Copenhagen- and New York–based architect Bjarke Ingels heads BIG, a 700-person practice working from buildings to product systems. His projects—housing blocks with sloped parks, power plants topped by ski runs—treat architecture as a tool for public life, not just enclosure. Each commission starts with what he calls “pragmatic utopia”: mapping real constraints, then twisting them until social, environmental, and economic gains line up. That method demands cross-disciplinary teams; engineers, ecologists, and coders sit beside modelmakers to prototype everything from floating neighbourhoods to carbon-capturing bricks. Recent work ranges from LEGO House’s walkable roofscape to Google’s lightweight, tent-like campuses, all measured against the UN Sustainable Development Goals rather than classical proportion. Ingels splits his time between a renovated Copenhagen brewery and a loft in Lower Manhattan. Off site he kite-surfs and sketches comic-book storyboards—brief pauses before the next workshop starts.