Since he opened a branch of his Copenhagen firm, BIG, in Manhattan in 2011, Mr. Ingels has received some of the city’s most prominent commissions.

His giant, soaring wedge of an apartment complex is currently under construction on West 57th Street. His firm recently won a bid to oversee the redesign of a portion of the waterfront along the East River, a series of parks and walkways that will make the region more pedestrian friendly and help to protect it from the next large hurricane.

Most notably, Mr. Ingels was selected to design 2 World Trade Center, the final building overlooking the site where the twin towers were destroyed.

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“From the starting point,” he said, “we’ve always been interested in this idea, that, say, 99 percent of the profession and also of the built environment is made by reliable and rational, analytical consultants that do things that are functional but probably also a little predictable and a little boring.”

He added: “And then you also have a wild avant-garde that makes spectacular, amazing works of art, but they are often also a little unpractical and maybe spectacularly expensive.

“Where we try to position ourselves is in the very, very small overlap between the two.”