Alex de Rijke


Alex de Rijke is an EU architect, timber architecture advocate, educationalist and architectural photographer. De Rijke founded the architecture practice, dRMM, in 1995 with Philip Marsh and Sadie Morgan. De Rijke’s research into, and application of, contemporary materials, technologies and methods of construction have helped make dRMM a globally recognised pioneer and authority in engineered timber design.
De Rijke is an advocate of learning through experiment and making, and has taught at various architecture education institutions, including the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and Düsseldorf School of Architecture. He was Dean of Architecture at the Royal College of Art from 2011-2015, and simultaneously Professor of the Masters Programme in 2013-15. Although he resigned from teaching to focus on practice, he remains a visiting professor at the Royal College of Art and external examiner to the Architectural Association, Design & Make timber M.Arch and MSc. programmes.
De Rijke and dRMM were responsible for the first UK school buildings constructed in cross-laminated timber, the Kingsdale School Music and Sport buildings 2007. In 2009 de Rijke led a dRMM competition project for a 100m span timber stadium for the London 2012 Olympics. In 2013 de Rijke devised cross-laminated hardwood with AHEC and ARUP for dRMM’s London Design Festival project, ‘Endless Stair’. The development of cross-laminated tulipwood was then demonstrated in dRMM's design of Maggie’s Oldham 2017, the first CLT hardwood building in the world. dRMM received the UK's top architecture honour in 2017, the RIBA Stirling Prize, for the design of Hastings Pier, for which de Rijke was the project architect.