Plaza (Courtesy BIG)

It’s no mystery that Bjarke Ingels is a fan of mountains, but building craggy edifices hasn’t been enough for the Danish leader of BIG. Now Bjarke has unveiled his firm’s latest plans to incorporate “rooftop-skiing.” He previously proposed the Hafjell Mountain Hotel in Norway in 2007 and more recently an imperiled Waste-to-Energy Plant in Denmark that appears to have stalled. The Danish firm’s latest competition-winner is a 500,000-square-foot resort called Koutalaki Ski Village in the Lapland region of Finland, consisting of four landscaped buildings that double as ski slopes.

Ingels described the project as “grown from the natural topography rather than dropped from the sky.” BIG’s landscape-minded hybrid design “left the jury in awe,” according to the Finnish developer Kassiopeia Finland Oy. The new manmade mountain is an extension to the existing framework provided by the Levi ski center. The new series of buildings will swirl out from the central square, touching the ground on both ends, enabling the skiers to descend in any direction from the rooftops.

The resulting central plaza—which will be used for ice skating and music performances—will be sheltered and intimate, while at the same time open to the views of the surrounding landscapes. In the off season, the manmade landscapes will turn green, blending with the surrounding forest environment for picnics and hiking.

Landscape (Courtesy BIG)