Architect Amanda Levete, founder of AL_A, will discuss two prominent cultural projects: the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum Exhibition Road Quarter and the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT).

• For London’s V&A, AL_A created a new entrance, public space, and gallery—the museum’s largest building initiative in more than a century. Awarded through a competition, the project features the world’s first porcelain courtyard.
• MAAT is a low-slung, tile-clad building that invites visitors onto its roof, creating a major new public amenity on the banks of Lisbon’s Tagus River.

Levete trained at the Architectural Association and worked for Richard Rogers before joining Future Systems as a partner in 1989, realizing ground-breaking buildings including the Media Centre at Lord’s Cricket Ground and Selfridges department store in Birmingham. In 2009 she founded AL_A.

Levete frequently contributes to radio and television programs and writes for major publications, and has lectured around the world. For over a decade she served as a trustee for influential London nonprofits the Young Foundation and Artangel.

A winner of the Stirling Prize and the Jane Drew Prize, she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2017.

Current AL_A projects include:

• Galeries Lafayette, Paris, France
• Maggie’s Centre, Southampton, UK
• Wadham College, Oxford, UK
• The Courtyard, Moscow, Russia

This lecture is co-sponsored by The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union.

The lecture will be followed by a discussion with Billie Tsien, co-founding principal architect of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners and President of The Architectural League of New York.

Support

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.