On a misty April morning in Lower Manhattan, Danish architect Bjarke Ingels stood high above a cobblestoned street on the roof of an old brick building, the collar of his black coat rakishly popped. The 40-year-old architect was shooting a promotional film for the most important commission of his young career: his design for the skyscraper known as Two World Trade Center.
At the time, the project remained a work in progress, and his primary client—media magnate Rupert Murdoch—had yet to formally sign off. Yet Ingels refused to let doubt hinder his vision. He had obsessed over every line and image, telling his director that he wanted viewers to swoon. While Murdoch’s plan to relocate his companies was still one of New York real estate’s best-kept secrets, Ingels was eager to broadcast the news from the rooftops.
Between takes, Ingels pointed toward a void in the densely packed Manhattan skyline, tracing the profile of a skyscraper that, for the moment, existed only in his imagination. From this vantage point, his design resembled a stack of seven blocks, ascending like a staircase toward One World Trade Center, its monolithic neighbor.
"In a way, it is almost like a physical manifestation of the spirit of America," Ingels remarked. "Out of many, one."
If completed, the tower would stand among the tallest buildings in New York City and serve as the final addition to the master plan for the redeveloped World Trade Center site. The complex rings two cascading pools honoring the nearly 3,000 people who perished in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Rather than focusing heavily on the solemnity of the tragedy, however, Ingels aimed to contribute to the living city. "The memorial is about the memorial," he noted. "The tower should be about the living city."
Eclecticism on Demand
Ingels often describes architecture as "the art of turning fiction into fact." While he possesses talents as a draftsman, salesman, and cultivator of his personal image, his greatest asset is a gift for storytelling—the ability to construct a compelling narrative around practical necessities.
His designs frequently careen in fantastical directions. In Copenhagen, he designed a waste-to-energy plant featuring a slanted roof that doubles as a recreational ski slope, complete with a smokestack engineered to puff a ring of steam each time it emits a ton of carbon dioxide. For a proposed expansion of Google’s campus in Mountain View, California, Ingels collaborated with designer Thomas Heatherwick on an elaborate complex of geodesic domes, envisioning a lifestyle of biking, hiking, and coding inside a sunlit glass terrarium.
Such imaginative flights have made Ingels famous—and highly sought-after—at an age considered precocious by industry standards. Yet fame can be a deceptive metric in architecture, where a completed project often reaches the public eye only after a years-long journey.
Ingels’ largest project to date at the time—a striking pyramidal apartment building under construction along Manhattan’s West Side Highway at 57th Street—measured roughly one-third the size of Two World Trade Center. "At the moment we are working seriously on one of the most daunting buildings in downtown New York," Ingels acknowledged. "We still haven’t completed a skyscraper."
With Two World Trade Center, Ingels sought to reinvent the high-rise work environment, transforming a structure that is fundamentally vertical and hierarchical into a venue for horizontal interaction. The challenge lay in translating that captivating narrative into reality on the ground.
Playfully calling his firm BIG, Ingels practices an approach he terms "BIGamy." Rather than adhering to a single rigid aesthetic, he tailors his ideas to meet client demands, producing designs unlike anything seen before.
To realize his vision for Two World Trade Center, however, Ingels had to continually prove its value to two hard-nosed figures: Murdoch and Larry Silverstein, the developer controlling much of the World Trade Center rebuilding effort. Securing a long-term lease between Murdoch and Silverstein was essential to financing the $4 billion skyscraper.
"There’s a lot of drama with the deal right now," Ingels said during the film shoot. "I don’t know how worried I should be."
Even with an agreement, the project faced a volatile real estate market, political sensitivities surrounding a site of mass murder, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the transportation agency that owns the land beneath the complex. These bureaucratic and political factors had stalled the redevelopment process for 14 years, derailing numerous architectural ambitions.
Ingels’ design had actually displaced an earlier proposal by Lord Norman Foster. To avoid a similar fate, Ingels needed to balance the competing demands of Murdoch and Silverstein while managing the rapid influx of new commissions flowing into BIG.
The first major hurdle Ingels faced was sheer inertia. Silverstein was satisfied with Foster’s original design and expressed deep concerns over Ingels’ early drawings, fearing the stacked structure would appear asymmetrical or teetering from certain angles. Silverstein nearly rejected the proposal outright before receiving reassuring endorsements from the architects of other World Trade Center buildings.
Shortly after, Ingels faced an intense review with Rupert Murdoch himself. Gathering in a conference room overlooking the site, Ingels encountered rapid-fire questioning from the media mogul. Murdoch’s primary concern was structural stability: Why doesn’t it fall over?
Assisted by David Childs, architect of One World Trade Center, Ingels explained that the leaning effect was an optical illusion. The unorthodox stepped form resulted from placing the elevator core off-center, creating expansive interior spaces for newsrooms, outdoor terraces, and direct views of the plaza for Fox News studios. The explanation won Murdoch over.
Ingels also found a vital ally in James Murdoch, Rupert’s son and corporate heir apparent. As the driving force behind the relocation of 21st Century Fox and News Corp. from an aging building near Rockefeller Center, the younger Murdoch sought an open, loftlike creative workspace rather than a traditional corporate tower. "We were struck by what a great problem solver he was," James Murdoch said. "This is someone who can take a set of constraints and create something surprising and effective out of them."
However, working around the remnants of Foster’s previously constructed foundation created significant engineering complications. Because a $4 billion underground transportation hub had already been built to match Foster’s baseline, any new tower had to connect seamlessly to those deep subterranean supports.
When Ingels’ team consulted with engineers and facade consultants, further obstacles emerged. Security standards set by the New York Police Department required all facades at the World Trade Center to use heavy laminated safety glass for explosion protection, adding millions to the projected budget. Negotiations between Silverstein and Murdoch grew tense, leaving the architecture temporarily in limbo.
Despite these setbacks, Ingels worked through compromises to preserve the essence of his design. Following meetings with Silverstein executives and engineers, modifications were made to align the structural requirements with realistic construction budgets.
As BIG continued to expand—opening new offices near Wall Street and managing major international projects ranging from the Smithsonian’s South Mall campus master plan to flood defenses along New York’s East River—Ingels reflected on the realities of his profession.
"In architecture, sometimes the eureka moment is actually when you give up a stance and say, OK, we have to try something else," Ingels observed.
Whether navigating the complex negotiations of Two World Trade Center or managing a growing roster of international projects, Ingels remained focused on the ultimate realization of his designs. Standing near the World Trade Center site, looking toward where the new skyscraper would rise, Ingels remained characteristically optimistic.
"Imagine, that’s where it’s going to sit," he said. "I think it’s going to be pretty epic."
