Book Review: Hot to Cold

Bjarke Ingels's book Hot and Cold chronicles many of his phenomenal projects, but his core argument has one economic flaw, and one of his projects a with politically motivated design thesis suffers.

VM Houses (collaboration with JDS) - Copenhagen, DK; I suppose these bolt-on balconies look like ships' hulls, prompting the owner to install a lifesaver on his railing. I hope he doesn't have to use it, being on the fourth floor, though it would be more entertaining if he had to. // photo my own

Bjarke Ingels, the founder of Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)  is one of the most sought-after architects alive today. Architecture students will live in Copenhagen just to study some of his work.

This book, Hot to Cold, is a discussion of one of his design theses, a criticism of the so-called International Style, resulting in similar-looking buildings all across the world. Contexts inevitably vary between building sites, whether it be the physical built form, cultures, or climate. Climate is how he chose to sort this monograph, a creative sorting from hot climates to cold, rather than a typical chronology of work.

In a world of starchitects furiously attempting to create a self-identity such as Frank Gehry's metallic curves, Thom Mayne's perforated metal deconstruction, or Robert Venturi's, well, bullshit, Bjarke Ingels is perhaps the most popular at rejecting this notion of architects only being able to become famous by projecting one style into their buildings.

True to his thesis, his work is highly contextualized. Though there may be some similarities between construction methods, it is not so easy to pick out a design by BIG if one was not already familiar with it, as you could with the architects mentioned above.

While I wholeheartedly agree with this from an architectural perspective, Ingels appears to ignore the economics of straightforward structural systems. Big glass and steel boxes proliferate the world because they are economical to build. In a post-scarcity world where architecture was of utmost importance, then perhaps these large boring boxes could be abolished in favor of Ingels's thesis, but we're not quite there. In the meantime, the savings in the more economical designs can be diverted to other uses in society that may be of more importance than architecture. If a medical company is able to save a few million dollars on construction costs and is able to use that money to produce a breakthrough medical advancement that saves thousands of lives, that is probably a good use of money.

For sure, there are ways to produce long-term savings by designing a building specifically to the climates of the site, but these savings are not always realized, particularly when considering the present value of money.

For a parallel with the practice I'm in, DR Horton and their low-end houses, honestly, have pretty dreadful architecture, completely ignoring context. However, what they're good at is creating cheap housing. And during a government-fueled housing crisis, their work becomes paramount so people can actually afford a house to live in. Not everyone can afford a BIG dwelling to live in.

I have been lucky enough to visit many BIG buildings. I generally really enjoy his work, in part because he designs to contextual constraints.

8 House - Copenhagen, DK; This massive condo complex is a giant figure-8, with sloping pathways like a mountain trail. The upward and downward motion varies the height of the building, allowing for views even from the courtyard units. At least a dozen of his staff must have been driven to insanity trying to figure out this building. // photo my own

Mountain Dwellings - Copenhagen, DK; One of his earlier buildings, just up the street from 8 House. It slopes down like the side of a mountain. The downslope side faces a canal, opposite of one-story single-family dwellings. The slope allows the building to pay respect to the scale difference. // photo my own

Vancouver House - Vancouver, BC; A condo building finished recently, pictured under construction. From one vantage point, the building looks extremely thin from the bottom to the point of toppling over, but this was due to maximizing the building envelope in response to an extremely tight highway noise setback that lessens as the building rises in height. // photo my own

There is, however, one project in particular that I did not understand at all when I visited it, and reading this book helped me understand why I didn't like it.

The project I'm referencing is not actually a building at all, but rather a park called Superkilen.

His writing on his project started off about the neighborhood in which the park resides, and the violence in 2006 that had exploded in this district that had grown more ethnically diverse, often refugees from war-torn countries. This clash was over a publication that had decided to exercise free speech in a series of cartoons that, like Charlie Hebdo, depicted an image of the Islamic prophet Mohammed, a big no-no in Islam.

