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Bjarke Ingels opens this addition to his high school with a parkour video of a kid jumping off the walls

Bjarke Ingels opens this addition to his high school with a parkour video of a kid jumping off the walls

Since Bjarke Ingels graduated from Old Hellerup High School near Copenhagen, he’s obviously become a bit of an architectural sensation. But that doesn’t mean Ingels is too cool for school, specifically his former high school. In 2013, the architect created an undulating recreation center for the school’s central courtyard that has a ribbed, almost cathedral-like wood ceiling. At the courtyard-level, the structure forms a a man-made hill where students can hang out between classes. And that was just the start of it.

As soon as that project was completed, BIG got to work on a two-story addition for the school which just wrapped construction. The new arts building provides a connection between the snazzy recreation center and the school’s soccer—er, “football”—fields. BIG said the new space is intended to mesh with its first project, but not copy it. So where the rec center is primarily concrete with some wood finishes, the new building has wooden walls and concrete floors and ceilings.

The building meets the street from underneath the existing fields, which it lifts up by two stories. The building’s roof extends the fields, creating a so-called “green carpet for informal activity.” The result looks quite similar to Kiss + Cathcart’s Bushwick Inlet Park pavilion in Brooklyn.

BIG also proposed a similar trick in its Smithsonian master plan.

“My high-school, formerly introverted and dispersed, has become open and integrated through two focused interventions. Even though each phase is autonomous and complete – their introduction in to the mix has completely reconfigured the sum of the parts,” said Ingels in a statement. “Like a catalyst or an enzyme–once inserted–all the surrounding substance transforms into something completely new.”

Since this is the Bjarke Ingels Group, the announcement of the building’s completion of course comes with a flashy video (up above). So you can watch as “‘free-runner” Bjarke Hellden backflips through the school.

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