LEGO VISITER CENTER
DESIGN
BJARKE INGELS
GROUP & RALPH APPELBAUM ASSOCIATES
LEGO
VISITER CENTER DESIGN BY BIG & RAA
PRESS
RELEASE FROM LEGO
International
architects to design Lego experience centre in Denmark.
Denmark’s
Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and Ralph Appelbaum Associates (RAA) of America will
team up with the Lego Group to design the physical home for “The
Lego House” in Billund, Denmark.
The
name has been decided for the Lego experience centre due to be built in
Billund, Denmark. Scheduled to open in 2016, the facility will welcome approx.
250,000 annual visitors and will be called: The Lego House. Construction
of The Lego House in the centre of Billund is expected to start in 2014.
”The
Lego House will be a place where people can enjoy active fun but at the
same time it will be an educational and inspirational experience – everything
that Lego play offers. The experience centre will give us the opportunity
to show how children learn through Lego play. We’ll be able to combine
academic knowledge about the developmental aspects of play with the brick
itself – enabling children and their parents to see and feel what
Lego play offers. And woven into the situation we’ll be able to relate the
story of our company in a dedicated way, reflecting our values,” says
Lego owner Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen.
Two
architectural practices have been chosen to design The Lego House: one is
a Danish company, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), the other an American, Ralph
Appelbaum Associates (RAA).
“In our
competitions for the project these two companies had the best understanding of
the idea behind the Lego® brick, Lego play and Lego values. At the
same time they possess a wealth of experience in architecture and museum
design, and I’m looking forward to our companies’ teaming up to produce
outstanding settings and exciting experiences for future visitors to The
Lego House,” says Hans Peter Folmann, Senior Director, Lego Huset.
RAA is
acclaimed for its work around the world on large-scale educational experiences,
including US FIRST (home of Junior First Lego League), the London
Transport Museum and the Museum of Jewish History and Tolerance Center in
Moscow.
"We
are thrilled to be part of creating the Lego house that will be devoted to
the builders of tomorrow. Playing, learning and creating with Lego Group's
international team of architects, thinkers and builders is a cherished
commission for any designer," says Ralph Appelbaum.
Danish
architect company BIG is among other projects known for the Danish Expo
Pavilion 2010, the West57th Street courtscraper currently under construction in
New York, and the soon to be opened Maritime Museum north of Copenhagen.
“It is
one of our great dreams at BIG that we are now able to design a building for
and with the Lego Group. I owe a huge personal debt to the
Lego brick, and I can see in my nephews that its role in developing the
child as a creative, thinking, imaginative human being becomes ever stronger in
a world in which creativity and innovation are key elements in virtually all
aspects of society,” says Bjarke Ingels, founder and partner, BIG.
http://www.big.dk/#projects-leg
You may
visit Bjarke Ingels’s projects of Kistefos Museum and Phoenix
Observation Tower in my blog to click below links.
http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2015/10/kistefos-museum-design-by-bjarke-ingels.html
BIG is a Copenhagen and New York based group of architects,
designers, builders and thinkers operating within the fields of architecture,
urbanism, research and development. The office is currently involved in a large
number of projects throughout Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East.
BIG’s architecture emerges out of a careful analysis of how contemporary life
constantly evolves and changes. Not least due to the influence from
multicultural exchange, global economical flows and communication technologies
that all together require new ways of architectural and urban organization. We
believe that in order to deal with today’s challenges, architecture can
profitably move into a field that has been largely unexplored. A pragmatic
utopian architecture that steers clear of the petrifying pragmatism of boring
boxes and the naïve utopian ideas of digital formalism.
In our projects we test the effects of size and the balance of programmatic
mixtures on the triple bottom line of the social, economic and ecological
outcome. Like a form of programmatic alchemy we create architecture by mixing
conventional ingredients such as living, leisure, working, parking and
shopping. By hitting the fertile overlap between pragmatic and utopia, we
architects once again find the freedom to change the surface of our planet, to
better fit contemporary life forms. In all our actions we try to move the focus
from the small details to the BIG picture.
BIG is led by partners – Bjarke Ingels, Andreas Klok Pedersen, Finn
Nørkjær, David Zahle, Jakob Lange, Thomas Christoffersen and Managing Partners,
Sheela Maini Søgaard and Kai-Uwe Bergmann.
