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P U B L I C P R O G R A M S
The Scala Tower
THE BIG CPH EXPERIMENT
7 New Architectural Species from the Danish Welfare State
By Bjarke Ingels Group
December 6, 2007 – March 22, 2008
Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts
The Madlener House, 4 West Burton Place, Chicago
New Gallery Hours: Wednesday through Saturday, 11am-6pm
Free admission
On February 29 Bjarke Ingels will lecture at the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, 6pm, Gallery 1100, Art + Architecture Building, 845 West Harrison, tel 312.996.3335. Lecture co-sponsored by the Graham Foundation and the School of Architecture at UIC.
The exhibition presents projects that are all specific urban experiments conducted in Copenhagen since January 2001 by Bjarke Ingels Group.* At different stages of realization, they portray a new breed of urban life forms, both locally specific and generally applicable, introducing residential diversity, programmatic alchemy, urban ascension, modular mania, and political pro-action into the architectural species of the Danish welfare state. The projects in the exhibition are the VM Houses, the Mountain Dwellings, the Scala Tower, Kløverkarréen, the LEGO Towers, the Battery, and Escher Tower.
Bjarke Ingels Group is a Copenhagen based group of over 80 architects, designers, builders and thinkers operating within the fields of architecture, urbanism, research and development. BIG’s architecture emerges out of a careful analysis of how contemporary life constantly evolves and changes. In their projects, BIG tests the effects of size and the balance of programmatic mixtures on the triple bottom line of the social, economical and ecological outcome. Like a form of programmatic alchemy, they create architecture by mixing conventional ingredients such as living, leisure, working, and shopping. For more information on BIG, go to www.big.dk
*VM completed by Plot/Bjarke Ingels & Julien de Smedt 2001-2005
This exhibition is made possible with the generous support of the LEGO group, the Dansk Architektur Center, Høpfner A/S, and Moe & Brødsgaard.
A version of THE BIG CPH EXPERIMENT was first presented at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City.
LEGO Tower
Watch the BIG team build the 250,000 piece LEGO model that is featured in the exhibition.