Big Pin / Phoenix Observation Tower

Phoenix, USA

Public Buildings

Architects: BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group

Location: Phoenix, USA
Year: 2012

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.