About this talk

Running time: 39 minutes

Amanda Levete's early success was with Future Systems, the practice she ran in partnership with her then husband the late Jan Kaplický. Future System's most notable work included Selfridges department store in Birmingham (2003), and the Stirling Prize-winning Media Centre at Lord's Cricket Ground in London. Since founding AL_A in 2009, Levete has gone on to design The MAAT - The Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon (2016), Central Embassy, a luxury shopping mall and hotel in Bangkok (2017), the London headquarters building for Sky (2016) and her most significant project to date, Exhibition Road Quarter at the Victoria & Albert Museum (2017).

In this talk, Levete discusses the V&A project. She describes the technical challenge of building a new subterranean gallery below the existing building; her success in persuading English Heritage to allow her to open up the Grade I listed Aston Webb Screen to create a new entrance; a more fluid relationship between the museum and the street; her novel use of ceramic tiles to pave the new courtyard, and other devices designed to visibly express aspects of the project that might otherwise have remained concealed.

Recorded in London, December 2018.

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