The Copenhagen-based architectural firm of Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), featured in Record’s Vanguard issue (December 2009, page 52) has expanded its partnership as of December 1.
 
More than 150 representatives of architecture and design organizations came to Chicago for the inaugural meeting of the Association of Architecture Organizations (AAO).
Photo courtesy Bjarke Ingels Group
 
Not a rock band but Bjarke Ingels Group’s new management team (clockwise from center): partners Jakob Lange, Finn Nørkjaer, and David Zahle; associate partners Sheela Maini Soegaard, and Kai-Uwe Bergmann; founder Bjarke Ingels, and partners Thomas Christoffersen and Andreas Klok Pedersen.
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Ingels, who founded the firm in 2005, now has five full partners: Thomas Christoffersen, Jakob Lange, Finn Nørkjaer, Andreas Klok Pedersen, and David Zahle. In addition, Sheela Maini Søgaard, the managing director of the firm, and Kai-Uwe Bergmann, the director of business development and communications, have been named associate partners.

Since the youthful (35 years old) Ingels started BIG, after having co-founded PLOT Architects in 2001, the firm has mushroomed to 60 people. Despite the recession it just keeps getting work: BIG is currently designing the World Village of Women’s Sports in Malmo, Sweden; the Shenzhen International Energy Mansion in Shenzhen, China; the Tallinn Town Hall in Tallinn, Estonia; and the Astana National Library in Astana, Kazakhstan among other projects.

Ingels sees the new management structure as “a natural evolution of our long lasting collaboration to turn our great professional relationship into an actual partnership.”