After posting on BIG’s National Library last week, a friend of mine passed along Bjarke Ingels’ Hedonistic Sustainability presentation at the TEDxEast talks last spring. It’s a very interesting perspective, he tries to frame sustainability as less of an apologetic remedy for human existence on the planet, and more of a positive mindset that creates positive, funny environmental experiences.

The project that really drives home Ingels’ idea that “sustainable life can be more fun than normal life” is the Danish Pavilion in Shanghai. The pavilion features outcomes from sustainable practices in Copenhagen in an activity based, sensorial experience. You can ride your bike along Copenhagen’s blue bike path that twists up and over a pool that contains water the same temperature and cleanliness as Copenhagen’s harbor.

It’s an interesting approach, attacking the misconception that sustainability is about sacrifice head on, providing an armature to enjoy and experience the fruits of sustainable practice. If there’s a critique to this approach, it is that it works well with pavilions and projects that have the funding to incorporate an alpine ski facility, but won’t apply to 99% of architectural projects. Ingels addresses this by including a project in Manhattan as an example of how these strategies can be deployed within a purely capitalist system. While it remains to be seen how the Manhattan project is “hedonistically” sustainable- certainly, green and passively sustainable strategies are deployed, but none are apparent that provide the level of enjoyment as the Danish Pavilion.

What’s more compelling than his argument for a hedonistic sustainability is how Ingels is going about it, particularly with the example of the Danish Pavilion. Sustainability in architecture is frequently thought of in almost alchemic terms, that the process of mitigating sunlight and providing natural ventilation will inevitably create both a sustainable construct and a pleasant experience. With the Danish Pavilion, BIG is creating a precisely controlled environment by maintaining the pool at a specific temperature.

Ingels’ use of the pool seems to be framing sustainability relative to the work of architects like Philippe Rahm and Kiel Moe. Rahm’s installation at the Venice Biennale, Hormonorium, was essentially an enclosed, white space but controlled oxygen and light levels to create the same experience as being on a Swiss glacier. By calling attention to the complete sensorial experience of being within a space, not just the visual experience, Rahm ultimately forces the consideration of all senses relative to architecture. This reemphasis in how we experience space encourages awareness of buildings as performative machines, devices that maintain their own climate but also affect the global climate.