Amanda Levete has spent her career exploring the transformative potential of space through buildings and furniture pieces. Research underpins her work and she is intellectually driven by the challenge to find the idea that will unlock the potential in everything she designs. She works with diametrically opposed elements, the organic and the man-made, to create the unexpected and is recognised for her ability to bring visionary projects to fruition realising the ambitions of private and public sector clients.
Levete has received a number of international commissions, including the recently-won competition to design a new gallery, courtyard and entrance for the V&A Museum, a major new hotel and retail development in Bangkok for Central Retail Corporation already on site, a residential tower on the City fringe for developer Londonewcastle, and a new Cultural Centre in Lisbon. She has forged long-term relationships with artists resulting in a joint project with Anish Kapoor for the Naples Subway. Her individual furniture pieces for Established & Sons have been called sublime, pushing materials and design to their limits. Through this relationship she has produced a number of defining pieces including Drift bench and the Around the Corner collection — each carved into a form by an advanced software program and then worked by hand.
She is visiting professor at the Royal College of Art and a trustee of Artangel, the Young Foundation and the Arts Foundation. Levete is a regular TV and radio broadcaster and writes for a number of magazines. She trained at the Architectural Association and worked for Richard Rogers before joining Future Systems as a partner in 1989.
The formation of AL_A in 2009 realised Levete’s ambition to create a collaborative office following her partnership with the late Jan Kaplický at Future Systems where she completed award-winning and internationally recognised buildings including Selfridges department store in Birmingham and the Media Centre at Lord’s cricket ground which won the prestigious Stirling Prize.
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