Bart Akkerhuis has come a long way since leaving his role as an associate with the Paris office of Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) to found his own studio. In two short years, Studio Akkerhuis has completed a beach club, a hotel, and a theater in the Netherlands, as well as two Paris galleries. Projects under way include the transformation of a neglected Leiden, Netherlands, industrial complex, the Meelfabriek, into a vibrant mixed-use community. “I started in September 2014 without any project or client but with the idea that this was always what I wanted,” says Akkerhuis, 45, who is Dutch but has lived in Paris for more than a decade. Now a range of ongoing work has grown the one-man firm into an office of 17 young architects from 12 countries.
Jennifer Krichels 