Wiel Arets

Wiel Arets was born in Heerlen in 1955, graduated from Eindhoven University of Technology in 1983 and founded Wiel Arets Architect & Associates in Heerlen in 1984. The firm moved to Maastricht in 1997. Arets has held a number of academic posts: from 1986 to 1989 he taught at the Academy of Architecture in both Rotterdam and Amsterdam and from 1988 to 1992 he was Diploma Unit Master at the Architectural Association in London. From 1991 to 1994 he was Visiting Professor at Columbia University and the Cooper Union in New York, the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam, the HAK in Vienna and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture in Copenhagen. In 2000 he held the Mies van der Rohe chair at the ETSAB in Barcelona and since 2001 he has held the Berlage chair at Delft University of Technology. From 1995 to 2002 Wiel Arets was Dean of the Berlage Institute and director of the Berlage PhD programme. In 2004 he took up a professorship at Berlin University of the Arts and opened a second office in Amsterdam and changed the firm’s name to Wiel Arets Architects. Mr. Arets received the Victor de Stuers prize in 1987 and 1994, the Charlotte Köhler prize in 1988, the Rotterdam-Maaskant prize in 1989, the Edmund Hustinx prize in 1991, the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion Award special mention in 1994, and the Concrete Award in 1995; in 1998 the Academy of Fine Art Maastricht was chosen by the International Union of Architects (UIA) as one of the world’s thousand best twentieth-century buildings and in 2005 he was awarded both the Royal Institute of Dutch Architects BNA Cube and the Rietveld prize. Now, Wiel Arets is the Dean of the College of Architecture, IIT, Chicago USA.