Alex de Rijke is a founding Director of dRMM, having established the practice in 1995 with Philip Marsh and Sadie Morgan. He is a design champion at dRMM, responsible for the concept, construction and delivery of our timber projects. These include Sliding House, Kingsdale School, Charlton WorkStack, Tower of Love, Endless Stair, WoodBlock House, Maggie’s Oldham, and the Stirling Prize-winning Hastings Pier.

Alex conducts ongoing research into contemporary materials, technologies and methods of construction. Through his leadership, dRMM has become a recognised pioneer and authority on engineered timber design and construction, especially laminated timber structures.

de Rijke introduced softwood CLT (cross laminated timber), to the UK with dRMM’s groundbreaking work at Kingsdale School, London and Naked House, Oslo in 2006. Alex invented, in collaboration with AHEC and ARUP, the world’s first cross laminated hardwood timber for Endless Stair in 2013, dRMM’s London Design Festival installation at Tate Modern. dRMM’s Maggie’s cancer care centre in Oldham 2017 was the world’s first hardwood timber CLT building and explicitly demonstrates a synthesis of concept, material construction and user well-being; a project that reveals de Rijke’s ‘total design’ ethos in the integration of landscape, architecture, furniture and art.

Since 2001 de Rijke has been an outspoken critic of the global problem of embodied carbon-heavy materials and building methods that are the default of the construction industry. Through his championing of the need to build using timber and low carbon materials, dRMM were the first UK architecture practice to make public buildings in CLT and have since the 1990s consistently been able to innovate and improve sustainable design through real projects.

Prof de Rijke has always combined cutting-edge practice with education, always positioning learning through experiment and making. He was appointed as the first ever Professor of Timber Architecture at TU Delft in 2023 and has extensive teaching experience at various institutions including the Architectural Association, London. De Rijke was Dean of Architecture at the Royal College of Art and Professor of the Masters programme from 2011-2015, instigating a new culture of making and prototyping. Alex was External Examiner for Architectural Association/Hooke Park Design & Make Masters 2016-21.

With a longstanding parallel interest in photography, de Rijke has documented dRMM’s projects on an ongoing basis for publications and exhibitions, including the practice’s timber architecture exhibition, Forest of Fabrication 2019. De Rijke champions timber for the wider profession in the media through radio, TV appearances and features in multiple publications.

Alongside and often integrated with his architecture, de Rijke has designed and made many furniture pieces using (some) recycled plastics and (predominantly) wood. Key examples of his freestanding and fitted furniture are ‘Table; turned’ for the London Architecture Wishlist, and various works with artist Richard Woods.