The Architect Behind Some of the World’s Boldest Buildings

I like it when a building exceeds the expectations. And in addition to solving what it is built for, it also gives a gift to the community it is part of. Every building we didn't do is a missed opportunity. We do everything from lamp designs to new cities from scratch. Here in New York, our first building was a building called the Court Scraper. And 25 years ago, our first building was the Copenhagen Harbour Bar. We've designed a museum that is a bridge spanning across a river in a sculpture park. And we've designed the home of the Lego brick. And we tried to imagine an architecture that would be as inviting and engaging as Lego is itself. So you can climb all the roofs like public playgrounds without a ticket. This is sort of the library where we somehow archive and store the sketch models for every project. I met Stephen Rockefeller. And they were involved in creating the Rose Rock Financial Center in Tianjin. This is a 3D-printed performance pavilion we've created in Austin. We are in the process of finishing this very large project that started right after Hurricane Sandy, which we've nicknamed the dry line. Essentially, imagine the high line that will keep Manhattan dry when the next Sandy comes. So this is essentially the waterfront of Lower Manhattan. We are realizing this entire East River portion is currently under construction. Like maybe a third of it has already opened to the public. But the south tip, you don't really have the real estate to protect the city. So we made a study for the city where we looked at expanding the south tip of Manhattan with a little more park. And this little zone of green is what will protect the city. The last, let's say, six years have definitely not been a feast. For all our traditional work. Because it's been like this perfect storm of one catastrophe after the other. And now lately, the constant threat of tariffs means that no one wants to commit any kind of long-term capital. So how have we survived the last six years? Around 2020, I made this kind of little bucket list of five projects that we have never done. And we kind of committed to say that every year we should be willing to over-invest 25% of our EBIT in trying to win one of these. And interestingly, just two years later, we won our first airport, the airport of Zurich. It's going to be the largest timber building on earth. We won the Philharmonic in Prague. We're doing the Vegas A's and we're creating their home on the Strip. And the good thing, all of these kinds of projects are a little bit less dependent on the typical economics. Because they are projects that need to happen. So in that sense, happily, we have survived actually doing the work we love. I studied at art school, you know, sculpture, painting and architecture. In the first, let's say, decade and a half of my career, when we would show up in the newspaper, it would always be in the cultural section. And I had a kind of wake-up moment. In January 2020, I was traveling in northern Brazil. And I ended up giving a talk, making the argument that the ecological value, if preserved and protected, would also represent in long-term the greatest economical value. And of course, the president at the time in 2020 was Xavier Bolsonaro. That photo of everybody in the meeting quickly gets cropped to me and Bolsonaro standing next to each other. And then all of the media explodes. It's almost like guilty by association. And it kind of shocked me that anyone would care who I met with. And in the end, I kind of came to the conclusion that I would like to be involved in important issues. I might actually have real insights for the powerful decision-makers to actually make the right choices. And I think the lesson is that you have now graduated from the cultural section to the grown-up section that's about politics and economics. I cannot imagine anything more rewarding than literally creating the world of your dreams. Running a business is the necessary side effect. I need a lot of skilled colleagues, talented human beings to make all this happen. And as a result, we are now like more than 800 people working together. I would hope that our buildings somehow make people aware that your physical environment, it can also create this opportunity, this idea allowing people to realize that the world can be more. We actually, as human beings, have the possibility and the responsibility to make sure that it actually does fit to the way that we would like to live our lives today.