LA London Looks Ahead
More than forty years after its founding in 1981, Lees Associates is excited to be formally rebranding as LA London. The name change is accompanied by a refreshed website, but our core values, our world-class processes, and our readiness to embrace innovation remain unchanged.
LA London Managing Partner, Andrew Paulson, explains the inspiration behind the rebrand and reveals some of the team’s new projects and latest innovations.
Our Heritage
The firm’s founder, John Lees, led Lees Associates for its first 30 years, and Kathryn Archer and I took over as partners when he retired in 2011. Our new name continues to recognise our heritage while also democratising the brand: we are, proudly, very much a team, and a growing one at that.
The ‘London’ part of the name pays tribute to our beloved home – the practice has always been based right in the heart of this amazing city – as well as the fact that the majority of our projects are in central London. We are prime London specialists, although we also work throughout the UK and around the world!
As one of the longest-established premium architects in the capital, we’re also ideally placed to advise overseas clients looking to put down roots here.
How we’ve evolved
Since I joined the firm 21 years ago, we have experienced steady growth, consolidating our position as one of the leading architectural practices in London’s prime residential market.
Our work has always been high-end but as our reputation has grown, we have been appointed on some of the most prestigious properties in the world. We’ve worked on unique projects for some incredible clients and brands, including refurbishments at Harrods and Selfridges, a major extension of The Savoy, and the fit-outs of two of the four penthouses at the ultra-prime and renowned One Hyde Park.
Our current period of growth is an ideal opportunity to refresh our brand and celebrate our commitment to our base in central London.
Harrods, where LA London has completed several department refurbishments.
Continuous improvement
In keeping with our core value of ‘continuous improvement’, we constantly strive to refine our processes to deliver projects of the highest quality, working to the most competitive timelines and budgets. We relish these challenges, forever pushing boundaries to deliver exceptional results for our clients.
We’re keen innovators and we’re always looking for more accurate and efficient methods and tools to deliver our projects. As early adopters of Archicad, we were one of the first architectural firms to use BIM (building information modelling). We also set up an in-house surveying arm, LA Surveys, to counter inaccuracies we were finding on project surveys.
By prioritising open and transparent communication with our clients and partners, we’ve fostered strong, lasting relationships built on trust.
The floating stone staircase at Camp End Manor in Surrey
Visionary design
Not only do our clients and collaborators value our experience and technical knowledge, they also choose LA London for our vision and skill as designers.
We spend time listening to our clients to ensure we understand their needs fully, so that we can implement creative and attractive solutions.
Whether it’s an internal terrace that morphs into a private roof garden or the world’s first solid stone floating 270º staircase, our beautiful and innovative designs are testament to the imagination and expertise of our team.
“Our beautiful and innovative designs are testament to the imagination and expertise of our team.”
What’s next
We continue to seek out ways to improve our service offering to match our clients’ evolving needs.
In response to the very new challenges of 2022’s Building Safety Act, we have established an innovative and robust process to take on the new Principal Designer role for building regulations, particularly in relation to higher-risk buildings. This is already paying dividends on several projects, saving our clients avoidable time and expense throughout this new and largely untested process.
Our pipeline includes a number of exceptional projects across a variety of sectors in and around London. As always, client confidentiality prevents us from talking about these just yet, but watch this space!
We are proud to be entrusted with the design and delivery of such unique and valuable properties, and are excited to be growing our team to continue to exceed our clients’ expectations.