Lawrence Group Architects

The legend continues┬áLawrence Group ArchitectsÔÇÖ dedication to ÔÇ£legendary customer serviceÔÇØ includes taking innovative approaches to solving client problems, as Keith Regan reports. Since the day it was founded in 1983, the Lawrence Group has been a growth-oriented architecture firm. Its founders had high hopes for the St. LouisÔÇôbased design shop; they wanted to create an international firm with a broad enough reach to touch a diversified range of architectural niches, says Dan Rosenthal, one of the firmÔÇÖs principals. ÔÇ£That vision has come true,ÔÇØ Rosenthal adds. Today, Lawrence Group has grown to 220 employees with offices in New York City, Philadelphia, Austin, Denver, Davidson, North Carolina, and, thanks to a merger completed in January with a local landscape design shop, Beijing, China. It has had years in which bookings grew by 40 percent or more, and while the growth has slowed somewhat due to a soft economy, the firmÔÇÖs diverse client baseÔÇöand the fact that nearly 90 percent of its work comes from repeat clientsÔÇöhas kept it growing through good times and bad. Through the growth, the firmÔÇÖs culture has remained intact, with architects and staff urged to strive for ÔÇ£legendary customer serviceÔÇØ in an environment that inspires individual growth and creativity. The firm has shown a decidedly entrepreneurial bent at times as well and is always willing to find creative ways to help clients be more successful, says Rosenthal. ÔÇ£The founding partners had really been visionaries when it came to growing the universe of services an architecture firm provides,ÔÇØ he says. Urban planning services were added, as was interior design. From that grew a demand from clients for assistance in choosing and sourcing furnishings, so the firm opened a furniture storeÔÇöknown as NicheÔÇöin downtown St. Louis that now sells to the general public as well as clients and was recently named the cityÔÇÖs top furniture store by a local publication. It also added construction management services and has taken on some project development roles, as when the firm took ownership of an old office building, converted it into condominiums and office space, and took some of the space for its own firmÔÇÖs housing group. Likewise, when green building began to arrive, Lawrence Group renovated its historically significant St. Louis headquarters building in a sustainable way, making it the first core-and-shell commercial office renovation project in the city to earn the US Green Building CouncilÔÇÖs award for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) with Silver project certification.Sustainability, creativity and the willingness to be entrepreneurial have all come together on one of the firmÔÇÖs recent endeavors, which involves designing homes built out of reused shipping containers. Lawrence Group has partnered with SG Blocks and other key suppliers on the venture, which is quickly gaining momentum, according to Rosenthal. ÔÇ£I think itÔÇÖd be conservative to say that in the past three days, weÔÇÖve had discussions that could generate over a million square feet of new housing of this type,ÔÇØ he adds. Model homes designed and built for the recent West Coast Green building expo and an Urban Land Institute gathering in Miami Beach, Florida, were both well received, with the exposure helping to spark new interest from designers, home builders and developers across the country.Lawrence Group has been at the forefront of the new approach, with a longtime client discovering the opportunity through Steve Armstrong, an employee who was once a US Navy Seabee. TV home improvement personality Bob Vila has featured the unique homes on his program.In 2006, Lawrence Group formed a design partnership with SG Blocks and took an equity stake in the firm. Rosenthal notes that some 300,000 shipping containers sit unused in storage facilities in the US alone, and they can be quickly modified for use in flexible housing settings. The partnership is designing 312 housing units for the 2010 Winter Olympics and has designed and is awaiting final financing for a 230-unit retirement community in Oceanside, California, where the complex was required to meet strict historic design guidelines. It also designed a seven-story housing project in New York City using the technology. Reusing shipping containers is not only a sustainable approach to building housing but can offer cost and time advantages as well. A single construction crane can install 15 containers per day, or about 4,800 square feet of weathered-in space every day. ÔÇ£If you multiply that by the number of cranes you can put on a site, the speed far exceeds conventional construction, and that translates into dollars saved,ÔÇØ Rosenthal says. To protect its early-adopter advantage in the space, Lawrence Group and SG Blocks have forged several key partnerships, working with ConGlobal, the largest owner of shipping container depots, and with railroad owners. ÔÇ£Shipping by rail uses less energy and costs about a third as much as moving them by truck over the road,ÔÇØ Rosenthal notes. Lawrence Group and SG Blocks have also partnered with Palm Harbor Homes to apply its expertise in pre-fabrication to the container homes. By stretching into new endeavors and remaining flexible on behalf of its clients, the firm has been able to weather the recent economic turbulence. The firm has a strong and growing healthcare practice that has helped pick up slack created by the housing slump. Rosenthal says the firm has a history of investing in technology that is also paying off now by enabling work to be shared among offices, with those in less busy areas able to contribute to projects in markets where work is more plentiful. ÔÇ£Our IT department has been instrumental in helping us manage projects where the client may be in California, the project may be in Houston, the project management run out of Austin, and the construction documents can be done in St. Louis,ÔÇØ he says. ÔÇ£WeÔÇÖre flexible enough to be able to bring the resources to bear for our clients wherever they are and whatever their needs.ÔÇØ┬á