“I’ve always been interested in visual communication on one hand, and in issues of social consciousness on the other hand,” says Sundlin, who joined BIG as an intern in 2008. For the first three years, he worked full time at BIG while also studying full time at the Royal Academy of Arts in Copenhagen. As Ingels says, of Sundlin: “He’s got one hell of a work ethic.”

Sundlin’s responsibilities as a lead designer include communicating BIG’s architecture through different media. “What defines BIG’s style of visual communication is that our diagrams clearly capture the essence of our projects, meaning that it’s very easy for people who don’t know our projects well to understand them,” he says. “That’s so important in a collaborative process.”

Sundlin is partner in charge of Google’s new headquarters in Mountain View, California, a collaboration between BIG and Heatherwick Studio. The designs shows a series of pavilions at ground level, housed under a huge, tent-like canopy. The ‘green loop’ – a circuit for cyclists and pedestrians that will run through the new building – is an integral part of the design. “You can bike and walk through the building and take part in one of the leisure activities going on in the courtyards along the route, says Sundlin. “We felt that this was a great way of bringing together the community and making it feel less like a corporate campus.”

Bjarke Ingels on Daniel Sundlin
“Daniel is blessed with a divine talent for creativity. More than most architects, he has access to the raw source of creativity. He’s such a goddamn natural-born talent”