On a misty April morning, Bjarke Ingels stood on the roof of a historic brick building high above the cobblestone streets of Lower Manhattan, the collar of his black coat rakishly popped. The Danish architect was shooting a promotional film for what is easily the most critical commission of his young career: his design for the skyscraper known as Two World Trade Center.
At the time, the project was still a work in progress, and his primary client—the formidable media magnate Rupert Murdoch—had yet to formally sign off. Yet, the hyper-eloquent 40-year-old architect refused to let doubt stand in the way of his vision. Having obsessed over every line and image, he told his director that he wanted viewers to swoon upon seeing the final structure. At that moment, Murdoch’s plan to relocate his vast media enterprises remained one of New York real estate’s most closely guarded secrets. But Ingels could barely contain his excitement, eager to shout the news, quite literally, from the rooftops.
Between takes, Ingels pointed toward a void in the densely packed Manhattan skyline, tracing the profile of a towering skyscraper that, for now, existed only in his mind’s eye. From this precise perspective, his design resembled a stack of seven distinct blocks, ascending like a monumental staircase toward One World Trade Center, its monolithic neighbor.
"In a way, it is almost like a physical manifestation of the spirit of America," he remarked. "Out of many, one."
If successfully completed, the tower will stand among the tallest buildings in New York City, serving as the final piece in the master plan for the redeveloped World Trade Center site. The architectural ensemble will ring two cascading pools that pay solemn tribute to the roughly 3,000 people who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. However, Ingels was not overly preoccupied with the solemnity of the memorial itself; his mandate was to build for the future and make his own history. "The memorial is about the memorial," he noted. "The tower should be about the living city."
Eclecticism on Demand
Ingels is fond of describing architecture as "the art of turning fiction into fact." He possesses a rare combination of talents—acting as a skilled draftsman, a persuasive salesman, and the charming cultivator of his own winning public image. Yet, his greatest asset remains a profound gift for storytelling: an innate ability to construct a compelling narrative around rigid practical necessities.
Often, his designs careen in wildly fantastical directions. He oversaw the construction of a waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen featuring a slanted roof that doubles as a recreational ski slope, complete with a smokestack designed to puff a symbolic ring of carbon dioxide each time the plant emits a ton of greenhouse gases. For a proposed expansion of Google’s corporate campus in Mountain View, California, Ingels—collaborating with designer Thomas Heatherwick—conceived an elaborate complex of geodesic domes, envisioning a lifestyle of biking, hiking, and coding sheltered beneath a sunlit glass terrarium.
Such imaginative flights have made Ingels internationally famous and highly sought-after at an age considered remarkably precocious by traditional architecture standards. But fame can be a deceptive indicator in his profession. As Ingels well knows, an architect’s work often resembles the light of a distant star, reaching the public eye only after a long, arduous, and years-long journey.
His largest completed project in New York up to that point—a striking pyramidal apartment building along Manhattan’s West Side Highway at 57th Street, dubbed VIA 57 West—was roughly one-third the scale 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, noting the sobering reality that, despite his massive global reputation, his firm had not yet completed a single skyscraper.
With Two World Trade Center, Ingels believed he had devised a way to invent an entirely new kind of high-rise work environment—one that transforms a form traditionally rooted in vertical hierarchy into a space optimized for horizontal interaction. The arduous part, however, lay in proving he could translate that captivating narrative into hard facts on the ground.
Playfully naming his firm BIG, Ingels often describes his architectural philosophy as "BIGamy." Rather than adhering to a single, rigid aesthetic dogma, he tailors his concepts to meet the unique demands of each client, all in service of producing designs unlike anything seen before.
Navigating the Bureaucratic and Corporate Labyrinth
To bring Two World Trade Center to life, Ingels had to continually prove its value to a pair of hard-nosed octogenarians: Rupert Murdoch and Larry Silverstein, the veteran developer who has controlled much of the World Trade Center rebuilding process. Murdoch and Silverstein still had to finalize a long-term lease agreement capable of financing the $4 billion skyscraper.
"There’s a lot of drama with the deal right now," Ingels admitted on the day of his promotional shoot. "I don’t know how worried I should be."
