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AL_A moves forward on world’s first magnetized fusion power plant in UK

2023-01-16T12:06:00-05:00

AL_A has been granted permission to construct the world’s first magnetized fusion power plant. The Culham Science Centre facility, to be located in Oxford, UK, is anchored by a 125-foot-tall cylindrical fusion hall wrapped in a translucent facade.

The scheme was first unveiled in August 2021, commissioned by the Canadian energy company General Fusion in collaboration with the UK Atomic Energy Authority.

Unlike traditional nuclear fission stations, which generate energy by splitting atoms, the fusion process involves merging two atoms to generate vast amounts of energy without the highly radioactive waste associated with nuclear fission. Last month, US scientists announced a major breakthrough in the process through a fusion experiment that released more energy than was inputted by the lab’s equipment.

Image credit: AL_A

For AL_A’s plant, the central cylindrical fusion hall is surrounded by a radial arrangement of support systems, all of which are equidistant from the core. In our 20...

AL_A-designed Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) opens in Lisbon

2016-10-04T19:49:00-04:00

Lisbon's new Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology officially opens October 5, spread across two structures: the renovated interior of a former power station, and a new kunsthalle designed by AL_A.

The MAAT was founded by the EDP Foundation, a private Portuguese organization primarily focused on energy and environmental concerns, and their extension into society and culture. MATT's construction extends EDP's preexisting art campus on the banks of Lisbon's Tagus River, and is part of an ongoing urban revitalization project along the historic waterfront, which includes Vittorio Gregotti’s Cultural Centre of Belém and Paolo Mendez de Rocha’s Coach Museum. Materially, the building is also meant to directly reference its site's craft tradition, made of 15,000 three-dimensional ceramic tiles.

AL_A's design for the MAAT includes a massive, low-slung roof that extends into the public space—allowing visitors to walk over and under it—intending to bridge the waterfront and the city. The m...

Photos (and video) of Amanda Levete's MPavilion

2015-10-07T20:40:00-04:00

The 2015 pavilion, founded and commissioned by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation, was designed by AL_A, the studio of award-winning British architect Amanda Levete. The pavilion is made up of 13 large and 30 smaller petal-like shades, supported by four metre high columns.

Made from carbon fiber poles and roof petals, Amanda Levete's newly opened MPavilion (which runs through February 7th, 2016) also has an acoustic component, courtesy composer Matthias Schack-Arnott of Speak Percussion.

"Sunset Ritual," as the L.E.D. lighting and music show is known, welcomes the night in Melbourne, Australia.

Check out a far more swooping, aurally pleasing view of the MPavilion in this video: