Alison Brooks was born in Toronto, Canada in 1962. From 1981 to 1988 she studied Architecture at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture in Canada. She then worked with renowned Canadian practice A. J. Diamond & Partners. In 1989, she moved to London and joined Ron Arad Associates. There she became a partner in 1992 and worked with Ron Arad until she founded her own practice Alison Brooks Architects in 1996.

Alison Brooks Architects have established a reputation as perceptive specialists for architectonic and urban planning contexts. A site-specific and experimental approach is characteristic for their designs. Alison Brooks, principal and creative director of Alison Brooks Architects London, is recognised as one of the leading architects of her generation. Her practice'’s work has been founded on research into the specific social, cultural and physical context of each brief, interpreted to respond directly to client needs while placing it within a broader cultural framework. This approach has produced an architecture of distinct identity, sensitivity to its users and relevance to its place.

Named by the Sunday Times as one of Britain's 500 Most Influential people, Alison Brooks is the only UK architect to have won all three of the UK's most prestigious awards for architecture: the Stephen Lawrence Prize, the Manser Medal and the 2008 RIBA Stirling Prize. With early private houses published worldwide and featured in the Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary Architecture, the practice is now undertaking arts, education, residential and urban projects across the UK and Europe. Her largest civic commission to date is a full academic and residential Quadrangle for Exeter College, Oxford. Currently under construction, this will be the first Oxford College to be designed by a female architect. Recently she teaches Urban Design and Housing at the Architectural Association.

Alison Brooks was a member of government advisory panel the Farrell Review of Architecture and the Built Environment, is a CABE/Design Council National Design Review Chair and Trustee of Open-City. As a member of the RIBA Awards Group she was juror for the 2011 Stirling Prize, the 2010 Lubetkin Prize. Alison Brooks taught at the Architectural Association as Diploma Unit Master from 2008-2010, and served as External Examiner at the Universities of Bath and Lincoln. She is currently External Examiner at the Architectural Association and the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.