Sir David Chipperfield studied architecture at the Kingston School of Art and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. After graduating he worked at the practices of Douglas Stephen, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster before founding his own practice in London in 1985. He later established offices in Berlin (1998), Shanghai (2005) and Milan (2006). Together, the four offices drive common architectural ambitions and share a commitment to the collaborative aspect of creating projects, finding solutions that are architecturally, socially, and intellectually coherent.

David Chipperfield Architects has built numerous projects worldwide including cultural, residential, commercial and educational buildings, as well as civic projects and urban masterplans. The work has received international awards and citations for design excellence, including the RIBA Stirling Prize for The Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach, Germany, and both the Mies van der Rohe Award (European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture) and the Deutscher Architekturpreis for the Neues Museum, Berlin.

Among the practice’s major recent completed projects are the James Simon Galerie in Berlin; an MBA building for the HEC Paris School of Management; the Museo Jumex in Mexico City; a redevelopment of the Royal Academy of Arts in London; the Amorepacific Headquarters in Seoul; and an extension building for the Kunsthaus Zurich opening to the public later this year.

In addition to design work, David Chipperfield has taught and lectured worldwide. He was Professor of Architecture at the Staatliche Akademie  der Bildenden Künste, Stuttgart from 1995 to 2001 and Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale University in 2011. He holds honorary doctorates from Kingston University (2009) and the University of Kent (2010).  David curated the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2012; served as 2016-2017 Mentor for Architecture for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative; and was the 2020 Guest Editor of the architecture and design magazine Domus. In 2017, he founded Fundación RIA, a private, non-profit entity to research and support sustainable development in Galicia, Spain.

David Chipperfield has received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, Praemium Imperiale, the Heinrich Tessenow Gold Medal, the Wolf Foundation Prize in the Arts, and the Grand DAI Award for Building Culture. In 2010, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In the UK, he was knighted for services to architecture in 2010 and appointed a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 2021.