Though he criticized the newspaper's printing as "a clumsy crusade for the liberty of speech," the broadcasting of his own thoughts was a clumsy defense of violence in the face of offensive speech. He gyrated around the wrongheaded idea that speech should be self-censorious when a monoracial culture becomes more diverse. This is completely nonsensical and has nothing to do with free speech. Attempted murder is not a proper response to offensive speech in any kind of functioning society.

By his own admission, free speech had been dwindling in favor of self-censorship at the threat of violence for a while before the violence broke out. This is not a coincidence. Free expression is the ultimate embodiment of tolerance to one another's culture. The ability to disagree with each other, potentially to the point of being offended, then being able to peacefully part ways or otherwise maintain civility is the cornerstone of a truly diverse society. In contradiction to his assertion, a peaceful diverse community is not possible without free speech. Those today in the United States with a penchant to engage in cancellation activism against speech they disagree with would do well to take heed.

The Red Square sector of Superkilen. It looks like a scene
out of the USSR. Or perhaps China. But somehow with
less charm. // photo by Orf3us

As a result, the project itself was one in disarray, disjointed, incohesive. In his pursuit of piling an amalgamation of various cultural symbols, he seemed to forget that he was designing a park. The sense of spatial awareness drifts away as it lacked boundaries for humans to feel comfortable hanging out in, an error from the old sweeping modernist plazas repeated. While I was there, I was uncomfortable, unsure what the park was trying to tell me. Aside from several clearly marked activity zones like bike lanes and tables for certain cultural games, much of the space was marked by loud ambiguity. It was like a truncated cultural museum masquerading as a park, with no real overarching theme to tie it all together.

His attempt to qualify the terms of free speech with the racial makeup of the community is a tortured one, as his attempt to qualify the park with cultural icons. One needs free speech to have a peaceful and coexisting society, regardless of race. Similarly, parks and public recreational spaces are needed for a sense of community and quality of life, regardless of cultural icons. Free speech becomes even more important instead of needing more restraint when dissimilar cultures must live together. Likewise, the inherent overarching sense of a park becomes even more important, not less so, when such a diverse array of monuments are meshed into one area.

His backward understanding of the importance of free speech, unfortunately, led to the backward design of Superkilen, despite a good underpinning of wanting to design a park of inclusion. Free speech needed to be strong for a strong diverse society. A park itself needed to be the strong central design for a strong diverse collection of cultures. Instead, society became fractured as free expression crumbled in favor of segregated cultural norms intolerant of each other. Likewise, the park became fractured as any sense of place crumbled in favor of segregated ethnic trinkets.

Sure, the park has received numerous awards and glowing reviews from the press, but I'll just put this out there: Andrew Cuomo won an Emmy last year and was the posterchild of quality governance from the corporate press. Saying awards judging panels don't get everything right is an understatement.

The Black Market sector of Superkilen. It kind of looks like
a giant "Not my job" meme of lane stripers.
// photo by Emily Lavieri-Scull

Lending credence to my point, people don't seem to populate the park very much. Given that a park is for the public, it seems like the public is somewhat rejecting it. When I was there, the usage seemed to be very low, contributing to the depressing aura of the park. I was so turned off by it that I didn't take a single photograph of it, not thinking I would be starting a blog a year and a half later and writing about it. Perhaps I was just there at a low traffic time, but looking at Google Maps street view, there doesn't seem to be many people there at all timeframes a photo was taken, for both the red square segment of the park and the black market segment of the park. Similarly, a quick look at Google Images returns many photos, but exceedingly few show more than a small handful of people at the park. Granted, Google Street View doesn't show a whole lot of visitors to nearby parks and plazas either, but that Superkilen isn't outperforming other parks is eyebrow-raising. For a park of this stature and fame along with the density in the park's immediate context, it should be swarming with people.

I don't want to give the impression that I think he's a bad architect. On the contrary, I think he is one of the most interesting architects today. It's just that when he interjects politics into his work, the design suffers.

Just like life in general.