Chipperfield was born in London in 1953, and graduated in 1976 from Kingston School of Art in London. He studied architecture at the Architectural Association (AA) in London, receiving his diploma in architecture in 1977. He worked in the offices of several notable architects, including Douglas Stephen, Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, before founding his own firm, David Chipperfield Architects, in 1985. As a young architect Chipperfield championed the historically-attuned, place-specific work of continental architects such as Moneo, Snozzi and Siza through the 9H Gallery situated in the front room of his London office.

He first established his reputation designing store interiors in London, Paris, Tokyo and New York. Among Chipperfield’s early projects in England was a shop for Issey Miyake on London’s Sloane Street. His shops in Japan led to commissions to design for a private museum in the Chiba prefecture (1987), design for a store for the automobile company Toyota in Kyoto (1989), and the headquarters of the Matsumoto Company in Okayama (1990). His firm opened an office in Tokyo in 1989. His first commission to design an actual building was for a house for the fashion photographer Nick Knight in London in 1990.

In 1997 he began one of his most important projects, the reconstruction and restoration of the Neues Museum in Berlin, which had been largely destroyed during World War II. After 2000, he won commissions for several other major museum projects in Germany, designed several major museum projects in Germany, including the Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach (2002–2006), and the Galerie Am Kupfergraben 10 in Berlin (2003–2007). In the same period he designed and built, at rapid speed, a new headquarters for the America’s Cup in Valencia, Spain (2005–2006), and an enormous judicial complex in Barcelona, Spain, which consolidated the offices previously contained in seventeen different buildings into nine new immense concrete blocks. He also constructed his first project in the United States, an extension of the Museum of ethnology and natural history in Anchorage, Alaska (2003–2009).

In 1997 Chipperfield, along with Julian Harrap, won a competition for the reconstruction of the Neues Museum in Berlin, which had been severely damaged during World War II. His commission was to recreate the original volume of the museum, both by restoring original spaces and adding new spaces which would respect the historic structure of the building. Reinforced concrete was used for new galleries and the new central staircase, while recycled bricks were used in other spaces, particularly in the north wing and the south dome. In addition, some of the scars of the war on the building’s walls were preserved, as an essential part of its history. As Chipperfield explained, the architects used these materials so that “The new would reflect that which was lost, without imitating it.” The building received the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture in 2011. In 2007 Chipperfield began a new project with the museum, to construct a new gallery, the James Simon Gallery, inspired on the colonnade of the old museum. The new section will house more than ten thousand objects from the archeological collections, including the famed bust of Queen Nefertiti. Scheduled for completion in 2017, it was handed over to the museum in December 2018 with opening to the public scheduled for 2019.

In 1999, Chipperfield was awarded the Tessenow Gold Medal, what was followed by a comprehensive exhibition of his work together with the work of the Tessenow Stipendiat and Spanish architect Andrés Jaque, held in the Hellerau Festspielhaus. In 2004 he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to architecture, and was made Honorary Member of the Florence Accademia delle arti del Disegno in 2003. In 2009 he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the highest tribute the Federal Republic of Germany can pay to individuals for services to the nation. In the New Year Honours 2010, Chipperfield was appointed as a Knight Bachelor for services to architecture in the UK and Germany. He was awarded the Wolf Prize in Arts in 2010 and the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2011.

Chipperfield’s buildings cannot be described as following one particular style, although his work is sometimes seen as a reaction against the more flamboyant projects of Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid or Santiago Calatrava. In 2005, he told Christopher Hall of the New York Times, “I’m very interested in doing buildings that people are fond of, but with each project I also try to push the boundaries, to make something familiar but different. I’m not so interested in convincing the architectural community that I’m a genius.”

Form Matters, an exhibition looking back over Chipperfield’s career, was mounted by London’s Design Museum in 2009. His Tonale range of ceramics for Alessi received the Compassod’Oro in 2011, and the Piana folding chair has recently been acquired for the permanent collection at MoMA.

