Will Alsop

Will Alsop
Will Alsop in his Battersea office aLL Design
Born	(1947-12-12) 12 December 1947 (age 69) Northampton, Northamptonshire, England, UK
Occupation	Architect
Awards	Stirling Prize (2000); RIBA Worldwide Award (2004); Civic Trust Award (2003, 2006); RIBA Regional Award (London) (2006)
Practice	aLL design
Projects	Yonkers Power Plant project; Clarke Quay Redevelopment project

Will (William) Allen Alsop, OBE RA (born 12 December 1947, in Northampton, England) is a British architect and Professor of Architecture at University for the Creative Arts's Canterbury School of Architecture. He is responsible for several distinctive and controversial modernist buildings which are usually distinguished by their use of bright colours and unusual avant-garde forms. In 2000, Alsop won the Stirling Prize, the most prestigious architecture award in the United Kingdom, for the Peckham Library in the south-east of London.

Alsop always wanted to be an architect, even before he really knew what architects did; when he was six years old, he designed a house for his mother to live in – its most striking specification was that it had to be built in New Zealand. When he was 16 his father, an accountant, died, and being bored with school he left to work for an architect, doing his A-levels at evening classes.

He was greatly influenced by his drawing tutor, Henry Bird while at foundation course at Northampton Art School. He recalled how he was taught to draw by him.

He gave me a brick, told me to draw it and promptly left the room. I proceeded to draw it with all its shadows. On his return he went into a rage and chastised me for destroying the vision with shading, shouting: 'What is wrong with a simple line?' He insisted that I redo the drawing with line only so that I could begin to see the brick and its proportions. I drew that brick for two three hour sessions per week, line only, for three months. Eventually, he admitted that I had mastered the brick and I was allowed to progress onto the tin can.

Alsop then studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture where at 23 he entered the competition to design the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and came second to the eventual winners, Richard Rogers & Renzo Piano. He worked briefly for Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, a couple who had been instrumental in introducing modernism to Britain in the 1930s, then joined Cedric Price for four years.