With Offices in Copenhagen and New York city,International Architectural Firm Bjarke Ingels Group has drawn extensive attention and acclaim for their pragmatic utopian architecture since being founded 2005.The firm is currently involved in a large number of projects,including several large scale commisions throughout Europe,North America,Asia and The Middle East.Better yet,the studio is being recognized at tonight's A+Awards gala with the firm of the year award.To understand how founder Bjarke Ingels has climbed to the top of the architecture world ,Architizer spoke with the winner himself.

What does winning Firm of the Year mean to you?

Bjarke Ingels: Of course, it's great — all expressions of appreciation are welcome. We came to New York four years ago, and I've been pretty amazed at how welcoming both the city and the profession have been. I came with one colleague, and now we have 90 people. Architizer has also been welcoming in terms of showing interest in what we are doing, allowing us to meet professional clients, and embracing the idea that our presence in the city and the country could be a positive contribution to the profession as a whole. This spirit of community hospitality has now manifested itself in us being recognized as the Firm of the Year.

NYC office of BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group. Photo by Alberto Newton

How would you describe the culture of your firm's studio?

It's very cheerful, yet everyone's super ambitious about what they do. You have people cracking jokes, and there's a culture of where it's cool to be helpful. People are not really competing. Every two or three years we all go on a big trip — a year and a half ago, we went to Japan, and we're planning on going in a year to Switzerland.

We also try to keep in mind the big picture. We invite people to come in to talk, sometimes an artist, engineer, writer, programmers — we try to use our network to actually bring some knowledge into the office. In the afternoon, we get some snacks and beers and then somebody tells something to share certain expertise, like model photography. In that sense, there's a growth of skills that happens in a decentralized way.

Also, a lot of the firm's tone is created between the people in the office. It's not really a top-down situation, but a facilitated exchange of ideas and skills. One of the most important things of leadership is to lead by example: treat each other with equality. In that sense, we're quite different form the stereotype of the despotic firm leader....Continue Reading

> via Architizer