Bjarke Ingels Is Designing Better Spaces for People and the Planet

The “SS Ingels” overlooks yet another prime example: CopenHill, a BIG-designed skiing slope-cum-hiking trail that occupies the pitched roof of a low-pollutant waste-to-energy power plant. At once fun and functional, it exemplifies Ingels’s self-described “hedonistic sustainability” point of view. “Hedonism is about hot showers while sustainability is about cold showers,” he says. “But somehow, when you integrate the two, you have a building or city that’s more environmentally friendly and therefore more enjoyable to live in.”“Utopian pragmatism” is another term Ingels uses to describe his work. “A utopia is a place so perfect that it can only exist in your imagination while pragmatism deals with the reality of the everyday,” he says. “Every time architects get called upon to imagine a spac