The challenge of architecture is to make visible the unfolding experience of place. This web site marks a point in the growth and unfolding of our design practice.

At the core of LMN’s practice is a belief in the creative process of active, engaged dialogue. Through a dialectic process between architects, clients, consultants and the public, and supported by project-based research, knowledge is created. We base our design on insights made deeper and more meaningful through this collective approach. In support of this philosophy we organize our studio to facilitate an open exchange of ideas, allowing each project to be enriched by the perspectives and discoveries of other projects and building types in our office. The design and construction of civic buildings, university facilities, and mixed-use communities all take years to realize. Because they have such long gestation periods within our studio, there is time to share, overlay and transfer knowledge between projects as they take shape.

Designing for our time and our various built conditions starts with finding the right beginning; a fundamental starting place. By asking the right questions and providing direct and meaningful answers, we enter into a conversation that goes beyond design, in search of an architecture that fully engages its physical and cultural context. While situated in a particular place, each project also marks a certain point in history. We believe architecture must be contemporary and address our present conditions with a perspective on both historic influences and future impacts. Designing a new building or adding to an existing one leads to a definition of the moment, as well as the creation and limitation of future possibilities.

At LMN, we also look for beginnings in the essential events that will be experienced within the new facility. Users do not experience architecture directly, they experience events within the context of architecture. By focusing on these events, both the mundane and the profound, we allow form to emerge, and as it emerges, we continuously explore ways to use architecture to enrich the linkages between people, events, and place.

The enduring life of a building is the product of many forces. An architecture of place and experience that is meaningful over time will naturally create rich ambiguity even as it produces clarity. Architecture that creates a dialogue between the local and the global, between the specific and the universal leads to a building that becomes authentically embedded in its place. By inviting multiple readings architecture allows the viewer to become a creative partner in design.

All of the projects included in this web site occupy a special place in the public realm. As we collaborate in the studio and in setting down the ideas here, we are reminded that architecture means seeking out and resolving the disparate and even conflicting assumptions in the given program and in the cultural and physical context. By making the dialogue lively and relevant, the design solution becomes a part of a larger dialogue between the imagination and the reality of a place in time.