Bernhard Karpf FAIA is the former Managing Principal of Richard Meier & Partners. His international background and experience provided substantial contributions toward the firm’s global success. Karpf’s work on significant public and private buildings worldwide is grounded in timeless principles of architecture. In his over 30-year career, he developed a distinguished body of modern works of architecture, distinctive for its order and composition, utilization of natural light, meticulous assembly, and site strategies and transformations.
Bernhard Karpf’s work has been published extensively and has received numerous awards from institutions such as the American Institute of Architects, Progressive Architecture, Bund Deutscher Architekten, and the Royal Institute of British Architects. He has been invited to speak at institutions worldwide, among them the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the National Museum in Tbilisi, Georgia, the AIA Convention in Boston, the Preservation Conference in Indiana, the Museo de Arte Carillo Gil in Mexico City, and the Academy for Architectural Culture in Hamburg, Germany
Karpf studied architecture and literature at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, the ETH Zürich, Switzerland, and the Technical University Darmstadt, Germany, where he received his diploma. After being awarded a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) fellowship he continued his education in the Master of Architecture/Urban Design Studio at Cornell University. He is licensed as architect in New York and in Germany. A member of the American Institute of Architects, he was elevated to the College of Fellows in 2018.