“I’ve always been a bit of an inventor type,” says Jakob Lange, head of BIG Ideas, BIG’s technology-driven special projects unit.

Lange founded BIG Ideas in 2014, when BIG’s plan to blow smoke rings from the Amager Resource Center hit a brick wall.

“At a partner meeting in Texas, we decided I’d get $15,000 to figure out how to solve the problem,” says Lange. “Within that budget I found the right people and built a prototype that blew steam rings instead of smoke. The moment when we generated the first steam ring was insane. I was screaming out loud – it was impossible to hold back. This was something that had never been done before.”

BIG Ideas’ highest profile project is its work with Virgin Hyperloop One, the LA company racing to build the world’s first high-speed transportation system.

“Our initial role was to be the architect and the designers of the stations and user experience,” he says. “This has developed and we’re now close advisors to Virgin Hyperloop One. We know everything there is to know about the Hyperloop system.”

For Lange, a technology-obsessed, future-orientated inventor, Hyperloop is something of a dream project.

“We’re moving into the realm of shaping the future with Virgin Hyperloop One,” says Lange “Because Hyperloop hasn’t been realised yet, everything we do now will determine what mobility will look like in the future.”

Lange has worked with Ingels since 2003. Right now he’s racking up frequent flier miles for travelling to the Middle East in connection with BIG Ideas’ latest challenge: Mars Science City.

Bjarke Ingels on Jakob Lange
“Jakob has a tinkerer’s attitude: if he doesn’t know how to do something, he’ll look it up and learn it. He has the patience to drill into very specific things and make them work”