Located in Copenhagen’s Nordhavn neighborhood, BIG’s new HQ building recently topped out its -storey structure. The new HQ is architecturally anchored in Copenhagen harbor’s heritage of warehouses and factories. The small footprint at the end of the pier became the main design dilemma: how to organize a single work environment for all of us when we would have to be split between a minimum of four levels. In a counterintuitive decision, we split all the floors in half and doubled the amount of levels.

The studio’s circular shape dismisses the front side-back side logic of a conventional building and produces a non-hierarchical shape that becomes most appropriate in its context of public space. The circular footprint also maximizes its surrounding public space, allowing the recording studio to become more of a sculpture rather than a building. Because the program of the studio has different requirements for clear heights, the roof elevation is strategically varied to form three peaks. These peaks occur at the live room, artists’ private lounge, and academy studios to provide generous space to its users, creating a playful yet elegant roof line reminiscent of the fluidity of sound. The form is then optimized to produce a series of equal horizontal modules that maintain the readability of the undulating roof edge and efficiency of the building structure.

Keen to shape buildings and cities in Southern Europe, BIG has opened its latest office in Barcelona, Spain. Located in Barcelona&#;s Las Ramblas neighborhood, the studio houses nearly BIGsters working on projects spanning from the west to the east of the Mediterranean region, most notably the HQ for Farfetch, and Fuse Valley campus in Portugal, the Joint Research Center in Sevilla for the European Commission, and the Gastronomy Open Ecosystem for Basque Culinary Center.

In , restaurant Noma &#; known as the &#;World&#;s Best Restaurant&#;- closed its doors to the th century warehouse that had been its home for fourteen years. After more than three years of planning and collaboration, Noma reopened in on the outskirts of autonomous district Christiania &#; this time at the protected site of an old fortification once used to store mines for the Royal Danish Navy.

Before designing the new Ellsinore Psychiatric Hospital, BIG dove into the programmatic requirements and needs of the client, as well as the daily users of the clinic, it&#;s staff, patients and relatives. The input from these different groups pointed to several conflicting requirements and ambiguities. To meet these needs and the requirements of modern psychiatric treatment, BIG set out to redefine the traditional hospital typology.