INTRODUCING AL_A AL_A is the award-winning architecture and design studio founded in 2009 by the RIBA Stirling Prize-winning architect Amanda Levete with Directors Ho-Yin Ng, Alice Dietsch and Maximiliano Arrocet. AL_A’s approach to design balances the intuitive with the strategic, drawing on a foundation of rigorous research, innovation, collaboration and painstaking attention to detail. The practice won the competition to design and implement the highly anticipated expansion of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. On completion in 2017 the V&A project will see AL_A realise a new entrance for the V&A, with the world’s first porcelain courtyard above a new underground gallery housing spaces for headline exhibitions. The project will be the V&A’s largest expansion in over 100 years and will be completed while the museum remains open to the public. Ongoing commissions around the world include the remodelling of Galeries Lafayette Haussmann in Paris; Central Embassy, a 1.5 million sq ft mixed-use development on the former grounds of the British embassy in Bangkok; the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon, commissioned by EDP, one of the world’s foremost energy companies; the 2015 MPavilion, a public pavilion for the Naomi Milgrom Foundation in the Queen Victoria Gardens, Melbourne; a new centre for the cancer care charity Maggie’s in Southampton; The Courtyard, a series of community mixed-use developments on 39 sites across Moscow; and the World Trade Center Mosque in Abu Dhabi. Past clients include Sky, News Corporation, Condé Nast, Goldman Sachs, the City of Naples, Dublin Docklands, Selfridges, and the Marylebone Cricket Club. AL_A is engaged in long-running research into the application of new materials and techniques in architecture and design. In 2015 the practice’s ceramic table, made using technologies adapted from the space industry, was selected by Edmund de Waal for inclusion in his white exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. AL_A sees self-generated projects as an essential element of its creative output. In 2014, the practice opened tincan, an acclaimed pop-up restaurant in London’s Soho that served only the best tinned seafood in the world. AL_A are developing a series of stackable football pitches that respond to London’s urban context and shortage of sports facilities as well as running the Architect’s Club with Robert Blair Primary School for children who are experiencing emotional and behavioural difficulties. In every project, however modest in scale, AL_A try to advance the debate, be it analytical response, social purpose, manufacturing technique or material innovation. HOW WE WORK Ambition shapes our work. We are at our best with clients whose ambition reaches beyond physicality, functionality and budget; those who want to move the game on, to transform themselves and create significant and positive impact beyond the building, on the community and city context. WORKING THROUGH COMPLEXITY AND INTUITION DRIVES OUR strategic THINKING Working through the complex demands of projects rigorously and rationally we interrogate complexity to add depth and intention to our work. Using our years of experience we cut through the layers and give clear strategic direction to our projects. Collaboration AMPLIFIES THE POTENTIAL OF PROJECTS We are natural collaborators. Four directors representing three continents work on all our projects bringing a richness of possibility. This spirit of collaboration runs across the office and beyond it to the expertise and experience offered by our sophisticated network of trusted specialists. TECHNICAL AND CONCEPTUAL INVENTIVENESS MAKE OUR BUILDINGS SPECIAL Technical and conceptual inventiveness sit hand in hand at the heart of our work, integral to each, operating as one. Together, inseparably they create the space, structure, form and aesthetic of our work. RESEARCH AND CONVICTION creates transformational impact Research underpins everything we do. Research to explore the history, context, circumstance, sustainability and conceptual viability of each project, research into technical possibility and constraints, materials, structures and techniques. Carrying out research with the conviction and tenacity to see it through, maximising the potential of every aspect, is fundamental to everything we do. DIRECTORS AMANDA LEVETE Amanda Levete is a Stirling Prize winning architect and founder and principal of AL_A. She trained at the Architectural Association and worked for Richard Rogers before joining Future Systems as a partner in 1989, where she realised ground- breaking buildings including the Media Centre at Lord’s Cricket Ground and Selfridges department store in Birmingham. Amanda is a trustee of leading social innovation centre the Young Foundation and has served as a trustee of influential arts organisation Artangel for over a decade. She is a regular radio and TV broadcaster, writes for a number of publications, including the New Statesman and Prospect, and lectures worldwide. HO-YIN NG Ho-Yin Ng was made a director of AL_A in 2009 