Professor Michel van Ackere

Michel van Ackere has been Professor in Practice at Meiji University I-AUD since 2024. 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, which funded research on traditional Japanese urbanism 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. From 1997-2024, he was 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. Promoted to Associate in 2007, Michel led a variety of domestic and international projects, including 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 (2024).

After leaving Maki and Associates at the end of 2024, Michel joined the Tokyo office of Kengo Kuma & Associates (KKAA) as a Design Consultant, and was elevated to Partner in 2026.