Amanda Levete

Amanda Jane Levete CBE (born 17 November 1955) is a Stirling Prize-winning British architect, and principal of AL A.

Originally from Bridgend, south Wales, Levete was a student at St Paul's Girls' School, London and the Hammersmith School of Art, enrolled at the Architectural Association became a trainee at Alsop & Lyall and an architect at the Richard Rogers Partnership. As co-founder of the firm Powis & Levete, she was nominated for the RIBA's '40 under 40' exhibition in 1985. Levete joined Jan Kaplický at Future Systems as a partner in 1989, served as a trustee of the arts organisation Artangel from 2000 to 2013, and is a trustee of the Young Foundation.

Levete is credited with makingthe Future Systems' organic and conceptual designs a reality. Recognised as one of the UK's most innovative practices, Future Systems completed works include the Selfridges department store in Birmingham and the Lord's Media Centre, which won the Royal Institute of British Architects' Stirling Prize in 1999.

Levete formed AL A (formerly known as Amanda Levete Architecture) in 2009, and in 2011 the practice won the international competition to design a new entrance, courtyard and gallery for London's Victoria and Albert Museum, which features a porcelain courtyard. AL_A's projects include the MAAT (Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology) project in Lisbon for the EDP Foundation, the Central Embassy project in Bangkok, 10 Hill's Place in London and the pop-up restaurant Tincan.

In 2014 AL_A was chosen to design the second MPavilion for the Naomi Milgrom Foundation in Melbourne, the first to be designed by an international architect. The M-Pavilion, made from fibreglass overlapping petals, opened to the public in October 2015.

The Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) in Lisbon opened on 5 October 2016 with site-specific work from Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. The €20m museum sits on the River Tagus (Rio Tejo) to the west of the city centre and was described as "sinuous" and "one of Europe's most lyrical new museums". Also in 2016, AL_A completed the 13-hectare media campusheadquarters building for Sky Central project in London central in London.

In the 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours Amanda Levete was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), for services to architecture.

In 2018, Levete was awarded the Jane Drew Prize by the Architects' Journal and Architectural Review.

Levete met the Czech architect Jan Kaplický in the 1980s. They married in 1991, had a son, Josef, in 1995 and divorced in 2006. Levete and Kaplický worked professionally together from 1989 to 2009. Since 2007 Levete has been married to Ben Evans, director of the London Design Festival.

On 19 March 2017, Amanda Levete appeared as a castaway on the Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs.