09 May 2018
Bjarke Ingels becomes WeWork's chief architect as company targets global growth
BY Kim Megson
New York-based shared workspace specialist WeWork has announced Bjarke Ingels as its chief architect, and he will be responsible for advising and developing the company’s design vision and language for buildings, campuses and neighbourhoods globally.
The company designs and builds physical and virtual shared workspaces for individuals and companies – from startups and freelancers to large enterprises. Increasingly, it has also branched out into the world of leisure, with initiatives such as Rise by We, a wellness club and ‘superspa’ concept designed for modern-day working lifestyles.
WeWork has already collaborated with Ingels, and his practice BIG, for its first WeGrow, a planned micro-school where subjects like mindfulness, yoga and farm-to-table cooking are on the curriculum. Now it has gone one step further by announcing a permanent role for the Danish architect.
Ingels, who will maintain his role as founding partner and creative director at BIG, said: “WeWork was founded at the exact same time as when I had arrived in New York. In that short amount of time – the blink of an eye at the time scale of architecture – they have accomplished incredible things and they are committed to continuing their trajectory to places we can only imagine.
“WeWork’s commitment to community and culturally-driven development is perfectly aligned with our active, social and environmental agendas. As WeWork takes on larger and more holistic urban and architectural challenges, I’m very excited to contribute with my insights and ideas to extend their community-oriented vision to ground-up buildings and urban neighbourhoods. BIG and I are incredibly thrilled to take an advisory role in WeWork’s evolution as a company and as a design culture.”
Explaining the high-profile appointment, WeWork co-founder and CEO Adam Neumann said: “Bjarke caught my attention because he’s changing the way we think about architecture. His designs inspire as much as they surprise. When we started WeWork eight years ago, we knew the world didn’t need another office building, it needed spaces where people could collaborate on projects, connect and create together, and potentially change the world.
"As WeWork’s chief architect, Bjarke Ingels will help us reimagine and reshape the future of our spaces, our company and ultimately our cities.”
You can read CLADglobal’s recent profile of Ingels and BIG here, and an interview with WeWork’s head of wellness, Avi Yehiel, here.
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