Ben van Berkel

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Personal Information
Ben van Berkel

Name	Ben van Berkel
Nationality	Dutch
Birth date	1957
Birth place	Utrecht, Netherlands
Work
Practice Name	UNStudio
Significant Buildings	Moebius House Erasmus Bridge Mercedes-Benz Museum

1 Background Information
2 Quotes
3 Selection of projects
4 Publications by Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos
5 External links

[edit] Background Information

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.

In 1988 he and Caroline Bos set up an architectural practice in Amsterdam. The Van Berkel & Bos Architectuurbureau has realized amongst others 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.

In 1998 Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos established a new firm: UNStudio (United Net). UNStudio presents itself as a network of specialists in architecture, urban development and infrastructure. Current projects are the restructuring of the station area of Arnhem, a shopping mall renovation in Kaohsiung, a masterplan for Basauri, a music theatre for Graz and the design and restructuring of the Harbor Ponte Parodi in Genoa. With UNStudio he realized amongst others the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, a façade and interior renovation for the Galleria Department store in Seoul and a private villa up-state New York.

Ben van Berkel has lectured and taught at many architectural schools around the world. Currently he is Professor Conceptual Design at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Central to his teaching is the inclusive approach of architectural works integrating virtual and material organization and engineering constructions.

[edit] Quotes

Positive Notes

“Not that everyone loves our work, but the good thing about producing a building is that, much more so than when a new film or novel comes out, people keep interacting with for a long time. The product of architecture can at least partly be understood as an endless live performance. As the architectural project transforms, becomes abstracted, concentrated and expanded, becomes diverse and evermore scaleless, all of this happens in interaction with a massive, live audience. Today, more than ever we feel that the specificity of architecture is not itself contained in any aspect of the object. The true nature of architecture is found in the interaction between the architect, the object and the public. The generative, proliferating, unfolding effect of the architectural project continues beyond its development in the design studio in its subsequent public use.” (Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, Positive Notes, 2006)

After Image

“the aim of our architecture is to intensify the gaze, to inspire thoughts and images and thus make it attractive for people to stay longer and return to the places we make for them. Keeping it light and almost scientific is our policy; the ploys invented to intensify the gaze are directly related to the traditional ingredients of architecture: construction, light, circulation, and so on.” (Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, After Image, 2006)

MOVE

“It is the role of architecture to make us see ourselves and the world around us in a new way: dressing the future and holding up a mirror to the world.” (Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, MOVE, 1999)

[edit] Selection of projects

Theatre Agora, Lelystad, The Netherlands	Main hall, Theatre Agora, Lelystad, The Netherlands	Mercedes-Benz Museum, Stuttgart, Germany	Mercedes-Benz Museum, Stuttgart, Germany
VilLA NM, Upstate New York	VilLA NM, Upstate New York	Galleria Department Store, Seoul, Korea	Interior Galleria Department Store, Seoul, Korea