“Formgiving. An Architectural Future History” is the third book in Bjarke Ingels Group’s Taschen series, following “Yes is More” and “Hot to Cold”. It should come as no surprise that the visionaries of BIG have some pretty provocative ideas about the future, going as far as what living on the Moon or Mars would look like.
The name “Formgiving” comes from the Danish word for design, which means: “to give form to that which has not yet taken shape. In other words to give form to the future.” The book is organised into three parts: past, present, and future. Past sets out a decelerating logarithmic timeline of six evolutionary threads: Making, Sensing, Thinking, Moving, Sustaining, and Healing. Present covers BIG’s current body of work categorized by ten architectural insights. Future consists of studies and projections about the Earth and interplanetary migration towards the Moon and Mars.
Counting down from the Big Bang to the present, BIG explores six evolutionary trajectories in order to find clues that map our future. From robotic manufacturing to artificially intelligent designers, the evolutionary history of innovation showcases the power of formgiving and leads Bjarke Ingels to question not just who we are, but who we want to become. “From Human Beings to Human Becomings.”
“To feel that we have license to imagine a future different from today, all we have to do is look back ten years, a hundred years, a thousand years, to realize how radically different things were then than they are today. The same will be true if we can look ahead with the same clarity of vision.”
Bjarke Ingels introduces his personal selection of the group’s projects, among which are the Twist, a 3-in-1 bridge, museum, and a sculpture, as well as the power plant and ski slope combination in the CopenHill. The award-winning photography goes along beautifully with his previously unpublished essays.
As for the future BIG urges architects and designers to apply a more holistic approach and combine multiple new fields, such as AI, robotic enhancement, and augmented reality. They even explore the possibilities of terraforming on the Moon and Mars. The Masterplanet project shows a comprehensive approach to develop a more sustainable future.
“Masterplanet is a project that aims to establish a master plan for achieving a carbon-neutral planet Earth, while addressing the fundamental challenges of energy, transport, industry, biodiversity, resources, pollution, water, food, and prosperous living conditions for a world with up to 10 billion inhabitants. The purpose of the project is to present an overview of what it would actually take to stop the net emission of greenhouse gasses, and to get an idea of the practical implications of the ultimate goal, a 100 percent sustainable human presence on planet Earth.”
BIG looks at the planet as a whole and analyses the impact of different aspects, like population, food, water, transport, greenhouse gases, and many more. Given that the estimated population growth is predicted to be 10.5 billion by 2050, the question they explore is “what world should we be planning for?”.
In more than 700 pages, filled with inspiring designs and thought-provoking essays, BIG reminds us that we have the power to give form to our desired future and not just wait around for it to take shape on its own:
“We know that we don’t have the powers of prediction, but we do have the power of proposition. However limited our impact may be, if everybody attempts to make a difference within their own capacity there is almost no limit to the collective impact of 8 billion people, all of them being the change they wish to see in the world.”
