Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos unquestionably belong on the shortlist of Dutch architects of international repute. Their Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam, Valkhof Museum in Nijmegen and Möbius House are just three examples taken from a large and varied body of work. In 1998 Van Berkel and Bos explicitly chose to steer their architectural practice in a new direction and set up UN Studio. This network of researchers and specialists in architecture, urban development and infrastructure creates perceptive projects which seamlessly weld together brief, construction, infra- structure, circulation, form and space. The work from the years 1980-1998 was brought together in the succesful three-volume publication Move.
UN Studio and NAi Publishers have since been working together on a new book. This documents the firm's most recent projects and takes critical stock of a welter of hitherto unpublished designs: the restructuring of the station area in Arnhem, the generating station in Innsbrück, the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) laboratory in Utrecht and the competition-winning design for the Ponte Parodi in Genoa. In this new book UN Studio have draped an ultra-personal layer over the analytical project documentation. With texts by Caroline Bos, experiments in associations and out-of-the-rut architectural photography, UN Studio UN Fold immerses the reader in the firm's design process. Move took a backward look and analysed the sum and substance of designing, this present volume looks to the future and goes in search of new perspectives and concepts.
The book is to appear simultaneously with the large retrospective exhibition on the work of UN Studio from May 26th to September 29th 2002 in the Netherlands Architecture Institute.
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