Caroline Bos co-founded her practice, Berkel & Bos in Amsterdam in 1988 in partnership with her then husband, Ben van Berkel. In 1998 their firm was relaunched as UNStudio, now a 300-member office operating out of Amsterdam, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Dubai, Melbourne, and Austin, Texas. Among the firm's most celebrated buildings are Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam (1996), Möbius House near Amsterdam (1998), Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart (2001), and Arnhem Central Transfer Hall in Arnhem, the Netherlands (2015).

Bos was born in Rotterdam in 1959 and grew up in a middle-class, culturally-minded family of a psychologist father, an Italian teacher mother, and two younger brothers. They lived on the edge of Zwolle, a small provincial town in the Northeastern Netherlands. Her father’s father was an architect near Amsterdam and her mother’s father was a historian. Bos initially studied law in Amsterdam and then art history at Birkbeck College at the University of London. In the early 2000s, she earned her Master's in Urban Planning from Utrecht University. In the following interview with Caroline Bos, we discussed her role as UNStudio’s conceptual designer, insights into the firm’s two key early projects—Erasmus Bridge and Möbius House—becoming an urban planner, what are the most critical issues that architects should explore now, and how not to make all decisions all the time but to give opportunities to others.

Vladimir Belogolovsky: How did you and Ben van Berkel first meet?

Caroline Bos: I met Ben through friends at my student house. At the time he was studying design at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in the evenings while working as a graphic designer during the day. I was 21 then and Ben was 23. He was super active. He organised a discussion on architecture at the Academy and invited Rem Koolhaas. It was Rem who recommended him to go to the AA. Ben was very interested in organising film screenings, lectures, and discussions. He was very ambitious from the start. I knew Rem even before I met Ben because his drawings were exhibited at the then-just-opened architecture gallery around the corner from the Stedelijk Museum. It was run by Luce van Rooy, the granddaughter of Berlage. At the time I studied law but wasn’t sure it was for me. When Ben decided to go to London, he convinced me to go with him. There I started studying art history at Birkbeck College at the University of London.

VB: I understand that your interest in architecture grew and you even did your thesis on architecture. What was it about?

CB: I was interested in Le Corbusier's ideas and how his writings supported his projects. I was particularly fascinated by his vision of what he saw as the role of the architect. Years later we wrote our own manifesto in our book, MOVE where we examined the new role of a contemporary architect and the new design techniques such as new computational technology. This interest in discussing the latest innovative works and theorising about them was in us from the very beginning. We met a lot of people in the architecture world and were asked to write about architectural and art projects and review exhibitions that took place in London for some mainstream Dutch newspapers and magazines. We wrote on projects by Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Daniel Libeskind, and others. We also covered the work of Peter Wilson and Nigel Coates. It was that work that encouraged me to complete my own degree and write my thesis.

VB: Could you talk about your current role in the practice?

CB: It is quite challenging to describe. Your role is what you make of it. I try to do what is interesting to me; hopefully, it is interesting to others as well. For sure, my role is not fixed. I need to activate it. I am very much aware of what is going on in the firm and I get engaged in dialogues with many people here. We are a large firm with about 150 active projects and over 300 UNStudio members in seven offices. Apart from Amsterdam, we are in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Dubai, Melbourne, and Austin in Texas.

While I am working on some of the projects, I am a conceptual director. My main contribution used to be in writing about our work, mainly analysing it. Then I decided to become an urban planner. I went back to school in the early 2000s and acquired a Master’s degree in Urban Planning from Utrecht University. Now I take part in conceptualising large urban projects here. I also work on the marketing side. I have a whole portfolio of responsibilities. I also work on formulating the design process that every project here has to go through—from conception to realisation and identifying clearly what each project is really about. Apart from following client briefs, we push for our own agenda and what we want to achieve with our work. I take an active role in developing these goals. My hypothesis is that if we cannot formulate the project’s concept precisely enough then it is highly likely that it is a bad concept.

VB: I would like to discuss your insights on a couple of early projects. The Erasmus Bridge was quite fundamental for the establishment of your firm. Could you touch on that?

CB: It was an amazing opportunity for us. We were still quite young and inexperienced at that point. There was such an interesting chain of coincidences. Ben was invited as a consultant by an important engineer here in the Netherlands who was asked to advise on the development of the Rotterdam port area. This engineer’s son was one of Ben’s students. It was quite random. Rotterdam’s city planning department originally wanted to simply reproduce the existing bridge that was nearby which everyone liked but then they realised that they needed a new symbol for the city and they were looking for young people with fresh ideas. During their early meetings, they were playing with sketches and it was Ben who came up with the sketch, which became it. [Laughs.] It was incredible. Everything about that project was interesting and unusual.

VB: The swan-like form of the bridge echoes small elements such as pillars and brackets of Santiago Calatrava’s Stadelhofen Station in Zurich, the project on which Ben worked shortly before you started your practice together. There is a strong visual connection between these two projects. Do you agree?

CB: Calatrava was one of just a few architects who then worked both on architecture and bridges. I think you can see both Zaha and Calatrava as strong influences on the design of the bridge. Ben was still young and I remember similar comments at that time. But that project is not just about its form. You need to look at the details. The pilon leaning back may evoke Calatrava but the way the cables are distributed is very different. All the details give it a completely different expression. 

VB: I actually like the similarities between projects designed by different architects, especially if they are not direct quotations. That’s what turns architecture into a sort of discourse between different authors who may be either contemporaries or from different epochs.

What about the Möbius House? Despite the project’s small scale, it was quite fundamental in establishing your reputation as a research-based experimental studio. It put you on the map, right?

CB: Absolutely. Both of these projects show that our interest is far beyond the object and even far beyond architecture. The bridge is an urban instrument to connect the city with the south side across the river, which was quite undeveloped. The bridge was designed to make that possible and it became Rotterdam’s most important symbol. You can see it from everywhere. It pulls people to the other side. And the Möbius House is all about how you move through the building. It was not designed as a static object with rooms in it. It is about the movement through it throughout the day, like a cycle. We were lucky with the clients who were super ambitious. They pushed us to be very radical but also something that would suit them, of course. We won a competition to design it. Both projects are about repositioning the role of architecture.

VB: You have said, “We give lots of creative freedom to our designers.” How open and inclusive is this process?

CB: Ben spends his time running around different studios. Somehow work gets done but I noticed that every time our design teams run into a problem and a decision needs to be made, they typically say, “Let’s ask Ben!” [Laughs.]

VB: What is your key focus now and what are some of the most critical issues that you think architects should explore?

CB: I think with the rise of urbanisation around the world one of the main problems now is mental health and disorder, especially with young people. Urban future is traditionally set to give people a better chance. But in recent times this seems to be reversing in many ways. The future of cities for young people isn’t what it used to be. Everything is interlocked and we need to be mindful of the choices we make. We need to work on our expertise, knowledge, and skills. Our projects need to be socially minded, interconnected, and comfortable. How can we transform a dystopian image that no one wants to see as our future into something that can be desirable? In other words, we try to design our projects in such ways that they become community-driven and sociable. People worry about the future a lot. And we have to be careful when we propose projects that seem futuristic. We need to find a good balance between ideas that are new, exciting, and yet comforting. We find comfort in our own skills and in working together, not in isolating and withdrawing. We also think it is important to share our leadership with other partners in the firm. We try not to make all decisions all the time and give opportunities to others.