Ben van Berkel (1957) 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 named Van Berkel & Bos Architectuurbureau, which 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 van Berkel and Bos relaunched their practice as UNStudio, the UN standing for "United Net". UNStudio presents itself as a network of specialists in architecture, urban development and infrastructure. In 2009 UNStudio Asia was established, with its first office located in Shanghai, China. UNStudio Asia is a full daughter of UNStudio and is intricately connected to UNStudio Amsterdam. Initially serving to facilitate the design process for the Raffles City project in Hangzhou, it is envisioned that UNStudio Asia will expand to a stable multinational team of all-round and specialist architects.
UNStudio in numbers: Total staff of 153 from 17 different countries, 23 years experience, 69 built projects, Over 100projects in progress

With UNStudio, van Berkel has built several projects, including the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, a façade and interior renovation for the Galleria Department store in Seoul, Korea, and a private villa in up-state New York. Current projects are the restructuring of the station area of Arnhem, a shopping mall renovation in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, a masterplan for Basauri, Spain, a music theatre for Graz, Austria, the design and restructuring of the Harbor Ponte Parodi in Genoa, and an apartment building in the Tribeca section of Manhattan. In 2009 New Amsterdam Pavilion in Battery Park in Manhattan was revealed. The pavilion was presented to the city of New York by the Dutch government to celebrate 400 years of relations between New York and the Netherlands.

Ben van Berkel has lectured and taught at several architectural schools. Currently he is Dean of the Architecture Class at the Academy of Fine Arts Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Central to his teaching is the inclusive approach of architectural works, integrating virtual and material organization and engineering constructions.

http://www.unstudio.com/