Even if the key principals reached an agreement, numerous other hazards loomed: a volatile real estate market, the unavoidable political melodrama inherent in building upon a site of mass tragedy, and the bureaucratic hurdles posed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the transportation agency that owns the underlying land.
For 14 years, these compounding factors had caused the redevelopment process to lurch forward unpredictably, crushing many ambitious architectural visions along the way. In fact, Ingels’ design directly displaced an earlier concept drafted by renowned architect Lord Norman Foster. (In the cyclical nature of the industry, Foster had previously pushed aside Ingels on a library project in Kazakhstan.)
To avoid his predecessor’s fate, Ingels had to balance the sometimes conflicting demands of Murdoch and Silverstein, who intended to market the upper half of the building as premium office space. Simultaneously, he had to manage a flood of new clients commissioning projects from BIG. While his dazzlingly swift rise inspired widespread awe and envy among peers, Ingels remained acutely aware of the stakes: just as a single triumphant building can cement an architect’s reputation, a single disaster can ruin it.
Never one to shy away from bravado, Ingels insisted he relished the immense pressure. "It is like this Zen exercise," he said. "Turning the force of your enemy into your own strength."
The first force Ingels had to overcome at the World Trade Center was institutional inertia. Silverstein was initially content with Foster’s existing design—which Foster declined to comment on—and harbored serious reservations about Ingels’ early drawings. Silverstein worried that the stacked, offset structure would look asymmetrical and precarious from certain angles.
"He just thought, like, could he see it fit in? No," Ingels recalled. "Was it a nice design for another place? Maybe, but not here."
Silverstein nearly walked away from the entire proposal until endorsements from the architects behind other World Trade Center buildings ultimately changed his mind. Soon after, Ingels faced an even more rigorous test when Rupert Murdoch requested a direct review of the latest design iteration.
The following Monday, the principals gathered in a conference room overlooking the ground zero site. Ingels, usually unflappable, was briefly knocked off balance by the media mogul’s rapid-fire questioning. "It’s almost sort of like kangaroo boxing," Ingels remarked hours later back at his office. Murdoch’s primary concern centered on a fundamental question: Why doesn’t it fall over?
With assistance from David Childs, the architect of One World Trade Center, Ingels explained that the leaning effect was an intentional visual illusion. The unorthodox stepped form of the building resulted from placing the structural core—which houses crucial elevators—off-center. This layout yielded expansive interior spaces ideal for modern newsrooms, provided Fox News studios with sweeping views of the Trade Center plaza, and created accessible outdoor terraces. Murdoch was ultimately convinced.
"Before you get that story, most people suspect that it’s all just follies," Ingels noted. "The more blatantly the architect can explain why things are the way they are, the better."
In his efforts, Ingels counted on a powerful ally: James Murdoch, Rupert’s son and corporate heir apparent. At 42, James was the driving force behind the decision to relocate 21st Century Fox and News Corp. from their aging headquarters near Rockefeller Center.
"It was funny," James said. "We sort of thought, ‘Let’s not hire a starchitect, let’s not build a big tower.’"
Instead, he initially sought an open, loftlike, creative workplace. But after exploring various potential sites across the city, he arrived at the World Trade Center—and partnered with Ingels, a star who understood his operational desires. "We were struck by what a great problem solver he was," James observed. "This is someone who can take a set of constraints and create something surprising and effective out of them."
Engineering Realities and Design Compromises
The foremost constraint involved the remnants of Foster’s foundation. As part of a political compromise between Silverstein and the Port Authority, Foster’s subterranean foundation had already been constructed to accommodate a $4 billion underground transportation hub. The rest of the tower was slated to rise once Silverstein secured an anchor tenant.
However, James Murdoch felt Foster’s conservative skyscraper did not suit a modern media company, and Ingels similarly dismissed the concept as "a generic extrusion with a flashy hat."
Marrying a brand-new architectural design onto a preexisting foundation created complex structural challenges, particularly on the lower floors and lobby, which had to be engineered to transfer the tower’s immense weight onto existing underground supports. Ingels had to convince yet another skeptical audience: Silverstein’s structural engineers.
Ten days after meeting with Murdoch, Ingels stood in his chaotic, half-boxed office as BIG prepared to move into a larger space. Taking a marker to a whiteboard, he explained the physics of his design.
