Professor Michel van Ackere

Michel van Ackere is Professor in Practice at Meiji University I-AUD. He received his BA from Brown University in art and architecture history and his M.Arch from Harvard GSD in 1994, where he was awarded the AIA Gold Medal and the Julia Amory Appleton Travelling Fellowship. The Appleton Fellowship funded research on traditional Japanese urbanism, conducted at Kyoto University in 1994-1995.
From 1995-1997, Michel worked at Itsuko Hasegawa Atelier in Tokyo, where he served as the site architect for Miura Art Village in Matsuyama. Since 1997, he has been employed at Maki and Associates in Tokyo, working on the design team for the Sam Fox School of Art and Design at Washington University, St. Louis, the MIT Media Lab Complex, the Main Administration Building of Republic Polytechnic Singapore, and the Tokyo University Law / Political Science Learning Center. Following his promotion to Associate in 2007, Michel led a variety of projects including the Ocean Terminal Extension in Hong Kong (unbuilt), the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania (2009), the Jewish Community of Japan, Tokyo (2009), the Bihar Museum, India (2017), and the Museum Reinhard Ernst, Wiesbaden, Germany (opening in 2024). He also assisted on numerous competitions, exhibitions, and office publications.
Michel is a licensed architect in the United States and Japan and maintains both LEED and CSI (CDT) certification. He was the founding President of the American Institute of Architects fourth overseas chapter (AIA Japan) in 2005-2006 and remained on AIA Japan’s Board of Directors through 2022. He also served as a visiting design critic at Kokushikan University in Tokyo between 2007 and 2021.