STUDIO
BIG – BJARKE INGELS GROUP
CopenHill, Copenhagen, Denmark. 2019. photo by Rasmus Hjortshøj
Studio Details
Location
Venice, Italy
Date
29 June-10 July, 2026
Team Leader
Kai-Uwe Bergmann (Partner, BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group)
Program
Reimagining Social Infrastructure
Field Trips and Site Visits
The Venice and Mestre ports
MOSE flood barrier
Large-scale Venice Lagoon infrastructure projects
Project
We will explore how well-designed social infrastructure contributes to a sustainable & resilient future. As the infrastructure projects of the previous century structured how the Venetian region looks and operates today, the projects we envision will structure how the lagoon looks and operates for future generations – how can we address and respond to our societal issues at the scale of infrastructure.
Our public infrastructures for transport, industry, energy, waste, water, sewage etc. are major investments in our public budgets. What if we could harness those massive investments and imbue them with positive social side effects? What if we could turn a bridge interchange into an urban farming landscape that provides food to the local schools? What if the massive volume of a waste-to-energy power plant could become a mountain with ski slopes in a city full of snow but without hills encouraging an active lifestyle across multiple generations? By proactively cross-breeding the public infrastructure with social programs we can inject new urban life forms into the heart of our cities – and we can seize the millions of euros in public funding to supplement the region’s shrinking budgets for urban social philanthropy and creating a resilient region for future generations.
BIG is a Copenhagen, New York, London, Barcelona, Los Angeles and Shanghai based group of architects, designers, urbanists, landscape professionals, interior and product designers, researchers and inventors. The office is currently involved in a large number of projects throughout Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East. BIG’s architecture emerges out of a careful analysis of how contemporary life constantly evolves and changes. Not least due to the influence from multicultural exchange, global economic flows and communication technologies that all together require new ways of architectural and urban organization. We believe that in order to deal with today’s challenges, architecture can profitably move into a field that has been largely unexplored. A pragmatic utopian architecture that steers clear of the petrifying pragmatism of boring boxes and the naïve utopian ideas of digital formalism. Like a form of programmatic alchemy, we create architecture by mixing conventional ingredients such as living, leisure, working, parking and shopping. By hitting the fertile overlap between pragmatic and utopian, we architects once again find the freedom to change the surface of our planet, to better fit contemporary life forms.
Internships and Opportunities
Young designers and students accepted to join BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group at Venice Studio may be considered for available internship or job opportunities at BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group. Selection of candidates is at the sole discretion of the team leaders and BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group. Places are not guaranteed.