Ben van Berkel

Architects are going to be the fashion designers of the future, dressing events to come and holding up a mirror to the world. The re-thinking of public imagination, public space and public forces transforms architects into public scientists. Their imagination is informed as much by the semi-conscious preoccupations of collective vision, such as glamour, mediation, advertising and celebrity, as by the specifics of the discipline. Architecture must engage with the banal dreams of the contemporary world, and stop presenting its products as uncontaminated objects that say only: 'architecture... Time is on the architect's side [...]’. MOVE examines the architect's new role in an environment of technological, public and economic change. The redefinition of organizational structures was the common thread running through the original three books.

Design Models is the complete monograph of UNStudio’s output. The book begins with an essay that sets out the principles of their ‘design models’, five conceptual methods that serve as the point of departure for their broad array of project types. Divided by design model, the book's main section presents 00 concepts and buildings, presented in detail: from the initial, generative diagram through the digital-modelling process, to construction and final outcome. Bookending the projects is a second essay, ‘After Image’, which contemplates the role and representation of contemporary architecture in today's visual and information culture.

With UNStudio, van Berkel has built several projects, including the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, an LED media façade (designed with Rogier van der Heide) and interior renovation for the Galleria Department store in Seoul, Korea, and a private villa in up-state New York, the Arnhem Central Station, Canaletto Tower in London and Raffles City in Hangzhou, China. Current projects are Doha Metro Network in Qatar, the Scotts Tower in Singapore, the Hanwha Headquarters in Seoul and ‘Four’, a new mixed-use development in the heart of Frankfurt.

The interactive book app Spaces of Flow – Arnhem Central Station is a free complementary publication to Knowledge Matters. The first in a planned series of digital publications with a focus on the future of mobility, Spaces of Flow elaborates on the application and production of knowledge in the design and development of Arnhem Central Station. For the first installment, we zoom in on this extensive and complex project, illustrating how the synthesis of external and internal expertise from a network of collaborators and stakeholders created a flow of knowledge that became essential to the success of the project. T Spaces of Flow app features drawings, diagrams, photographs, videos, audio commentary, animations and a detailed timeline narrating the history of Arnhem Central Station

Published by Frame Publishers, Knowledge Matters is an exploration into a more agile form of practice - one that is scalable, relevant and opens conversations about the future of the discipline in the context of today's knowledge sharing society. It does so by critically engaging the expanded set of demands now placed upon the profession – reframing these demands as the latent potentials of performative architecture in the 21st century. These potentials are explored, realised and speculated upon through the book's 11 ‘Knowledge Tools’, with projects often appearing more than once and in various guises.

This book documents a number of UNStudio projects and takes critical stock of a welter of previously unpublished designs: the restructuring of the station area in Arnhem, the generating station in Innsbrück, the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) laboratory in Utrecht and the competition-winning design for the Ponte Parodi in Genoa. In this new book UN Studio have draped a personal layer over the analytical project documentation. With texts by Caroline Bos, experiments in associations and out-of-the-rut architectural photography, UNStudio UNFold immerses the reader in the firm's design process. The book appeared simultaneously with the large retrospective exhibition on the work of UNStudio from May 26 to September 29, 2002 in the Netherlands Architecture Institute.

In 1998 van Berkel and Bos relaunched their practice as UNStudio, the UN standing for "United Network". UNStudio presents itself as a network of specialists in architecture, urban development and infrastructure.

Ben van Berkel has lectured and taught at many architectural schools around the world. He has led Diploma Units at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam (1992-1993) and the Architectural Association in London (1999). Before his role as dean at the Städelschule in Frankfurt (2001-2016), he was Visiting Professor at Columbia University, Princeton University and Harvard University. In 2011 Ben van Berkel was appointed the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Central to his teaching is the inclusive approach of architectural works integrating virtual and material organisation and engineering constructions.

In 1988 he and his then wife, Caroline Bos, set up an architectural practice in Amsterdam named Van Berkel & Bos Architectuurbureau, which realized, amongst other projects, the Karbouw office building and the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam. In 1998 van Berkel and Bos relaunched their practice as UNStudio, where UN stands for "United Network".

In 1988 he and Caroline Bos set up an architectural practice in Amsterdam named Van Berkel & Bos Architectuurbureau, which realized, amongst other projects, the Karbouw office building, the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam, Museum Het Valkhof in Nijmegen, the Moebius house, and the NMR facilities for the University of Utrecht

Ben van Berkel studied architecture at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, and at the Architectural Association in London, receiving the AA Diploma with Honours in 1987.

Ben van Berkel has received many personal awards and affiliations, such as the Eileen Gray Award (1983); the British Council Fellowship (1986); the Charlotte Köhler Award (1991); Member of Honor of the Bund Deutscher Architekten (1997); the 1822-Kunstpreis 2003 (Mercedes-Benz Museum, Stuttgart) (2003); the Charles Jencks Award (2007); the Honorary Fellowship AIA (2013); and the Kubus Award (2016). Dutch Designer of the Year (2019).

Ben van Berkel (born 1957) is a Dutch architect; founder and principal architect of the architectural practice UNStudio. With his studio he designed, among others, the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam, the Moebius House in the Netherlands, the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, Arnhem Central Station, the Singapore University of Architecture and Design, Raffles City in Hangzhou and numerous other buildings.