Until 2011 most of his major projects were on the continent of Europe, but lin 2011 he opened two notable museum projects in Britain, the Turner Contemporary (2006–11) in Margate, and The Hepworth Wakefield in Wakefield. In 2013 he opened the Jumex Museum in Mexico City, and the extension of the Saint Louis Art Museum in the United States. His most remote project was the Museum of Naga, on a site in the desert 170 kilometers northeast of Khartoum in Sudan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He designed a structure to preserve the remains of two ancient temples and an artesian well, dating to 300 B.C.-300 A.D. The building, built of the local stone, blends into reddish mountains around it.

Rowan Moore of The Guardian reviewed the body of Chipperfield’s work in a 2011 article. He was critical of some buildings, such as the Hepworth Gallery, which he suggested resembled “a bunker”, and the law courts in Barcelona, which he said were “uncomfortably prison-like, as if defendants were guilty until proven innocent,” but he also found much to admire in Chipperfield’s work: “He is much sought after for projects that help define cities’ modern view of themselves, often in relation to a rich or fraught history. He deals in dignity, in gravitas, in memory and art. He likes “permanence”, “substance”, and “meaning”, and dislikes designs that are spectacular for the hell of it…His buildings have a strong presence, with right angles and straight lines prominent. He likes solid masonry and concrete, where you seed that stuff that is holding the building up, and sense its mass. He adheres, arguably too much, to the classical idea that architecture is about naked materials and structures seen in daylight. Mobility, surface, illusion, or the way artificial lighting forms cities at night, is less important to him…He likes the appearance and reality of permanence, and is skeptical about architect’s common feeling that buildings can be as light and transient as airplanes or tents.” He cites Chipperfield: “‘You always have to dig a hole in the ground and pour a lot of concrete into it.'” Moore wrote: “What all these projects have in common is the desire to bring out the best in the thing that Chipperfield finds in the brief or site – the ruins in Berlin, the light in Margate, the art in Wakefield.”

In 2012 Chipperfield became the first British architect to curate the Venice Biennale of Architecture. The biennale, entitled ‘Common Ground’, sought to foreground the collaborative and interconnected nature of architectural practice.

Chipperfield has been recognised for his work with honours and awards including membership of the Royal Academy of Arts, the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, a knighthood for services to architecture, and the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association in 2013.

In a 2014 interview with Andy Butler in Designboom , Chipperfield declared: “The one thing you can’t do in architecture, at least in my opinion, is to limit your way of thinking to a style, or a material, you have to be responsive to the circumstances of a project.” He declared that “architecture could not be globalized”, because it varied depending upon the culture of a city. “However contemporary we feel that we are, we still want to find different characteristics in different places. When we are building in a city we have a responsibility in a way to join in and to understand why buildings are as they are in that city. I find it very weak for an architect to disregard the history and culture of a city and say “I have an international style.” There’s absolutely no justification for that. It’s the equivalent of having no variation in a cuisine, you may as well just place all the different types of food in a blender and consume it as a protein-rich shake.”

In 2015, Chipperfield won a competition to redesign the modern and contemporary art wing of the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. He also began his first ground-up building in New York City, the Bryant, a thirty-three story hotel and condominium project next to Bryant Park in Manhattan. In 2017 he and his associates were engaged in a multitude of major projects around the world; including new flagship stores for Bally and Valentino, the reconstruction of the U.S, Embassy in London; One Pancras Square, an office and commercial complex behind King’s Cross Station in London.a project for the Shanghai Expo tower in China, the new Nobel Center headquarters for the Nobel Prize in Stockholm, a headquarters store for the online firm SSENSE in Montreal, the Kuntshaus cultural center in Zurich, the Haus der Kunst cultural center in Munich, the completion of the headquarters of Amorepacific in Seoul, Korea, and the Inagara Reien Project, a temple complex in Japan