Alison Brooks

Principal and Creative Director at Alison Brooks Architects

Speaker

Alison Brooks, Founder and Creative Director of Alison Brooks Architects, is one of the UK’s most highly awarded and internationally acclaimed architects. A native of Ontario, she moved to London in 1988 and established her practice in 1996. With built works encompassing urban design and housing, private houses, installations, public buildings for the arts and higher education, she is the only architect to have received the profession’s three most prestigious UK awards: the RIBA Stirling Prize, Manser Medal (twice), and the Stephen Lawrence Prize.

Her work reflects a commitment to generous, inclusive city-building and a uniquely sculptural design language beautifully demonstrated in her recently completed Cohen Quadrangle for Exeter College, Oxford. Current large scale urban projects in Canada include a sixty-storey tower in Toronto’s Quayside development, and a 1M sf mixed-use urban quarter in the City of Surrey, BC. Landmark projects include the Stirling-prize-winning Accordia in Cambridge, Ely Court and Cadence in King’s Cross, London. Private houses continue to serve as a focussed platform for the practice’s design research, from the much-celebrated 2001 VXO House to the 2021 RIBA House of the Year, Windward House. She has been invited to exhibit her practice’s work at the Venice Architecture Biennale three times.

In 2020 she was awarded Dezeen Architect of the Year and BD Housing Architect of the Year. Alison has held numerous teaching positions, including the Architectural Association, the Bartlett, Harvard GSD, ETSAM in Madrid, and more recently, Cornell AAP. She lectures internationally on architecture and urban design and serves on numerous international design competition juries.