AL Academy Launches!

The best thing happened earlier this month; we welcomed our first intake to the AL Academy!

Two brilliant students, Zaineb Tahir and Aaliyah Ismail Mohammed, from New City College, London joined our studio on placement, and it was amazing watching them transform even in the space of the first few days. Plus their excitement at having designed something that actually looked cool by the end of the first week was infectious!

The idea for the AL Academy began three years ago, when our directors, Oli and Jon came up with the idea of building an Academy like Sir Alex Ferguson did at Manchester United. They wanted to find and develop the Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville, and David Beckham of the Architectural world.

Oli said: “In order to design the cities of the future, we need people from diverse backgrounds who actually grew up in cities. The current route into architecture is too long, too expensive and, in our experience, not as inclusive as it should be. No one is going into schools in Tower Hamlets or Hackney and telling students architecture is an industry that will welcome them. We wanted to change that, and selfishly secure the brightest young talent to work at AL so we can win the Premier League six times!”

Our part 2 architectural assistants, Joe Maguire and Laurence Richards spent considerable time setting up the Academy, and our aim is to mentor 24 pupils over the next year. Our team’s takeaways from the first intake were:

  • Gen Z are hilarious. They genuinely made us laugh a lot

  • The look of utter distain on Aaliyah’s face when our director, Oli said LinkedIn was his favourite social network

  • Having young people in the office diffuses stress, as we have to remain calm even when handling testing moments!

  • The look of delight on their faces when we asked them to come back and do paid work for us in the summer.

We’re excited to continue supporting young people on their journeys into the world of Architecture. To find out more, contact Joe or Laurence via info@ackroydlowrie.com.

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