Fifteen stations, ten miles: the Austin Light Rail and Ben van Berkel

Texas is where his studio is now designing a city's way of moving. For the Austin Light Rail, led by Austin Transit Partnership with HKS and Gehl, Ben van Berkel's practice is shaping the design framework of Phase 1: 15 stations along nearly 10 miles of track, shaded corridors under an expanded tree canopy and a new bridge over Lady Bird Lake. The Dutch architect, trained in Amsterdam and London, founded his first office with Caroline Bos in 1988 and built the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam before the practice became UNS in 1999, known for decades as UNStudio. At Harvard GSD he has held the Kenzo Tange Visiting Professor's Chair and still teaches a studio on health.

His furniture follows the same people-first logic. Node+, designed in 2021 for LaCividina, turns a sofa into a small piece of architecture, with wooden or acoustic partitions, desks and side tables built into the island. For American lobbies, lounges and open offices that need privacy without walls, La Mercanti draws the island on the client's plan before ordering.