Inside the Futuristic 'Courtscraper' in New York City

Bjarke Ingels is an architect who delights in combining seemingly incompatible structures. In his home country of Denmark, he's building a public utility plant that turns waste into energy and will double as a ski slope. In the United States, he’s overseeing the construction of a new building on New York's West 57th Street that marries two traditionally separate typologies—a courtyard and a skyscraper.

The “courtscraper,” as he and his team at BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) have nicknamed it, takes the shape of a warped pyramid, retaining the density of a high rise while creating a lush green space in its center. “By boiling down Central Park to the scale of a city block,” Ingels says, “we ended up nesting the qualities of the urban oasis into a single building.”