Ben van Berkel is the leading figure of the Dutch architect’s firm UNStudio. 

On the occasion of his appointment to the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, the exhibition Motion Matters will be open to the public till 6 March 2011 in the Gund Hall Gallery. 

Since spring 1984, twenty-nine internationally recognized architects and urbanists have been appointed to the Kenzo Tange Chair at Harvard.  

UNStudio in TLC Yearbook

In 2009, The Low Countries Yearbook published an article on UNStudio. Read it here. In the 2010 issue of TLC, UNStudio was mentioned in an article on “Dutch Architecture as an Export Product”. Follow this link to read it. 

Shifting perspectives 

Motion Matters presents six of UNStudio’s pavilions, each one illustrating architectural and urban issues being tested in real matter. UNStudio has been experimenting with the typology of the temporary installation for some time, which has resulted in a series.

The exhibition shows that this serialization itself is an important aspect of this typology and further explores different readings, interpretations, and perceptions of the featured temporary installations. By moving through the exhibition, shifting perspectives appear, demonstrating the visual and spatial effects of new, more dynamic, materializations. Each pavilion featured in the exhibition highlights one particular topic; the six topics - interrelated yet specific - are: Transitional Typology, Urban Lobbies, Crossing Points, Kinetic Platforms, After Image and Switching On/Off. 

Motion Matters presents the development from the diagram to the design model, and then to a new form of architectural expression. Larger-scale UNStudio projects are related to the topics explored by the six pavilions, as the exhibition investigates the potential of the pavilion to move beyond a typology and become a prototype situated somewhere between technological research and artistic production.

Ben van Berkel will also deliver the Kenzo Tange Lecture, The New Understanding at the Piper Auditorium, 3 March 6.30 pm.

Picture: Erasmus Bridge, Rotterdam, by UNStudio