Twenty + Change: LAAB architecture

Michel Lauzon founded Montreal-based LAAB just four years ago, but he did so with the knowledge of many years in practice. What made a lasting impression were the experiences and feedback of clients who often perceived architectural design as a haphazard, intuitive, and somewhat opaque process. This left them feeling insecure about capturing the full potential of their projects. With LAAB, Lauzon set out to “demystify” design: making it clearer, more precise, and more participatory for clients.

For him, design excellence is much more than a product of an architectural style or signature. Rather, it emerges from a diligent creative process of feasibility studies, applied research, and strategic thinking. He encourages his team not to “jump too quickly into design solutions.” This means that each project requires its own timeline to mature, steadily laying the strategic groundwork upstream. Once green-lighted, there is less risk, less stop-and-go, and less design rethinking in later stages.

Lauzon sees LAAB’s evidence-based approach as akin to urban design, in that it aims to consider as many parameters and competing interests as possible. Key to this is quantitative analysis. By using UX modelling, the studio begins by producing and working with data, which Lauzon says makes it easier for their clients to engage in the strategic design process.

For example, LAAB might model the entrance of a museum to gauge the fluidity of the space with existing and projected visitor numbers. In this case, a well-designed space would “take away the need for wayfinding.”

In the case of the new Terrebonne Campus of the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR), the developer asked LAAB to conduct a UX study of transit options and user occupation throughout the day. The aim was to test whether the number of parking spaces could be drastically reduced, making for a more compact and environmentally sustainable solution.

Offering strategic design and UX studies as a distinct service has, according to Lauzon, allowed LAAB to be more versatile within an architecture market that’s less open than it used to be, with fewer design-based competitions in Quebec and narrower selection processes.

The firm has blossomed since 2020, attracting a roster of A-list clients and an array of ambitious public and private commissions. Lauzon says that launching the firm during the Covid-19 pandemic has ensured that agility and adaptability were ingrained into the team’s DNA from the get-go.

Building on these capabilities, he is less concerned with building a portfolio in specific typologies or establishing a particular aesthetic than in ensuring his practice remains focused on delivering innovative and relevant design solutions in an ever-evolving architectural landscape.

This profile is part of our October 2024 feature story, Twenty + Change: New Perspectives. 

As appeared in the October 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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