The Cunningham Lecture: Bjarke Ingels

The Department of Architecture welcomes Bjarke Ingels for his lecture.

Bjarke Ingels founded BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group in 2005 after co-founding PLOT Architects in 2000 and working at OMA in Rotterdam. Bjarke believes the architectural profession is best explained with the traditional Danish word for design: Formgivning. As the name suggests it literally means form giving. When you design something you give form to that which has not yet been given form – in other words you are giving form to the future. Because when you design a space, a building or a city, you are giving form the world that you would want to find yourself living in – in the future.

Named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time Magazine, Bjarke is involved in designing and building public institutions, neighborhoods and cities world-wide including The Prague Philharmonic, The Chinese National Natural History Museum in Beijing, Zurich Airport, The Woven City in Japan and Gelephu Mindfulness City in Bhutan. He is working with NASA and ICON Technologies to design the first permanent human habitat on the Moon.

If you require any accessibility accommodation, such as live captioning, audio description, or a sign language interpreter, please email news@design.upenn.edu. Please note, we require at least five (5) business days’ notice.