The New Nordic Restaurant: Culinary Manifesto and Architectural Concept

Speakers

• 

  Kai-Uwe Bergmann, FAIA

  Partner, Bjarke Ingels Group

  Bio
  

  Kai-Uwe Bergmann, FAIA

  Partner, Bjarke Ingels Group

  Kai-Uwe Bergmann, FAIA is a Partner at BIG who brings his architectural expertise to proposals around the globe, including work in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Kai-Uwe heads up BIG's business development--which currently has the office working in over 40 different countries. He also oversees BIG's Urban scales projects and supports BIG’s Landscape projects. He is registered as an architect in the USA (15 states) and Canada.

  Kai-Uwe most recently contributed to the resiliency plan BIG U to protect 10 miles of Manhattan's coastline. First envisioned through the Rebuild by Design competition to develop proactive responses to Superstorm Sandy, it is now being constructed with a completion date in 2026. Further projects include Reimagining Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn Queens Park, Smithsonian Master Plan, Pittsburgh Master Plan and Miami Beach Square. He complements his professional work through previous teaching assignments at Georgia Tech, University of Pennsylvania, IE University in Madrid, and his alma mater the University of Virginia. Kai-Uwe formerly was on the Board of the Van Alen Institute, participates on numerous international juries and lectures globally on the works of BIG.

• 

  Aaron Dorf

  Director, Snøhetta

  Bio
  

  Aaron Dorf

  Director, Snøhetta

  Aaron Dorf joined Snøhetta in its fledgling New York office in 2007, shortly after the Library of Alexandria was completed, and immediately went to work on the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion in New York, a project for which Snøhetta had recently won a design competition.

  He says that joining Snøhetta right out of college and working on such an intense and politically involved project gave him an ideal entry into the company, with the youthful exuberance and incredible self-confidence that won the design competition and continues to energise the company.

  “Although we were an established company by this point, when I arrived in New York in 2007 we were a group of just seven or eight people. Because of rapid growth, at unexpected times or places, we have a tremendous startup, do-it-yourself mentality that has never gone away,” Dorf says. “That’s really the birth of this company. It has always been multinational and multidisciplinary: made up of architects, landscape architects, interior architects and, more recently, graphic and product design. We are a multidisciplinary design agency with a worldwide presence,” he says.

  Far from the “makeshift group” he first worked with, Snøhetta now employs more than 350 people in 40 countries, with teams spread across nine regional studios in Oslo, New York, San Francisco, Innsbruck, Paris, Adelaide, Melbourne, Hong Kong and Shenzhen.