Draft:Albert Williamson-Taylor

Albert Williamson-Taylor (born 1959) is a British-West-African structural engineer, and the 2023 recipient of the Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE) Gold Medal. . He is most prominently a co-founder and design director of the London-based engineering practice AKT II, which he formed in 1996 (originally as Adams Kara Taylor) alongside fellow engineers Robin Adams and Hanif Kara.

Early life and education
Williamson-Taylor was born in 1959 in London to Nigerian parents. His family then moved to Nigeria in 1960, where he attended preschool in Lagos. They then moved to Sierra Leone, where he attended state school in Freetown and then in Kono (amidst the country’s diamond-conflict region), as a result of his father’s governmental work. Williamson-Taylor then returned to the UK in 1976 to study with Brunel Technical College, and then with Bradford University, where in 1983 he became one of the first two recipients of the university’s new master's degree in structural engineering. Throughout his further and higher education, Williamson-Taylor additionally worked variously as a chef, a site labourer, a hospitality doorman (bouncer), and an overnight factory worker, while also tutoring younger engineering students and mentoring local youth offenders.

Career
Williamson-Taylor initially worked for the firms Price & Myers and Anthony Hunt Associates. He then co-founded AKT II and has since overseen all of the practice’s work as the principal design director with responsibility for technical management. As of 2023, AKT II’s work has been recognised with more than 400 design awards, with four projects that have received the RIBA Stirling Prize

Notable projects

 * 1991 Sackler Galleries, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK
 * 1996 West India Quay Footbridge, London, UK
 * 2000 Rainforest House, Hanover Botanical Garden, Hanover, Germany
 * 2001 Library Building, London School of Economic s, London, UK
 * 2007 East Beach Café, Littlehampton, UK
 * 2010 Masdar Institute for Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE
 * 2010 UK Pavilion for Expo 2010 Shanghai, Shanghai, China
 * 2011 Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge, UK
 * 2012 Coca Cola Beatbox, London, UK
 * 2013 Heydar Aliyev Centre, Baku, Azerbaijan
 * 2015 South Bank Tower, London, UK
 * 2016 Villaggio Vista, Accra, Ghana
 * 2017 Bloomberg European Headquarters, London, UK
 * 2018 Generali Tower, Milan, Italy
 * 2019 Centre Building, London School of Economics, London, UK
 * 2019 Vessel, New York, US
 * 2022 Google Mountain View, California, US
 * 2022 HYLO, London, UK
 * (Ongoing) Google London, London, UK
 * (Ongoing) Central Bank of Iraq, Baghdad, Iraq
 * (Ongoing) King’s Cross regeneration, London, UK
 * (Ongoing) Zayed National Museum, Abu Dhabi, UAE
 * (Ongoing) Ummahat Al Shaykh resorts, Red Sea, KSA
 * (Ongoing) Smithfield Market regeneration, London, UK
 * (Ongoing) National Cathedral of Ghana, Accra, Ghana

Academia
Since 2011, Williamson-Taylor has taught with London’s Architectural Association School of Architecture (the AA), where he leads the engineering tutoring for the master-level architecture course within the institution’s avant-garde Design Research Laboratory department.

Awards, honours and recognitions
Williamson-Taylor is a Fellow of the Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE) and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). He is a trustee of the charity Open City, and a trustee of the international architecture school African Futures Institute (AFI). He has also served as a design review panellist for the London borough of Southwark and Newham.

Taekwondo
Williamson-Taylor holds a fifth-degree blackbelt in Taekwondo. While studying in Bradford, he helped to set up the university’s first Taekwondo club in 1979, which (at the time of the 1970s Bradford murders) became the largest martial arts club in both the university and town. Following his graduation, he then opened a martial arts club in the Wood Green area of North London in 1983 (in the wake of the 1981 Wood Green riots ), with the stipulation that young members must concurrently be working towards a university education if they wish to train. Later that same year, he also co-founded the Taekwondo Association of Great Britain, and then in 1993 was involved in founding the UK-based association Global Taekwondo International (GTI). Williamson-Taylor then became the GTI’s black-belt champion in the English/British Lightweight league for five years. He was also a member of the Southern England demonstration team, and he participated in the first International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF) world championship.

Family
Williamson-Taylor is married to an adoption-consultant social worker. He has four children.