"A lot of towers, as they get over a certain height, they tend toward a square footprint," Ingels said.
This generic form is typically dictated by cost, marketability, and engineering constraints, as uniform floor plates are easier to lease and withstand massive gravity and wind loads. Ingels, however, believed he could reshape the high-rise. "We just redistributed the calories," he quipped.
Moments later, Ute Rinnebach, project manager for Two World Trade Center, returned from a meeting with the engineering team. "Really bad," she told Ingels, delivering sobering news.
Ingels’ original idea for retrofitting the foundation involved reinforcing underground walls and columns within the Port Authority’s domain—a plan deemed unacceptable. Much like pulling a block from a Jenga tower, altering those critical reinforcements threatened the stability of the entire structural scheme.
Simultaneously, a facade consultant delivered another blow. Ingels had planned to vary the alignment of the glass panes and metal mullions to keep costs down. However, New York Police Department security standards mandated that all facades at the World Trade Center use heavy laminated safety glass to protect against potential explosions.
"I was like, fuck!" Ingels recalled. "Because that’s a piece of information that hadn’t reached me. I just thought I had an ace up my sleeve, which I didn’t, because the building has to be safe."
With Silverstein and Murdoch navigating a tense bargaining phase, any deviation from standard construction formulas drove up estimated costs. "Right now," Ingels noted, "the architecture is essentially held hostage."
For weeks, the project’s fate hung in the balance. "It’s trying to resolve all these issues without totally bastardizing the design," Ingels said in May, walking briskly toward his Tribeca apartment. He noted an impromptu visit from Larry Silverstein, who had encouraged him to push through the hurdles.
"He said, ‘You know, this is a historical moment, we can make this happen,’" Ingels recounted. "’We need to make this deal happen, and to do that, we need to make the design happen. There are these outstanding issues, and you, my friend, are the one who can solve them.’"
Ultimately, Ingels averted disaster by agreeing to painful structural adjustments. "I think it still sort of looks like itself," he said with guarded optimism.
Walking across the World Trade Center plaza, he stopped by the lobby of Four World Trade Center, designed by Fumihiko Maki, to admire its 98-foot titanium art installation. Just then, a group of Silverstein executives walked past, including Janno Lieber, Silverstein’s second-in-command, who offered unexpected praise.
"I gotta tell you, I gotta give you a hug," Lieber said. "That was a helluva turnaround that you guys did in the last week."
"Suddenly, the sum of a lot of nudges adds up," Ingels replied.
Reflecting on the episode, Ingels leaned into his broader architectural philosophy. "I really like this idea that architecture is the art and science of trying to make everybody happy," he said. "Potentially, somewhere out there, there’s a design that can actually satisfy every dream, by being different."
Drawing an evolutionary parallel, he added, "In Darwinian evolution, the animal has two primary instincts: fight or flight. And normally you would associate innovation with plowing through and fighting for your standpoint. But often in evolution it is the moment of flight where you are forced to go another route… In architecture, sometimes the eureka moment is actually when you give up a stance and say, OK, we have to try something else."
Managing Global Ambitions and Expanding Horizons
That evolutionary metaphor speaks to an unavoidable truth in architecture: every practitioner must learn to live with continual defeats. In his 2009 manifesto, Yes Is More, Ingels observed that "most architectural projects either miscarry or die in early infancy," estimating that of 200 designs produced in his firm’s first eight years, only 11 were built.
While fame increased his odds by attracting affluent and influential clients—such as Google, whose CEO Larry Page once told him regarding parking constraints, "It’s nothing that $50 million won’t solve"—even the world’s most powerful companies face setbacks. The city of Mountain View ultimately denied the development rights required to build Google’s entire 2.5 million-square-foot complex, proving that even tech giants hear "no."
Yet, BIG’s pipeline continued to swell. In Manhattan alone, Ingels spearheaded four major additions to the Hudson River skyline alongside the Dryline, a $335 million hybrid park and flood defense system along the East River designed in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. In Washington, D.C., the firm undertook a master plan for the Smithsonian’s South Mall campus. Each high-profile commission drew attention from increasingly prominent entities, including an NFL franchise owner exploring a stadium project.
