Friday TED Talk: Bjarke Ingels Tells the Stories Behind His Amazing Architecture

Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, who heads up one of the most innovative design teams in the field today, tells with humor, sharp wit and images the stories behind three of the projects he has completed. In each one he shows how the designers' concern for connecting people with the functions made for a more humane and ecologically sensible environment. Don't miss his tale about proposing to ship Denmark's national treasure -- the "Little Mermaid" -- to China for an exhibition, along with her own crystal-clean harbor water as a backdrop, or his tale about transferring the ideas from a failed project in Iceland to a new one that recreated a national landmark for an urban environment in Malaysia. This talk was one of the very best at the TED 2009 Global Conference:

You may read more about Bjarke Ingels here; he is a principal of a firm appropriately named BIG (for Bjarke Ingels Group), in Denmark, and the TED blog has just published an interview with him. Watch the talk in high-resolution video from this link, and download the talk in that and other versions from this page. Best of all -- and save it for last -- is a visit to his firm's innovative Website (be sure your Java is up-to-date).