Ben van Berkel is the Co-founder UNStudio, he studied architecture at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and at the Architectural Association in London, receiving the AA Diploma with Honours in 1987. His first projects were built almost immediately after founding Van Berkel & Bos Architectuur Bureau. Among the buildings of this first period are Karbouw, the Remu electricity station, and Villa Wilbrink. Being elected to design the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam (1996) profoundly affected his understanding of the role of the architect today and constituted the foundation of his collaborative approach to practising, leading to the foundation of UNStudio in 1999. He is currently Professor of Conceptual Design and head of the architecture department at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt am Main (Germany).
Villa NM
In the design for this single family house the sloping site is used as a device for programmatic and volumetric organization. A box-like volume bifurcates into two separate volumes; one seamlessly following the northern slope; the other lifted above the hill creating a covered parking space and generating a split-level internal organization. The volumetric transition is generated by a set of five parallel walls that rotate along a horizontal axis from vertical to horizontal. The ruled surface maintaining this transition is repeated five times in the building. From inside the huge window strips from floor to ceiling allow a fluid continuity between interior and landscape. From the exterior the reflective glass seams to become one with its surroundings.
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