Ben van Berkel

Ben van Berkel (1957-) is a Dutch architect, founder together with Caroline Bos of the international studio UNStudio. Van Berkel and Bos, his wife at the time, began collaborating in 1988 with the foundation of the Van Berkel & Bos Architectuurbureau in Amsterdam and soon made a name for themselves for their ability to recall typical styles of art and painting in their works. The highly acclaimed Möbius House (1998) dates back to this first period of their activity, a private residence without clear boundaries between the internal spaces inspired by the continuous shapes of the Möbius strip, as does the Erasmusbrug bridge (1990-96), one of the symbolic architectures of the city of Rotterdam, with pylons with a characteristic silhouette reminiscent of a swan. In 1998, van Berkel’s studio was renamed UNStudio (the initials stand for “United Net”, in an attempt to present itself as a network of architects from different nations), in a change that marked a leap in scale in his activities: from that moment on, he began to deal mainly with large projects around the world, creating modern and scenographic buildings such as the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart (2001-2006) or the Agora Theatre in Lelystad (2002-07). Collaborations that see Ben van Berkel and his UNStudio as product designers are quite rare: those with Alessi, Walter Knoll and La Cividina are particularly memorable.