Quotes from Bjarke Ingels

Architecture is restricted to such a limited vocabulary. A building is either a high-rise or a perimeter block or a town house.

I wanted to be a cartoonist, but there was no cartoon academy. So I enrolled in the Royal Danish Art Academy School of Architecture. But then I really got smitten by architecture.

Our cities are not polluted or congested because they have to be. They are what they are because that's how we made them.

Silicon Valley has been this global engine of innovation and economic growth over the last few decades, but a tidal wave of innovation that has been focused very much in the digital realm.

All comic books take place in built environments, and I was very good at drawing people and animals, and stuff like that, but I hadn't spent much energy drawing buildings. So I thought, maybe I could, and then I became an architect.

Something like 'Abstract' can really give people access to the behind-the-scenes of how our physical surroundings take shape.

Sustainability can't be like some sort of a moral sacrifice or political dilemma or a philanthropical cause. It has to be a design challenge.

A kid in Minecraft can build a world and inhabit it through play. We have the possibility to build the world that we want to inhabit.

If I was misogynist, would I hire a woman as my CEO? Probably not. I grew up in Denmark, for crying out loud. Denmark is probably one of the places where equality is actually fully achieved. Our political system is practically a matriarchy.

Architects have to become designers of eco-systems. Not just designers of beautiful facades or beautiful sculptures, but systems of economy and ecology, where we channel the flow not only of people, but also the flow of resources through our cities and buildings.

People outside the profession of architecture perhaps often lack the understanding of how their physical environment comes into being. What are the processes, the concerns and considerations? What are the parameters that shape the world around them?

I don't have to come up with the best idea. It is my job to make sure that it is always the best idea that wins.

I think the avant-garde often hides itself in the highly incomprehensible because they are frustrated that the real world is so boring.

I almost never listen to the radio.

The one thing all humans share is that we all inhabit the same limited amount of real estate, which is Planet Earth.

For me, architecture is the means, not the end. It's a means of making different life forms possible.

I think architecture is rarely the product of a single ideology. It's more like it can be shaped by a really big idea. It can accommodate a lot of life forms.

When I moved to America, everybody was asking, 'Why the hell are you going to America? It's over; you should be going east.' But it turned out our timing was miraculous.

We can engineer a building and design a building with least reliance on active machinery to make it inhabitable.

New York is flat - it's ideal for bicycling.

I think the biggest backhanded criticism-compliment I get is that I'm 'good at communicating.' Which implies that you're bad at doing.

It's legendary how architectural lectures can be incredibly boring.

When I started studying architecture, people would say, you know, 'Can you tell me why are all modern buildings so boring?' Because, like, people had this idea that in the good old days, architecture had, like, ornament and little towers and spires and gargoyles, and today, it just becomes very practical.

Instead of trying to change people, we could change the world.