Many of you know our good friend Kai-Uwe Bergmann. We originally met Kai through our involvement making short films with the local urban activist group "Action:BetterCity" when he was with Weinstein here in Seattle, then he went overseas to Baumschlager Eberle in Lochau, Austria. He's got an amazing architecture tour itinerary of Austria and Switzerland, if anyone's interested - though he's gotten rid of his Mini-Cooper since our trip together. Kai moved to Copenhagen the day before Grace & I left after our 2-month stay in Fall 2004 and began practice there with the office of C. F. Møller. In 2006 Kai landed at Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) Architects in Copenhagen, which appears to suit him quite well.
Following the evolution of this young firm since we left DK, we've come to admire BIG for their ambition and passion for getting innovative design and concepts out into the public realm for discussion. Bjarke has even done a TED talk on architecture:
http://blog.ted.com/2009/09/15/3_warpspeed_arc/
BIG was invited to the 2010 Venice Biennale and put together an amazing video presentation projected into the corner of a room. The concept of multiple projectors is simple, but I’m guessing the intellectual and computing power that went into this was vast. I've updated the link below since the original post, as the text is more legible, but the concept is essentially one of regional mobility and livability in the Øresund region that links Denmark and Sweden.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeMS0eyKSdw&feature=player_embedded]
Somewhat tangential, but the presentation brings to mind the early work of James Turrell and his projected "volumes" into corners of a room. I first saw Turrell's work at the Henry Art Gallery in 1992, and have been hooked ever since:
http://www.c4gallery.com/artist/database/james-turrell/james-turrell.html