometry of the facade,

reduces the energy consumption on cooling by 30 percent.

So you can say what makes the building look elegant

is also what makes it perform elegantly.

It's an architecture that is adapted to its climate.

You can also adapt one culture to another,

like in Manhattan, we took the Copenhagen courtyard building

with a social space where people can hang out

in this kind of oasis in the middle of a city,

and we combined it with the density and the verticality

of an American skyscraper,

creating what we've called a "courtscraper."

From New York to Copenhagen.

On the waterfront of Copenhagen,

we are right now finishing this waste-to-energy power plant.

It's going to be the cleanest waste-to-energy power plant in the world,

there are no toxins coming out of the chimney.

An amazing marvel of engineering that is completely invisible.

So we thought, how can we express this?

And in Copenhagen we have snow, as you can see,

but we have absolutely no mountains.

We have to go six hours by bus to get to Sweden,

to get alpine skiing.

So we thought, let's put an alpine ski slope

on the roof of the power plant.

So this is the first test run we did a few months ago.

And what I like about this

is that it also show you the sort of world-changing power of formgivning.

I have a five-month-old son,

and he's going to grow up in a world

not knowing that there was ever a time

when you couldn't ski on the roof of the power plant.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

So imagine for him and his generation, that's their baseline.

Imagine how far they can leap,

what kind of wild ideas they can put forward for their future.

So right in front of it, we're building our smallest project.

It's basically nine containers

that we have stacked in a shipyard in Poland,

then we've schlepped it across the Baltic sea

and docked it in the port of Copenhagen,

where it is now the home of 12 students.

Each student has a view to the water,

they can jump out the window into the clean port of Copenhagen,

and they can get back in.

All of the heat comes from the thermal mass of the sea,

all the power comes from the sun.

This is the first 12 units in Copenhagen,

another 60 on their way,

another 200 are going to Gothenburg,

and we're speaking with the Paris Olympics

to put a small floating village on the Seine.

So very much this kind of, almost like nomadic, impermanent architecture.

And the waterfronts of our cities are experiencing a lot of change.

Economic change, industrial change and climate change.

This is Manhattan before Hurricane Sandy,

and this is Manhattan after Sandy.

We got invited by the city of New York

to look if we could make the necessary flood protection for Manhattan

without building a seawall

that would segregate the life of the city from the water around it.

And we got inspired by the High Line.

You probably know the High Line -- it's this amazing new park in New York.

It's basically decommissioned train tracks

that now have become one of the most popular promenades in the city.

So we thought,

could we design the necessary flood protection for Manhattan

so we don't have to wait until we shut it down before it gets nice?

So we sat down with the citizens living along the waterfront of New York,

and we worked with them to try to design the necessary flood protection

in such a way that it only makes their waterfront

more accessible and more enjoyable.

Underneath the FDR, we are putting, like, pavilions

with pocket walls that can slide out and protect from the water.

We are creating little stepped terraces

that are going to make the underside more enjoyable,

but also protect from flooding.

Further north in the East River Park,

we are creating rolling hills

that protect the park from the noise of the highway,

but in turn also become the necessary flood protection

that can stop the waves during an incoming storm surge.

So in a way, this project that we have called the Dryline,

it's essentially the High Line --

(Laughter)

The High Line that's going to keep Manhattan dry.

(Applause)

It's scheduled to break ground on the first East River portion

at the end of this year.

But it has essentially been codesigned

with the citizens of Lower Manhattan

to take all of the necessary infrastructure for resilience

and give it positive social and environmental side effects.

So, New York is not alone in facing this situation.

In fact, by 2050,

90 percent of the major cities in the world

are going to be dealing with rising seas.

In Hamburg,

they've created a whole neighborhood

where the bottom floors are designed to withstand the inevitable flood.

In Sweden, they've designed a city where all of the parks are wet gardens,

designed to deal with storm water and waste water.

