A parking lot transformed into a man-made mountain of cars; a stack of homes twisted into a cascade of houses with gardens, penthouse views and big lawns; multiple elements that don’t necessarily fit—like the garden home and the high-rise—merge together into a new typology.
Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, founder of architecture firm BIG, says architecture should allow people to transform their own environments as they would when playing popular computer game Minecraft. In a movie filmed for the Future of Storytelling summit in 2014, Ingels spoke about how stories are being used to shape the meaning of everyday life.
“More than 100 million people populate Minecraft, where they can build their own worlds and inhabit them through play,” says Ingels in the film.
“Architecture must become Worldcraft; the craft of making our world, where our knowledge and technology doesn’t limit us but rather enables us to turn surreal dreams into inhabitable space. To turn fiction into fact.”
BIG sits behind a number of international high profile projects, including a $2 billion overhaul of the Smithsonian Institution campus in Washington; a flood-defense system for New York; and a public square for London’s Battersea Power Station redevelopment.
