Over the years, Ingels has made much of his commitment to the environment; in TED talks, he describes his philosophy as “hedonistic sustainability” (according to Ingels, you don’t need to sacrifice comfort to live a sustainable lifestyle). And in January, on a trip to Brazil, he met with President Jair Bolsonaro to discuss crafting a master plan for sustainable tourism in the country. When critics pointed out that Bolsonaro is responsible for letting agriculture companies slash and burn swaths of the Amazon rain forest, pushing the ecosystem to its brink and displacing hundreds of indigenous people in the progress, Ingels called their concerns “an oversimplification,” “superficial clickbait,” and sheer “ignorance.” Architects, he said, have to “engage and embrace our differences if we want to dare to imagine a different future.” 

Ingels is hardly the first architect to work for an autocratic leader.

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