So we thought, could we perhaps --

Actually, today,

three million people are already permanently living on the sea.

So we thought, could we actually imagine a floating city

designed to incorporate all of the Sustainable Development Goals

of the United Nations

into a whole new human-made ecosystem.

And of course, we have to design it so it can produce its own power,

harvesting the thermal mass of the oceans,

the force of the tides, of the currents, of the waves,

the power of the wind,

the heat and the energy of the sun.

Also, we are going to collect all of the rain water that drops

on this man-made archipelago

and deal with it organically and mechanically

and store it and clean it.

We have to grow all of our food locally,

it has to be fish- and plant-based,

because you won't have the space or the resources for a dairy diet.

And finally,

we are going to deal with all the waste locally,

with compost, recycling, and turning the waste into energy.

So imagine where a traditional urban master plan,

you typically draw the street grid where the cars can drive

and the building plots where you can put some buildings.

This master plan, we sat down with a handful of scientists

and basically started with all of the renewable,

available natural resources,

and then we started channeling the flow of resources

through this kind of human-made ecosystem or this kind of urban metabolism.

So it's going to be modular,

it's going to be buoyant,

it's going to be designed to resist a tropical storm.

You can prefabricate it at scale,

and tow it to dock with others, to form a small community.

We're designing these kind of coastal additions,

so that even if it's modular and rational,

each island can be unique with its own coastal landscape.

The architecture has to remain relatively low

to keep the center of gravity buoyant.

We're going to take all of the agriculture

and use it to also create social space

so you can actually enjoy the permaculture gardens.

We're designing it for the tropics, so all of the roofs are maximized

to harvest solar power and to shade from the sun.

All the materials are going to be light and renewable,

like bamboo and wood,

which is also going to create this charming, warm environment.

And any architecture is supposed to be able to fit on this platform.

Underneath we have all the storage inside the pontoon,

almost like a mega version of the student housings

that we've already worked with.

We have all the storage for the energy that's produced,

all of the water storage and remediation.

We are sort of dealing with all of the waste and the composting.

And we also have some backup farming

with aeroponics and hydroponics.

So imagine almost like a vertical section through this landscape

that goes from the air above, where we have vertical farms;

below, we have the aeroponics and the aquaponics.

Even further below, we have the ocean farms

and where we tie the island to the ground,

we're using biorock to create new reefs to regenerate habitat.

So think of this small island for 300 people.

It can then group together to form a cluster or a neighborhood

that then can sort of group together to form an entire city for 10,000 people.

And you can imagine if this floating city flourishes,

it can sort of grow like a culture in a petri dish.

So one of the first places we are looking at placing this,

or anchoring this floating city,

is in the Pearl River delta.

So imagine this kind of canopy of photovoltaics

on this archipelago floating in the sea.

As you sail towards the island, you will see the maritime residents

moving around on alternative forms of aquatic transportation.

You come into this kind of community port.

You can roam around in the permaculture gardens

that are productive landscapes, but also social landscapes.

The greenhouses also become orangeries for the cultural life of the city,

and below, under the sea,

it's teeming with life of farming and science

and social spaces.

So in a way, you can imagine this community port

is where people gather, both by day and by night.

And even if the first one is designed for the tropics,

we also imagine that the architecture can adapt to any culture,

so imagine, like, a Middle Eastern floating city

or Southeast Asian floating city

or maybe a Scandinavian floating city one day.

So maybe just to conclude.

The human body is 70 percent water.

And the surface of our planet is 70 percent water.

And it's rising.

And even if the whole world woke up tomorrow

and became carbon-neutral over night,

there are still island nations that are destined to sink in the seas,

unless we also develop alternate forms of floating human habitats.

And the only constant in the universe is change.

Our world is always changing, and right now, our climate is changing.

No matter how critical the crisis is, and it is,

this is also our collective human superpower.

That we have the power to adapt to change

and we have the power to give form to our future.

(Applause)