Big Pin / Phoenix Observation Tower

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Location
Phoenix, USA
Year
2012
Status

In Progress

Size in m2
6500

Project type
Observation Tower

Client
Novawest

The Arizonian landscape is quiet, hot, dry, still. Monsoon rains and haboobs -intense dust storms- violently break the silence at exceptional moments that last little. It is vast, open and flat, interrupted by rough edged mountains which become the points of reference in the horizon. Drenched in red by the sunset, it’s like a William Turner painting wrapped around Phoenix. The uncharacteristic buildings become a backdrop to what lies beyond.

Like the monsoons, the haboobs and the mountains, the Pin becomes an exceptional moment, a point of reference and a mechanism to set the still landscape in motion, only this time through the movement of the spectator.

Instead of referencing other observation towers, the Pin takes the most exciting building in the USA, the Guggenheim museum of New York as a point of reference. The experience is combined with a spiral motion, but here the focus is inverted, and in the place of the void we place Phoenix and Arizona.

Other Projects by BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group

OPPO Headquarters
Hangzhou, China
1200 Intrepid
Philadelphia, USA
Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet
Le Brassus, Switzerland
The Heights Building
Arlington, USA
Danish National Maritime Museum
Helsingør, Denmark