AP Valletta

AP Valletta is an architecture practice that has worked on Malta's historic buildings and public spaces since 1991. Its team is multinational and multidisciplinary, bringing architects together with engineers, researchers and valuers. The studio is at 4 Sappers Street in the heart of Valletta, in a historic building the practice restored itself.

The firm specialises in sustainable heritage, which means that old buildings are conserved and reused rather than replaced. On VisitMalta.co.uk it is one of the architects in Malta you can approach for a restoration, a new house or a larger urban scheme.

Who AP Valletta are

Since 1991 the practice has collected more than 75 awards and nominations. Recent news includes an AR Future Projects Award in April 2025, Naxxar House named a finalist for the 2025 World Architecture Festival, and a new phase of work at the museum of St John's Co-Cathedral. Written material for prospective clients includes a profile document, a 2025 capability statement and a manifesto sketch that sets out its direction under new leadership.

The vision is for architecture to be a maker of places, a container of meaning and a producer of stories. In practice, each commission is treated as a mix of ideas drawn from different specialisms, whether those of the architect, the engineer, the critic, the educator, the artist or the anthropologist. Architecture is seen as something that generates real life, not simply a backdrop to it.

What the practice offers

The range of services is wide. Architectural and interior design sit beside masterplanning and urban design, structural and civil engineering, restoration, feasibility studies, education, research and publishing. Property valuation is a further line: over the last ten years the practice has valued both movable and immovable property for varied building types, and it has advised clients on the worth of property portfolios.

Its work is grouped by type: culture and leisure, exhibition design, hospitality, infrastructure and industrial, mixed use, offices, residential, restoration and renovation, retail, and urban landscapes and waterfronts. For a UK buyer who has bought an old townhouse after reading our guide to relocating to Malta, the restoration and residential work is the most relevant, and it is useful to know that a valuation and a design can come from the same team.

Heritage projects in Valletta and beyond

Many of the projects are rooted in Valletta. The practice is working on the rehabilitation and extension of the museum at St John's Co-Cathedral, including an extension shaped like a reliquary to house a set of tapestries. It has been resident architect at the Manoel Theatre since 1996, and as associate architects to Renzo Piano Building Workshop it handled the regeneration of the city entrance, the Parliament building and the old opera house ruins, which became an open-air theatre. It also designed the twenty-storey panoramic Barrakka Lift beside the Upper Barrakka Gardens.

Other Valletta schemes include the restoration of an eighteenth-century palazzo in St Ursula Street, the Forni Stores on the cruise terminal waterfront, the Priory of Navarre, townhouse renovations and the conversion of Q-Bar in the Pinto Stores. Further afield are the Museum of Tools, Trades and Traditions in Palazzo de Piro, which you can find through our Mdina guide, and the Dock No. 1 proposal that links the waterfronts of the Three Cities with a continuous 2.5 km promenade. Anyone exploring the capital will find more background in our Valletta guide.

Houses, workplaces and research

AP Valletta also designs homes and workplaces. Villa Cantilena, Tarxien House, Naxxar House, Villa Castro and the Glasshouse at Villa Bologna show how limestone, wood and concrete can be balanced with older fabric. Commercial projects include the GO Technical Centre at Bulebel, the Melita Technical Centre, the Farsons Brewery, the HSBC contact centre in Swatar and offices for the law firm Ganado Advocates. Professional firms thinking about a Maltese base, such as those that work with CLA Malta, can see examples of the studio's office work.

Hospitality and leisure are covered as well. The practice worked on the insertion of the 1930s Phoenicia Hotel into the rehabilitation of the area between City Gate, the former bus terminus and the Floriana parade ground, and later designed a new spa wing whose concept draws on ancient Roman baths. Proposals include converting the Evans building into a hotel with an accessible urban landscape and exploring new uses for the Dragonara promontory, while the Dingli Garden Extension adds to a farmhouse on a panoramic hill. Work on libraries, sports clubs and a literature centre, Iċ-Ċentru Malti tal-Ktieb, shows how far the brief can stretch.

Research is part of the offer. The LIMAP project, funded by the FUSION R&I Research Excellence Programme, is led by the practice with a technical partner and the University of Malta and tackles the manual mapping of deterioration in the island's limestone. It also works on heritage building information modelling and on regeneration proposals such as Wied Dalam Park and the Qormi Valley. International work includes villas and a mosque proposal in Saudi Arabia, a school in Accra, a hilltop villa in Sicily, a museum in France and homes in London.

Exhibitions, public space and sustainability

The practice is also known for work that sits between architecture and culture. It designed the Malta Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, an installation bringing together thirteen artists and a selection of objects from national and private collections. It created Malta: Land of Sea at the BOZAR centre in Brussels, took part in the first designMT with an installation about the island's relationship with water, and produced Beyond the Bastions for MICAS, the national contemporary art museum. Many of these ideas end up shaping how visitors read the city when they follow our things to do in Malta.

Sustainability runs through its public-space proposals. The Gżira Pumping Station project restores a Grade 1 Neo-Gothic building about 130 years old while keeping its working use, the Qormi Valley proposal would restore and rewild a canal to let rainwater flow naturally, and the nature-based solutions study re-imagines open space at a secondary school in Hamrun. Smaller projects such as St Anthony House in Attard keep most of an existing structure to reduce cost and waste. For clients, that approach means a conversation about reusing what you already own before any demolition is considered.

Working with AP Valletta

The practice's own studio is a statement of how it works. Number 4 Sappers Street was renovated as part of the Four Sappers creative cluster, a deliberate grouping of creative businesses intended to stimulate regeneration, innovation and branding in Valletta, and the practice also renovated an abandoned residential block in the same cluster. The firm accepts applications from people who want to join the team.

The team includes specialists in architecture, engineering, valuation and research, and the practice keeps its own library of publications that present different aspects of its thinking. Industrial and infrastructure clients are served too, from a brewery to a telecoms technical centre. For a client, the first step is a conversation about the site, the building and what you hope to achieve, whether that is a family home, an office fit-out, a restoration under heritage rules or a valuation of existing property. Decisions about scope, timescale and fees are agreed with the practice directly. Use the VisitMalta.co.uk enquiry form on this page and we will pass your message to AP Valletta.