The Danish Architecture Centre (DAC) zooms in on one of Danish architecture's most successful and innovative architectural companies, BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group. This exhibition forms part of a pilot project called 'Close Up', in which DAC takes a long, hard look at new tendencies, theories and challenges within Danish architecture – using exhibitions, debates, seminars and teaching sessions. The exhibition sets op a platform for, and extends an invitation to, a dialogue about a number of Danish architectural companies that have forged striking, ground-breaking concepts to create a kind of holistic architecture quite out of the ordinary. In recent years, building construction in Denmark has been like a river in flood. Danish architects have experimented, expanded and developed their potentialities; and Danish architecture has taken great strides in terms of design and visual form language, new technologies, new skills, professionalisation, internationalisation and sustainability – to such an extent that Danish architects have in so many ways radically renewed and expanded the Danish/Scandinavian architectural tradition. Teetering as we are on the brink of a financial meltdown, there are a number of relevant questions: How have Danish architects renewed and developed Danish architecture in recent years? How have they broken new ground? And how can Danish architectural companies carry their experience and huge potential further onwards in this 21st century. 'Close Up' is a platform for debate, zooming in on innovative thinking, new opportunities and new challenges within Danish architecture today. A large, colourful series of cartoons unfolds across the walls of the exhibition, inviting visitors to step behind the projects to experience the constant transformation of ideas into projects. A collage of quotations and images illustrates the evolutionary process that characterises BIG – where differences and opposition along the way become an inspiration to further development and part of the final design. In the centre of the exhibition, a large conglomeration of models rises like a major city lit up at night, marking the transition from a simple form to the more complex, innovative structure of the final design. As an extension of the exhibition there will be a number of dialogue meetings to encourage architectural discussions about the development and renewal of the Danish/Scandinavian aesthetic tradition in our day.

Photos DAC / Jakob Galtt