Bjarke Ingels is no stranger to challenges. His firm, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), has embraced them with open arms around the world. Projects like The Mountain in Copenhagen blend two seemingly incompatible uses — residences and parking — into one fluid entity. Also in Copenhagen, 8 House brings living, offices, and retail together and ties them in a knot; the project takes the shape of a bowtie. Now, BIG is taking these groundbreaking Scandinavian designs and transporting them to a North American context. 

Vancouver House, image by BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group & Luxigon

SkyriseCities recently spoke with Thomas Christoffersen, partner at BIG, about their Telus Sky project in Calgary and the 49-storey Vancouver House. Now under construction, the residential and retail project was BIG's first Canadian venture when it was unveiled. Westbank Project Corp. is the Vancouver developer attached to the mixed-use complex, and Christoffersen recounted how their relationship first blossomed.

"Bjarke did a lecture in Vancouver rather shortly after we opened our office here in New York. At that lecture, he met Ian Gillespie, Founder of Westbank," said Christoffersen. "A couple months later, Ian turns up at this site in Vancouver that he had been looking at and working on for some time. He had seen some other projects we had been doing that had dealt with difficult or challenging sites. We agreed to do some ideas for him and work on some concepts and that’s basically what became the Vancouver House. We have since been working on other things together, but Vancouver House was our first real encounter."

Telus Sky, image by BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group & Luxigon

Since then, BIG has teamed up with Westbank again to launch the residential and office Telus Sky project, which is at a similar stage in construction. But Vancouver seemed like the perfect place for BIG to gain a foothold in Canada. "We are from Scandinavia, so the Pacific Northwest feels rather familiar culturally and Vancouver is a beautiful city," said Christoffersen. "One of Bjarke’s first projects coming out of architecture school was working on the Seattle Public Library. He was also familiar with the region and has been there quite a lot. So it was mainly that one event and then the encounter with Ian that made us come to Vancouver."

Vancouver House in context, image by BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group

Christoffersen talked about how Vancouver's building typology influenced the design. "Vancouver has this very special residential tower skyline which they call ‘Vancouverism’: the slender, residential tower with the small-scale podium so that you have a sense of human scale at street level while having a higher residential density. For Vancouver House, it was about reimagining already existing typologies."

Vancouver House, image by BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group & Luxigon

Vancouver House reinvigorates the depressing underbelly of the Granville Bridge by animating it with retail, restaurants, and programmable space. The project takes the form of three triangular parcels hugging the north end of the bridge, with the tower rising from the northernmost parcel. "It's about looking at how we can create architecture that is maybe a little less glassy and work with a podium that is engaging not only with townhouses and larger homes at street level but also an engaging retail and workplace neighbourhood under the Granville Bridge."

Looking down at the three parcels, image by BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group

The constraints of the site led to some unique solutions that spurred the design we see today. "The challenge in Vancouver was definitely all the setbacks and distances that the surroundings demand, like a 100-foot setback from the bridge, moving up to not shadow on the park across the street, and then the building across the street that we didn’t want to be too close to," said Christoffersen. "So we ended up with a triangular footprint that’s very small. That’s the challenge that the developer also has to decide. They really liked the area and neighbourhood and also the character the bridge is bringing to the development, but it was hard to do anything that had enough floor plate to be a feasible building."

One of the triangular blocks, image by BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group

BIG came up with a solution that maximized the potential of the site. "We said ‘we have this triangular floor plate, why don’t we start to expand the triangle into a rectangle as the tower rises?' As it rises above the on-ramps of the Granville Bridge, the building can start to expand, and we end up with the upper third of the building having a rectangular floor plate," said Christoffersen. "That’s where it gets the density for the units. That’s what makes the building possible as a development. So of course we had to talk to the city about being allowed to encroach the setback line as the building rises and we had to do our due diligence on the structure and challenges that the form comes with."

Under the Granville Bridge, image by BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group

Christoffersen also acknowledged a similarity between Vancouver House and Telus Sky, while pointing out their innate differences. "We didn’t start off the design of Telus Sky with the notion that there should be a similarity. It somehow came by chance. The two projects have very different challenges. The distribution of Vancouver House seems similar, though it’s upside down. It was something we talked to Westbank about and we agreed that there was a sort of charming sibling relationship that they had in each other, though they are built, executed and detailed very differently. Telus Sky has less structural challenges than Vancouver House. We are using different materials." Like many Vancouver projects, glass will be included as a cladding material. It will be joined by "two brighter metals, an aluminum and a warmer stainless alloy that is the liner of the balconies."  

Under the Granville Bridge, image by BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group

Christoffersen continued: "The climate in Calgary is a lot more challenging than it is in Vancouver. It’s been rewarding to follow through the two projects and we really look forward to having a sort of duality between the two because now they share a lot more than they would otherwise have."

BIG is partnering with DIALOG and James KM Cheng Architects to bring the 49-storey project to life. With excavation taking place, Vancouver House is on track for completion in 2018. Though Vancouver House and Telus Sky are very different projects, architecture fanatics in the respective cities share the same anticipation. With BIG's first two Canadian projects, the Danish company has the chance to cement their reputation for progressive design while introducing Canadians to one of the world's hottest architecture firms. 

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