On a misty April day in Lower Manhattan, Danish architect Bjarke Ingels stood high above a cobblestoned street, the collar of his black coat rakishly popped, shooting a promotional film for the defining commission of his young career. He was presenting his design for Two World Trade Center, a skyscraper still very much a work in progress. His primary client—the media magnate Rupert Murdoch—had yet to formally sign off on the plans. Yet the hyper-eloquent 40-year-old architect refused to let doubt stand in the way of his vision, obsessing over every line and image for a video he hoped would make viewers swoon.
At the time, Murdoch’s plan to relocate his media empire was one of New York real estate’s best-kept secrets. But Ingels could hardly contain his excitement, eager to share a project that he believed would reshape the city’s skyline. Between takes, Ingels pointed toward a void in the densely packed Manhattan skyline, tracing the profile of a skyscraper that, for the moment, only he could see. From that vantage point, his design resembled a stack of seven distinct 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 said. "Out of many, one."
If completed, the tower would 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 ensemble was designed to ring two cascading pools paying tribute to the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But Ingels was not overly preoccupied with the tragedy of the past; his goal was 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." He possesses a rare combination of talents—as a draftsman, a salesman, and a charming cultivator of his own public image—but his greatest asset is a gift for storytelling. He excels at constructing compelling narratives around practical necessities, often pushing his designs 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 symbolic ring of steam each time it emits a ton of carbon dioxide. For a proposed expansion of Google’s corporate campus in Mountain View, California, Ingels collaborated with designer Thomas Heatherwick to envision a wild complex of geodesic domes, imagining a lifestyle of cycling, hiking, and coding beneath a sunlit glass terrarium.
Such imaginative flights have made Ingels famous—and heavily sought-after—at an age considered precocious by the exacting standards of architecture. Yet, as Ingels well knows, fame can be a deceptive indicator in his profession, where an architect’s work often takes years to materialize. His largest project at the time, a striking pyramidal apartment building along Manhattan’s West Side Highway at 57th Street known as VIA 57 West, was 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, he believed he had found a way to reinvent the high-rise work environment, transforming a structure that is fundamentally vertical and hierarchical into a space that fosters horizontal interaction. The laborious part, however, lay in proving he could turn that captivating story into hard reality.
To realize the design, Ingels had to continually prove its value to two formidable figures: Rupert Murdoch and Larry Silverstein, the developer controlling much of the World Trade Center rebuilding effort. Murdoch and Silverstein still needed to finalize a long-term lease to secure financing for the $4 billion skyscraper.
"There’s a lot of drama with the deal right now," Ingels admitted during his film shoot. "I don’t know how worried I should be." Beyond negotiations, the project faced a volatile real estate market, the heavy political sensitivities of building on a site of mass murder, and the complex bureaucracy of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
For 14 years, these very factors had kept the redevelopment process lurching forward unpredictably, derailing many architectural ambitions. In fact, Ingels’ design had displaced an earlier concept by Lord Norman Foster. To avoid a similar fate, Ingels had to balance the conflicting demands of Murdoch and Silverstein while managing a growing roster of international clients who had recently flooded his firm, the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), with work.
Overcoming Inertia and Structural Realities
The first major hurdle Ingels faced at the World Trade Center was institutional inertia. Silverstein was initially content with Foster’s existing design and harbored serious concerns about Ingels’ early drawings, fearing the stacked structure would appear asymmetrical or precarious from certain angles. Silverstein nearly rejected the entire proposal until other architects involved in the World Trade Center master plan voiced their support.
Shortly after winning over the developer, Ingels faced a high-stakes review with Rupert Murdoch himself. Gathering in a conference room overlooking the site, Ingels was quickly tested by the media mogul’s rapid-fire questioning.
"It’s almost sort of like kangaroo boxing," Ingels remarked afterward. Murdoch’s primary concern was structural safety: why didn’t the building fall over? With assistance from David Childs, the architect behind One World Trade Center, Ingels explained that the leaning effect was an optical illusion. The unorthodox stepped form resulted from placing the core—which houses crucial elevator systems—off-center, thereby creating expansive interior spaces for newsrooms, outdoor terraces, and direct views of the plaza for Fox News studios. Murdoch was convinced.
Ingels also found a crucial ally in James Murdoch, Rupert’s son and corporate heir apparent. As the driving force behind the decision to relocate 21st Century Fox and News Corp. from an aging building near Rockefeller Center, the younger Murdoch was looking for an open, loft-like, creative workplace. "We were struck by what a great problem solver he was," James said of Ingels. "This is someone who can take a set of constraints and create something surprising and effective out of them."
However, translating those concepts into reality meant confronting the lingering remnants of Foster’s original design. Because a $4 billion underground transportation hub had already been built using Foster’s foundation, Ingels’ new tower had to connect seamlessly with existing subterranean structures.
Complications quickly mounted. During meetings with engineers and consultants, Ingels learned that his proposed adjustments to underground walls violated Port Authority rules, threatening the structural stability of the entire base. Furthermore, New York Police Department security standards required all facades at the World Trade Center site to use heavy laminated safety glass to withstand potential explosions, driving up estimated construction costs significantly.
"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 from explosions."
As negotiations between Silverstein and Murdoch ebbed and flowed, any deviation from standard construction formulas came with a heavy price tag. Yet through careful compromise and structural adjustments that preserved the essence of his design, Ingels managed to keep the project alive, earning praise from project executives for steering the team through a difficult period.
A Rapid Ascent in a Traditional Industry
Ingels founded BIG in Copenhagen just a decade prior, and his meteoric rise has startled industry veterans. Preston Scott Cohen, an acclaimed architect and professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, noted that Ingels had effectively bypassed the traditional avant-garde trajectory. "No one has done it that fast, with that degree of success," Cohen observed. "You name them, he has just flown right over their heads."
While museum-grade architecture has historically been limited to civic projects or institutional clients, Ingels has sought to bring artistic ambition to profit-driven commercial developments, corporate complexes, and megaprojects. Having started his career working under Rem Koolhaas at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Ingels absorbed a fearless approach to placing unconventional ideas on the table.
As BIG expanded to hundreds of employees across New York and Copenhagen, Ingels increasingly delegated authority to partners and staff while maintaining his role as the firm’s primary creative force and brand ambassador. Whether working on the Smithsonian South Mall campus master plan, residential towers in Manhattan, or coastal flood defense systems like the Dryline, Ingels continues to embrace the complex realities of modern urban development.
Reflecting on the challenges of his profession, Ingels remains philosophical about the compromises required to bring grand visions to life. "In architecture, sometimes the eureka moment is actually when you give up a stance and say, OK, we have to try something else," he reflected.
Standing near the World Trade Center site as plans for his projects moved forward, Ingels looked out over the evolving Manhattan landscape, unwearied by the immense pressure of his commissions. "Imagine, that’s where it’s going to sit," he said, framing a view with his hands. "I think it’s going to be pretty epic."
