Documentary tells tale of twisted tower’s architect
Documentary Big Time follows Ingels as he thinks and designs well outside the box
The new twisty tower that is quickly rising at the foot of Howe Street is certainly attention-grabbing and, according to the documentary Big Time, that is what the architect behind the 59-storey Vancouver House skyscraper is all about.
In theatres now, Big Time, from director Kaspar Astrup Schroder, lets viewers in on architect Bjarke Ingels’ methods and some might say his madness as the 40-yearold from Copenhagen designs well outside the box.
For instance, if you Google-image search him, you’ll see the enormous “experience space,” called Lego house in Billund, Denmark, where Lego was first invented. The building is a series of connected blocks topped by a giant replica of the iconic block.
Then there’s the Amager Bakke waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen. It turns trash into power and has a 600-metre ski run on the roof. Not yet completed, the plant was to have the smokestack blow smoke rings. Because smoke rings are just cooler than a column of steam, right?
The film shows Ingels meeting and looking at a smoke-ring device with designer/inventor Peter Madsen. However, the smoke-ring technology hasn’t been perfected and that might have something to do with the fact that Madsen is currently charged with murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall on his submarine.
That weird story aside, the story of Ingels is that of a kid who loved to climb on roofs and wanted to create comic books to a man striving to leave his mark firmly on the world.
“There’s nothing greater than building buildings,” Ingels says in the film.
Legacy looms large for Ingels and that is clear as he talks about the deaths of a few of the giants of modern architecture. Ingels’ own health scare (he was accidentally hit in the head with a baseball bat) puts an even finer point on his quest for legacy.
“You really need to lay some bricks while you’re here because the building you’re working on could be your last,” says Ingels, who landed on Time magazine’s 2016 list of the 100 most-influential people on the planet.
With that in mind, Ingels pushed the company BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) to expand to North America. The film travels with him on his move to New York and his work on two very impressive contracts — a posh, pyramid-like apartment complex on the river and Two World Trade Center.
“He always wanted to build a skyscraper, so he went to the city of skyscrapers,” said Schroder over the phone from Copenhagen recently.
Those big contracts certainly make for substantive points in a solid story, but for Schroder the film works because Ingels actually falters a bit when it comes to his own personal life.
“His success was interesting for me to see, but I was also kind of nervous because I didn’t want to make a commercial for him or his company. As a filmmaker you want to have drama, a story that evolves and a character that learns something throughout the film,” said Schroder.
“It wasn’t until three years in I think that I felt there was a drama in him as a person, as a man that tries to conquer the world but maybe forgets himself and the basic needs and health in that journey. That was something that intrigued me. Then I felt there was a movie here. There was something at stake.”
Throughout the film it’s clear that Ingels wants to be revered and remembered. Schroder agrees with that, but said the Danish architect doesn’t play the annoying artiste in action.
“He is very grounded. He is still friends with everyone in the office,” Schroder said when asked about the guy away from the camera. “It is always the best idea that wins. He is definitely not a big ego, but he does know that he has some great ideas, I think. He knows how to communicate.”
And one of those ways he communicates in the film is through drawing on big rolls of white paper while explaining a design plan. In a wonderfully fluid way he uses a big black marker to draw examples freehand while he riffs on sites and styles.
“He has a saying: ‘Yes is more.’ He says yes to everything,” Schroder said about Ingels’ approach to clients.
“Any suggestion and any demands from a project he will say yes to and then solve it in the best possible way.”
A client who appears in the film parrots that and explains that Ingels isn’t the type to throw down his pencil and walk away.
“He goes for the dream project every time and I think in the back of his mind he kind of knows that maybe it needs to change. But he always starts out ambitiously,” said Schroder.
And he always grabs attention.