having joined the office in 2006. He has led the teams developing the master plans and building designs for the BSkyB Media Campus. Ho-Yin is passionate about incorporating emerging technologies that extend efficiency and enhance the design, construction and delivery process. His current research includes the integration of advanced construction techniques with sophisticated parametric 3D models that he has developed in the office. This work is driving the design methodology of AL_A. ALICE DIETSCH Alice Dietsch was made a director of AL_A in 2012 having joined the office in 2006. She has led the much anticipated V&A Exhibition Road project, since it was won through an international competition, to design the new entrance, gallery and courtyard for the Museum. Alice also coordinates the competition group in the office and is fluent in developing innovative concepts within budgetary and technical constraints. Her working methods are driven by extensive research, experimentation and intellectual challenge. She moved to the UK after studying and working in Paris and Stockholm. MAX ARROCET Max Arrocet was made a director of AL_A in 2012 having joined the office in 2007. He is leading the design of the EDP Arts & Technology Centre in Lisbon and the Maggie’s Centre in Southampton. Max also leads a number of private residential projects and has an expertise in bespoke contemporary and historic detailing. Max’s brings a technical expertise from his background in engineering as well as architecture, reflected in projects at all scales, from complex building schemes to ground breaking installations. V&A EXHIBITION ROAD 800 tonnes of historic Grade I listed stonework stands on one Client Victoria & Albert Museum “mega-beam” as excavation for the subterranean galleries Location London, UK progresses as part for the AL_A’s Exhibition Road project for Programme Gallery for temporary the V&A. exhibitions, public courtyard and new museum entrance A new lobby will be created within the Western Range to provide the Area 6,360 m2 entrance to the temporary exhibition galleries beneath the courtyard. Status In progress Commencement 2011 The descent to the gallery 15m below is celebrated as an important Completion 2017 part of the visitor’s journey, woven into the fabric of the Museum and Architect AL_A framing otherwise-impossible views of the fine façades. Descent and ascent have been designed with a specific focus on the theatre of the journey and the interplay between new and old. The “mega-beam” is formed of four individual steel beams. It is temporarily supported on steel needles, which will be replaced by four steel columns. The beams and columns will be expressed within the volume of the stairwell, so that as visitors pass under Aston Webb’s 1901 façade they have an understanding of where they are going and where they are in relation to the rest of the Museum. MUSEUM OF Art, ARCHITECTURE & TECHNOLOGY MAAT, the new Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Client Fundação Energias de is an outward-looking museum located on the banks of the Portugal (EDP) Tagus in Belém, the district from where the Portuguese great Location Lisbon, Portugal explorers set off. Programme Museum including exhibition spaces, auditorium, cafe, Proposing a new relationship with the river and the wider world, the public spaces kunsthalle is a powerful yet sensitive and low-slung building that Area 6,400 m2 explores the convergence of contemporary art, architecture and Status Phase 1 completed technology. Commencement 2011 Completion 2017 The new building is the centrepiece of EDP Foundation’s masterplan Architect AL_A for an art campus that includes the repurposed Central Tejo power station. Incorporating over 7,000m² of new public space and blending structure into landscape, the kunsthalle is designed to allow visitors to walk over, under and through the building that sits beneath a gently expressed arch. CENTRAL EMBASSY Located within the former gardens of the British Embassy, Client Central Retail Corporation along Ploenchit Road – Bangkok’s primary commercial artery, Location Bangkok, Thailand the 1.5 million sq ft Bangkok Central Embassy project merges Programme Mixed use luxury retail, a seven storey luxury retail podium and a 36 storey five-star entertainment and hotel hotel tower into a cohesive, twisting shape. The elevated form complex that rises from the podium wraps around two vertical light Area 145,000 m2 wells, opening up internal spaces to reveal stepped terraces, Status In progress and dividing hotel functions; private guest-related programmes Commencement 2010 face the gardens of Lai Nert Park, while the hotel bar, reception Completion 2017 lounge and sky terrace face the city centre. Architect AL_A Drawing on motifs and patterns found in traditional Thai architecture, the external skin of the building is characterised by a range of extruded aluminium tiles, to create a dynamic pattern in response to external conditions. The distribution of tiles creates a moiré-like pattern, articulated by the play of light and reflects both the sky and the city.