From a power station topped with a ski slope, to a flood-defence park in Manhattan - there's no such thing as 'can't' for this architect

'Architecture is like a sort of gentleman's sport where you only really get to do it when you're old," says Bjarke Ingels, chomping into a cheese-and-ham croissant outside a café in London's Kensington. "There's this catch-22 that you can't do it till you've proven yourself, but you can't prove yourself till you get the chance to do it." Ingels got the chance to prove himself early on and he's run with it. Not that he's exactly un-gentlemanly. He could have stepped out of a menswear catalogue: dark, handsome, strapping Danish physique clad in fashionable monochrome. But he's still a few months away from turning 40 – practically a teenager in architect years. His career to date has been marked by a succession of fresh, inventive, attention-grabbing projects of the kind most young architects would expect to wait another few decades to get a crack at, and many older ones doubtless wish they'd thought of. If any designer out there represents a generational shift in the discipline, it's Ingels.
Ingels says: 'Maybe it's being from a Danish background, but I always see the potential for synergy or harmony'
Ingels says: 'Maybe it's being from a Danish background, but I always see the potential for synergy or harmony'

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If Ingels's approach is indebted to anyone, it is Rem Koolhaas, head of Dutch practice OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) and possibly the most influential architect of the preceding generation. Rather than drawing on traditions of aesthetics, engineering or even ideology, Koolhaas's method typically involves both the processing of deep research and pragmatism, resulting in buildings that are highly functional and jarringly avant garde. "I read Rem Koolhaas before I read Le Corbusier," Ingels admits. "As a matter of fact, I discovered Le Corbusier through Koolhaas. He's such an integral part of my education." When I ask him what separates his approach from his mentor's, > Ingels falters a little. "A lot of it has to do with attitude, in a way. If you visit our offices, the atmosphere is rather different."

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Considering his spectacular ascent to the big league, Ingels is remarkably unfazed. "It feels it's been quite slow actually," he says. "I first read the brief for the Maritime Museum when I was 31, but I was 39 when it opened. We've only grown by about one person per month. I believe we're building a culture with BIG, and I would love for this culture to be able to make amazing ideas and realise amazing buildings, with or without me. I don't think we're quite there. But once in a while, when I come from New York back into our Copenhagen office, this old Carlsberg factory full of stuff we've done, I think, 'F*ck, yeah'".