How a Great Architect Thinks, with Bjarke Ingels | Better in Person

**Stephen Dubner** (0:00)
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Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. If you've been listening to Freakonomics Radio for a while, you know that we like to try new projects. For a while, we made a live game show. Over the years, we've made a bunch of other podcasts.
Well, we just went and made another new show, but this one is different. It's a video show shot in my living room and it's called Better in Person. If Freakonomics is about how things work, Better in Person is about how people work. Everyone has a public story. I wanted the rest. We've just launched the first season of Better in Person on the Freakonomics YouTube channel. There will be 10 episodes over the next couple months, so just search for Freakonomics on YouTube and you will find Better in Person. But we're also happy to provide this podcast version of the show for you right here in the Freakonomics feed. The Freakonomics audience is smart, curious, and just the right amount of weird. I know this because I read your emails. You've always been very generous in giving our new projects a chance, and I hope you'll give Better in Person a chance too. If only out of a burning need to see what I actually look like. If you like the show, please spread the word. That is the single best thing you can do to support the stuff we make. As always, thanks for listening. Here now is Better in Person with the architect Bjarke Ingels.
I know when you first went online and you're Danish, so the URL was big, bjarkeingelsgroup.dk, which if you read it is Big Dick, that's on purpose, I assume?

**Bjarke Ingels** (1:52)
No, the thing is, I've been struggling with this ever since.

**Stephen Dubner** (1:56)
So, that was not a self-promotional URL.

**Bjarke Ingels** (2:00)
No, I'm sure that it's gone into the spam filter in a few places.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:12)
This is Better in Person, with Stephen Dubner and Bjarke Ingels.

**Stephen Dubner** (2:18)
When I first started thinking about who to have on the show, I made a list, many lists actually, and one name always wound up near the top, Bjarke Ingels.
If you already know something about Bjarke Ingels, you'll understand why I wanted him, and if you don't, you can thank me later. He is an architect in New York City and many other places, and there is a chance that he will go down as one of the greats. He started his first studio called Plopt in 2001 By the way, he told us that Bjarke means little bear in Danish. When he was 31, he founded Bjarke Ingels Group for Big. They have designed the Spiral in New York City, the Lego house back in Denmark, and they're currently building a stadium for the old Oakland A's who are moving to Las Vegas. He's also working with NASA and a 3D printed company called Icon. They're trying to figure out how to do construction on the moon using mostly moon dust as the raw building material. I'm making this new show in my living room and we had just moved in.
So Bjarke brought a housewarming present.

**Bjarke Ingels** (3:21)
I have a gift for you.

**Stephen Dubner** (3:22)
It was synthetic moon dust that they had created for that NASA project. He poured some out. It looked like fine gray beach sand or maybe the remains of your favorite pet. This was my first time meeting Bjarke. I had tried to get a coffee with him before we taped, but we couldn't make it happen. Bjarke Ingels can be elusive.
But I started out as a reporter. I'm used to just hanging around places. So I went to hang out at the big offices in downtown Brooklyn, and I talked to some of the architects there, including Rachel Wilkins, a senior landscape architect. So we're talking to Bjarke next week.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:01)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

**Stephen Dubner** (4:02)
But Bjarke, he's not in New York very much, and he's busy.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:05)
He's really busy.

**Stephen Dubner** (4:05)
He said he's going to call me sometime, and I actually took my phone off, do not disturb for a whole day. He didn't call. So I have a feeling he's just going to show up. You think?

**SPEAKER_2** (4:14)
Yeah, I think so. He's pretty, he's very amiable.

**Stephen Dubner** (4:17)
I met designer Norrain Chang in the hallway. Okay, so we're interviewing him next week. There must be some question that you would really like to ask him yourself, that you've never gotten the opportunity.