Having been raised in the UK, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, Williamson-Taylor built his career in London, initially working for Price & Myers and for Anthony Hunt Associates, before ultimately co-founding Adams Kara Taylor—now AKT II—in 1996 where he puts design and technology at the forefront of engineering practice to find solutions for the planet’s challenges.
Williamson-Taylor has since overseen AKT II for over 25 years and has worked on numerous high-profile projects with architects and designers across over 50 countries.
Highlights of Williamson-Taylor’s portfolio of design authorship include the Stirling Prize-winning Bloomberg European Headquarters in London, the Google Headquarters ‘groundscraper’ in London, the inhabited Vessel sculpture in New York, the masterplanned Google Mountain View campus in California, the demountable Seed Cathedral for Expo 2010 Shanghai in China, the eco-friendly Ummahat Al-Shaykh resorts in the Red Sea, the Masdar science city in Abu Dhabi, and the monumental National Cathedral development in Ghana. Albert’s portfolio also includes several landmark towers such as the South Bank Tower and Hylo redevelopments in London, the Central Bank of Iraq in Baghdad, and the Villaggio Vista residential development in Ghana’s capital city of Accra.
In addition to his professional practice, Williamson-Taylor has taught with London’s Architectural Association School of Architecture (the AA) since 2011; he leads the technical tutoring for the master-level architecture course within the institution’s avant-garde Design Research Laboratory (DRL) department. He has also served as a design-review panelist for the London Borough of Southwark and the London Borough of Newham. Williamson-Taylor is a fellow of the Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE) and an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
In 2023, Williamson-Taylor was the first Black Engineer to be awarded the IStructE Gold Medal Award—the Institution’s highest individual honor—in recognition of his outstanding contribution to structural engineering and to society. He also leads AKT II’s work in encouraging young people from ethnic minorities into STEM careers.
