Bjarke Ingels of BIG named guest editor of Domus for 2025

Born in Copenhagen fifty years ago, Bjarke Ingels is the founder of the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), with offices in Copenhagen and New York. Ingels will be the eighth “guest editor” in the 10x10x10 editorial project, leading up to Domus magazine’s centennial in 2028. His career spans numerous awards and iconic projects that have established him as a global force in architecture. These range from CopenHill – Copenhagen’s waste-to-energy plant doubling as a ski slope – to VIA 57 West, the pyramidal skyscraper transforming New York’s skyline, and even lunar colonies conceptualized for NASA. In his manifesto for the upcoming guest editorship, Ingels introduces the theme of his Domus 2025 as “a material odyssey,” beginning with solid rock and culminating in streams of electrons. “Stone, earth, concrete, glass, wood, metal, plants, plastics, resources, digital. We aim to return to the fundamental material nature of what we create. Unlike other art forms, architecture is not about representation – it’s about reception. It does not refer to life; it makes space for it. It does not discuss the world; it produces it,” Ingels states. “In the pages of Domus, you will find the traditional and the avant-garde, the artisan and the technophile, the ornamental and the austere, the expressive and the tectonic, the global and the local, the pragmatic and the utopian – side by side. Conflicting ideas united by matter.”

Bjarke Ingels,  Domus guest editor 2025

Ingels seeks to redefine “materialism,” steering it away from clichés and negative connotations, and instead highlighting the architect’s role as a shaper of reality – someone who translates visions into tangible forms. “Architecture is the materialization of thought. A bridge between imagination and the physical world, between dreams and the concreteness of life. Society, by contrast, is built on immaterial processes – social, political, and economic structures – that are not tangible.” The architect’s task, he believes, is to translate these abstract systems into design. “You must understand education if you’re designing a university, health care if you’re designing a hospital, or mobility if you’re designing a public square.” A good architect, Ingels insists, “makes material what is abstract.”

This concept is further explored in an exclusive interview with Walter Mariotti, editorial director of Domus, which appears in a special monograph accompanying the December issue. For Mariotti, “Bjarke Ingels is one of the great, original, nonconformist talents of our time, someone who has offered architecture – and the wider worlds of ideas, global society, and space-focused technology – solutions that no one had previously conceived.”

Ingels joins a distinguished roster of architects who have served as guest editors of Domus: Michele De Lucchi inaugurated the project in 2018, followed by Winy Maas (2019), David Chipperfield (2020), Tadao Ando (2021), Jean Nouvel (2022), Steven Holl with Toshiko Mori (2023), and Norman Foster in 2024.

Walter Mariotti, Domus editorial director

“Since 1928, Domus has been addressing the challenges of the present through architecture, design, art, and the life that accompanies them,” notes Cav. Lav. Giovanna Mazzocchi, President of Editoriale Domus. “These challenges are always new, increasingly complex, and often paradoxical. That is why we chose Bjarke Ingels.” The first Domus issue curated by Bjarke Ingels will be released in January 2025. The December 2024 issue – on newsstands from Saturday, December 7 – will feature the special monograph with his manifesto and full interview.

Opening image: Photo Claus Troelsgaard