"Coming here to America five years ago, we were given the opportunity to try to reimagine the skyscraper, which is one of the great inventions of American architecture," Ingels said. "I think the American football stadium would be an awesome thing to take on."
Having founded BIG in Copenhagen just a decade prior, Ingels’ meteoric rise confounded industry expectations. "He has just bypassed all the rest of the avant-garde," said Preston Scott Cohen, an architect and professor at the Harvard School of Design, where Ingels has also taught. "No one has done it that fast, with that degree of success. You name them, he has just flown right over their heads."
Traditionally, museum-grade architecture was limited to civic projects due to its complexity and expense, while profit-driven office buildings remained utilitarian. Ingels, however, championed the philosophy of being "both pragmatic and utopian," seeing no reason why artistry could not be infused into corporate complexes and megaprojects.
Influenced by his early work under Rem Koolhaas at OMA, Ingels inherited a fearless attitude toward placing bold ideas on any table. But while Koolhaas primarily theorized New York through texts like Delirious New York, Ingels sought to leave a tangible, physical mark on the city’s skyline.
By early June, a tentative deal between Silverstein and Murdoch was secured, allowing the partners to publicly unveil the design for Two World Trade Center. Before doing so, however, Ingels sought a final blessing from Daniel Libeskind, the architect behind the original World Trade Center master plan. A decade prior, Libeskind had been the toast of New York before running into the harsh realities of commercial development.
During a presentation at BIG’s conference room, Ingels took care to demonstrate how his design respected Libeskind’s "Wedge of Light" plaza, using diagonal lobby columns to resolve foundation alignment challenges.
Libeskind gave his verdict with a firm slap on the table. "Congratulations, that is a super building," he said, adding with a touch of mischief, "I hope we’re going to see it going up, Mr. Janno."
While initial reviews were largely positive, Libeskind noted that the conceptual unveiling was only the beginning. "Between that first smile and the last stone is the challenge of architecture," he observed, pointing to the complex interplay of economics, social pressures, power brokers, and politicians.
As negotiations and minor design adjustments continued, Ingels even faced a critique from Douglas Durst, operator of the neighboring One World Trade Center. "I’m very disappointed in Bjarke’s design," Durst remarked, objecting to the orientation of the stepped gardens. "He turned his back on our building. Not even metaphorically. It’s very disrespectful."
Durst quickly added that he still considered Ingels a genius—illustrating the delicate balancing act required of an architect managing multiple high-stakes corporate clients simultaneously.
A New Headquarters and Continuing Challenges
As BIG expanded to include 170 employees in New York and 100 in Copenhagen, Ingels stepped into the role of brand ambassador while delegating authority to his partners and staff. Yet, the firm remained deeply personalized. Returning from Europe to a flurry of operational and design crises—ranging from concrete finishes for residential facades to conceptual disagreements with clients—Ingels maintained his characteristic energy.
By mid-summer, as the Two World Trade Center design team set up a dedicated studio inside Silverstein’s headquarters, practical realities once again took center stage. Reviewing the lobby design, Ute Rinnebach noted that the sloping columns required to satisfy the initial architectural vision had proven too expensive, recommending a shift to straighter, more cost-effective columns.
"I could live with that," Ingels concluded. "If we really want the truth, this is the truth. This is the truth in dollars."
Janno Lieber echoed the sentiment during a brief visit, emphasizing that the primary hurdle remaining was purely financial. "Nobody wants to pay $12 million to $15 million more for structure," Ingels agreed.
Despite the economic constraints and the compromises required to make the project viable, Ingels remained content to work within practical boundaries rather than retreat into architectural purism.
"A lot of the starchitects have started their careers doing some high-end sculptural projects," Ingels reflected over breakfast in Tribeca. "When they suddenly get faced with something that is more governed by the parameters of the practical, they end up almost petrified or paralyzed, because their usual repertoire doesn’t work."
Atypical of his generation of architects, Ingels viewed the challenge not as a limitation, but as solving a massive equation with multiple fixed variables. Walking down Greenwich Street toward the World Trade Center site, he framed an imaginary snapshot with his hands, clicking his tongue like a camera shutter.
"Imagine, that’s where it’s going to sit," he said. "I think it’s going to be pretty epic."
