David Chipperfield (born December 18, 1953, London, England) is a British architect who

is especially known for quietly incorporating modern, minimal designs with historic build-
ings. He was praised for his reconstruction of the Neues Museum (2010) in Berlin, and the
Procuratie Vecchie (2022; Old Procuracies), the 16th-century building on the north side of
St. Mark’s Square, Venice, recognizable by its arched colonnade.

Chipperfield was raised on a farm in southwestern England and spent his childhood plan-
ning to become a veterinarian. He later graduated (1977) from the Architectural Associ-
ation in London and worked with such award-winning architects as Richard Rogers and
Norman Foster before establishing (1985) David Chipperfield Architects. Many of his early
commissions were in Japan, where he gained an appreciation for the mundane aspects of
daily life, a philosophy that profoundly impacted his design. He also worked often in Ger-
many and maintained offices in Berlin as well as in London, Milan, and Shanghai.

Chipperfield’s work earned numerous accolades over the years. Most notably, in a 15-year
span (1998–2013), seven buildings designed by his firm were nominated for the Royal
Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Prize, with the Marbach Museum of Modern
Literature, Germany, awarded the prize in 2007. Other short-listed projects were an office
and studio building in Düsseldorf, Germany (1998); the River and Rowing Museum in
Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire (1999); Ernsting Service Centre in Coesfeld-Lette, Germa-
ny (2002); the America’s Cup Building in Valencia, Spain (2007); the reconstructed Neues
Museum, which was the culmination of a mammoth 12-year project; and the Hepworth
Wakefield Art Gallery in West Yorkshire (2012). Other notable works include the East
Building (2013) of the Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri, a light-filled structure featuring
skylights, floor-to-ceiling windows on the front, and a concrete facade that was composed
of locally sourced river aggregates.

Chipperfield also built a number of private homes, apartment buildings (One Kensington
Gardens [2015], London), and mixed-income housing (Hoxton Press [2018], London).
His designs for retail spaces included the Valentino flagship stores in New York (2014) and
London (2016) and a new entrance to Selfridge’s department store (2018), London. Chip-
perfield’s long-awaited restoration of Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie—designed by Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe in 1968—was completed in 2021.

In addition to buildings, Chipperfield also designed furniture, lighting, tableware, and

other objects. In 2020 he was the guest editor for Domus, the Italian architecture magazine.
Chipperfield was the recipient of several awards for his entire body of work, including the
Pritzker Prize (2023), architecture’s highest honour. He was also granted the RIBA Gold
Medal for lifetime achievement in 2011, the same year that he was awarded the EU Prize
for Contemporary Architecture–Mies van der Rohe Award. His other awards include the
Heinrich Tessenow Medal (1999), election to the Royal Academy (2008), Germany’s Order
of Merit (2009), and the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale (2013).