Levete trained at the Architectural Association, worked for Richard Rogers, and from 1989 to 2009 was a partner in Future Systems with Jan Kaplický, where the aluminium monocoque of the Lord’s Media Centre — built in a shipyard, not on site — won the Stirling Prize in 1999 and the disc-clad Selfridges at Birmingham became the most photographed British building of its decade. Since founding AL_A in 2009 she has built the MAAT in Lisbon, the Exhibition Road courtyard and porcelain-tiled galleries at the V&A in London, and the Paisley Museum. Her work is consistently curved, seamless and made off-site, and it treats a building’s skin as a single continuous surface. She received the Jane Drew Prize in 2018 and was appointed CBE in 2017.
