AL_A

AL_A is an award-winning architecture and design studio. It was founded in 2009 by Amanda Levete and grew out of Future Systems, a practice widely regarded as laying down the agenda for architecture in the twenty-first century, with works including the Stirling Prize-winning Media Centre at Lord’s Cricket Ground and the Selfridges department store, Birmingham. Led by Amanda Levete, Ho-Yin Ng, Maximiliano Arrocet and Alice Dietsch, AL_A has refined an intuitive and strategic approach to design that has radicalised clients and briefs, and led to a diverse range of concepts for cultural, retail and commercial schemes around the world. The practice’s creative relationship with a client is defined by a mutual respect as well as being reciprocally demanding: AL_A challenge assumptions and presuppositions, and expect to be challenged in return.

Recent commissions include the highly anticipated expansion of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Central Embassy, a 1.5 million sq ft mixed-use development in Bangkok on the former grounds of the British embassy, a new centre for the cancer care charity Maggie’s, a 13-hectare media campus for Sky, and a cultural centre in Lisbon commissioned by EDP, one of the world’s foremost energy companies.

Recent invited competitions include a new campus for the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne, the design of new social spaces for Oriel College at Oxford University, the UK Pavilion for the Milan Expo 2015, galleries for the Science Museum in London, and the new wing of the Mumbai City Museum.

Our current self-generated projects include Tincan, a pop-up restaurant project in London’s Soho, serving the best tinned seafood in the world, tablO, an open source tool for a product to aid designers who use tablets, and a series of stackable football pitches that respond to London’s urban context and shortage of sports facilities. Each and every AL_A project gives an insight into our way of thinking, combining a strategic and intuitive approach with an attention to detail.