Architecture & Design | Amanda Levete A
s the world’s population increases and cities become magnets for much of this population, it has become the role of the architect to redefine how people should live in urban environments.
Our traditional heritage has become outdated as our fast- moving society invents new ways of communicating, demanding more adaptable public spaces to reflect these changes.
British architect Amanda Levete has created civic buildings and spaces in such different cultures as the UK, Portugal and Thailand. Her masterpiece, the 1.5 million sq ft Bangkok Central Embassy project merges a seven storey luxury retail podium and a 30 storey five-star hotel tower into a cohesive, twisting shape that will launch this year, while her work on a new extension of the Victoria and Albert Museum is well under way in London. Amanda Levete is a Stirling Prize winning architect and founder and principal of AL_A, an international award-winning design and architecture studio. Prior to its formation in 2009 Amanda was a partner in Future Systems from 1989. AL_A has refined an intuitive and strategic approach to design that has radicalised clients and briefs, leading to a diverse range of concepts for cultural, retail and commercial schemes around the world.
AL_A’s design for a new courtyard
and gallery at the V&A responds directly to the V&A’s long-term brief to make Exhibition Road a place where culture and learning are accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds. The design explores a relationship that does not currently exist between the museum and the street by creating a physical permeability between the two. Bangkok Central Embassy blurs
boundaries between diametrically opposing elements: tower & plinth, façade & roof, local craftsmanship & digital technology, Thai tradition & contemporary design. By embracing advanced technology as well as local heritage and culture, the building celebrates a perceptive and contemporary architectural language. It is a design that is local to its surrounding yet simultaneously redefines the location. The EDP Foundation Arts &
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Technology Centre is a new public building located on the Belém waterfront in Lisbon, renewing access to the Tagus River from the city and consolidating the wider publicly-funded urban regeneration of the quarter; restoring the historic connection between the city and the water. The 7,000m² of new public space will accommodate a trans- disciplinary programme of exhibitions, public events and community engagement; a new discursive space for the city.
In an exclusive interview for Global Opportunity, Amanda explains the ethos that underpins her work. Why are public spaces so important in today’s world?
Architecture is an essential discipline, both historically and going forward. It speaks of history, of culture, of society and politics. It defines and changes the way we behave, our mood and the way we interact with each other. It is an incredibly powerful component of what makes cities great. The cities we love to visit as tourists are those cities that have an incredible richness of architectural heritage. Whether it is historical or about modernity, architecture is always fundamental to it. It helps not just to define our national identity but to define the culture of a nation. It expresses our values and is a potent form.
The driver for a city or an economy is the interaction between people and the exchange of ideas. The architect has to look at what it takes to amplify that, and to create the kind of crossover between people and factors of society that might otherwise not reach each other. People attract people and are drawn to places with lots of people. So to create the spaces is as important as creating the building itself.
How have you applied this concept to your vision for the extension of the Victoria and Albert Museum in
London? We are responding to a new sense of place, Exhibition Road in South Kensington, which has been semi-pedestrianised. Traditionally it was the route to the Great Exhibition and Crystal Palace, but because it has been pedestrianised it has taken on a different character. Our scheme for the V&A is responding very much to that shift in character and using it as a driver.
In coming up with our very first
designs for the new galleries at the V&A it was about understanding that we needed to come up with a new public place. Although it is a new boulevard there is no respite, no place to come off the main drag and relax. So creating a new public courtyard in front of the V&A, breaking down that moment of threshold between the street and the museum and imagining the dialogue between them was a very important conceptual idea to make visible.
AMANDA LEVETE
l Amanda Levete is a Stirling Prize winning architect and founder and principal of AL_A, an international award- winning design and architecture studio. Since its formation in 2009, AL_A has refined an intuitive and strategic approach to design that has radicalised clients and briefs, led to a diverse range of concepts for cultural, retail and commercial schemes around the world. Levete trained at the Architectural Association and worked for Richard Rogers before joining Future Systems as a partner in 1989, prior to founding her own studio.
So we took down the solidity of the Aston Webb screen, a Grade 1 listed building which involved huge negotiations with English Heritage. This allows people to drift in off Exhibition Road into the new courtyard through multiple entrances. The courtyard in a sense becomes an outdoor gallery because it is bounded on four sides by historic elevations, the one on the front which is the Aston Webb screen, then three around it which are extraordinary beautiful elevations, not at the moment visible to the public, as they were hidden by the screen designed to hide the boiler rooms that have long since gone. This new public place becomes a kind of orientating place; it is
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