Amanda Levete Architects has been awarded the Exhibition Road expansion project at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, London. The practice’s precise 1,500 sq m composition will overlay an underground gallery for temporary exhibitions beneath an open public courtyard.

A statement from the firm explains: “This project is more than just a gallery, it's an opportunity to create a new public space for London – South Kensington's Drawing Room. It is a defining project for AL_A because it expresses the way we think; for the V&A we have made visible the invisible.”

The Museum is looking to complete the project by 2015 following the cancellation of Daniel Libeskind’s highly controversial design in 2004. Splitting the critics, Libeskind’s concept was repeatedly compared to a stack of cardboard boxes. Levete’s sleeker, more refined composition is likely to cost £35m half of which has already been donated by an anonymous benefactor.