BIG IDEAS
Information Driven Design
BIG’s design process always starts by identifying the
key criteria of a project: What is the biggest problem – what is the greatest
potential? Rather than arbitrary aesthetic or stylistic prejudice, all
decisions are based on project specific information - Information Driven
Design.
Our effort as architects is sandwiched in the window
of opportunity between analysis and implementation. And our influence happens
in the translation from information to material. In an attempt to increase our
sphere of influence on our built environment, we have established BIG IDEAS.
BIG IDEAS is an internal technology driven special projects
unit, expanding the traditional scope of the architect into the realm of
information and material. BIG IDEAS explores new intellectual territory in both
the digital and material realm through three specific areas.
As daylight analysis directly influences the building
geometry and as studies of thermal exposure, conditions the building envelope,
we are increasingly relying on technical simulations that would traditionally
be part of the engineering scope. To speed up the feedback loop between design
and analysis, between trial and error, we have internalized the environmental
analysis into our own office. Daylight, sunshine, thermal exposure, airflow,
turbulence, wind, space syntax and traffic flow are technical simulations we
now control to enable ourselves to make designs that are literally shaped by
the forces that surround them. We still collaborate with the best technical
experts to tap into the cutting edge at the horizon of the profession, but we
have found it necessary to educate ourselves to wield the digital tools of
design. Not just building information management or digitally aided design but
also environmental simulation must become part of our architectural tool kit.
Our line of investigations from the Shenzhen Energy Headquarters to the Hanwha PV Plant to the Cité du Corps Humain, has provided us with a parametric design engine that allows us to tailor building envelopes and façade geometries to respond to different climate conditions across the globe. Our expanded parametric design tools are helping us start to formulate a vernacular architecture 2.0 through engineering without engines.
Our line of investigations from the Shenzhen Energy Headquarters to the Hanwha PV Plant to the Cité du Corps Humain, has provided us with a parametric design engine that allows us to tailor building envelopes and façade geometries to respond to different climate conditions across the globe. Our expanded parametric design tools are helping us start to formulate a vernacular architecture 2.0 through engineering without engines.
PRODUCT DESIGN
On the other end of the spectrum where the design
intelligence gets manifested into the material world, we have increasingly
encountered that our imagination was limited to what was already on the
shelves. Through our collaboration as part of KiBiSi –
our design partnership with Kilo
Design and Skibsted
Ideation – we have explored personal technology, urban mobility
and furniture. With BIG IDEAS we feel we can close the gap and really make our
interest in product design a literal extension of our efforts in architecture.
SPECIAL PROJECT
Rather than accepting the inhibitions from the
architectural scope starting too late and leaving too early – missing out on
both research and production – with BIG IDEAS were are starting a new journey
to explore new intellectual territory in both the digital and material realm.
In collaboration with Danish Technical University and Raket Madsen BIG IDEAS resurrected the idea of the giant smoke rings for the Copenhagen Power plant.
In collaboration with Danish Technical University and Raket Madsen BIG IDEAS resurrected the idea of the giant smoke rings for the Copenhagen Power plant.
http://www.big.dk/#big-ideas
BJARKE INGELS
Bjarke Ingels started BIG Bjarke Ingels Group in
2005 after co-founding PLOT Architects in 2001 and working at OMA in Rotterdam.
Through a series of award-winning design projects and buildings, Bjarke has
developed a reputation for designing buildings that are as programmatically and
technically innovative as they are cost and resource conscious. Bjarke has
received numerous awards and honors, including the Danish Crown Prince’s
Culture Prize in 2011, the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2004, and the
ULI Award for Excellence in 2009. In 2011, the Wall Street Journal awarded
Bjarke the Architectural Innovator of the Year Award. In 2012, the American
Institute of Architects granted the 8 House its Honor Award, calling it “a
complex and exemplary project of a new typology.”
Alongside his architectural practice, Bjarke
taught at Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, and Rice
University and is an honorary professor at the Royal Academy of Arts, School of
Architecture in Copenhagen. He is a frequent public speaker and has spoken in
venues such as TED, WIRED, AMCHAM, 10 Downing Street, and the World Economic
Forum.
EDUCATION
The Royal Academy of Arts, School of Architecture I Graduation 1999
I DK
ETSAB I School of Architecture of Barcelona I ES
