ABOUT US

The LADG (thuh loss-ANN-ju-less duh-ZINE groop) designs new buildings for new kinds of families, gatherings, and uses. The LADG (thuh loss-ANN-ju-less duh-ZINE groop) designs new buildings for new kinds of families, gatherings, and uses. Like our namesake city, we take seriously the casual, the physical, and the ad hoc. For us, these are appealing qualities but also signs of intelligent strategy: buildings can engage with the scene alongside people in ways that are open, direct, and comprehensible. This is the kind of work we do. It makes familiar-seeming things new again so audiences can re-think what they expect from their buildings and cities. The projects may originate in LA, but the ideas apply everywhere.
The office was founded in 2004 by co-principals Claus Benjamin Freyinger and Andrew Holder and now has offices in Venice, CA and Cambridge, MA. We work at all scales, from furniture to multi-unit masterplans, and have completed projects in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, and the United Kingdom. We’ve received a number of awards, including 2017 and 2018 Progressive Architecture Awards, the 2014 League Prize from the Architectural League of New York, and multiple citations from the Los Angeles Chapter of the AIA.


Claus Benjamin Freyinger is co-Principal and co-founder of The LADG. Benjamin is a Guest Lecturer at the University of California Los Angeles, Department of Architecture and Urban Design. His design interests include the repurposing of architecture of the late Baroque for contemporary audiences, and building relationships between architecture and fine art practice. Prior to co-founding The LADG Benjamin held positions at Mones and Partner, Architects in Munich, Germany, and Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects and Planners in New York. He holds a B.A. in Art History from Boston College with a Minor in Fine Arts from the Ludwig Maximilian's University in Munich, Germany. Benjamin received his M. Arch from UCLA in 2005. Prior to working in the field of architecture he gained fine art curatorial experience working for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy.
Andrew Holder is co-Principal of the The LADG and Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. His research and design interests include the late Baroque architecture of 18th century Germany, the English picturesque, and the construction of architecture as an inanimate subject. Andrew’s recent work has been published in Young Architects 16, a+t, Log, Pidgin, Project, and RM 1000. He is a frequent lecturer and guest critic at institutions across the United States and has held teaching appointments at the University of Michigan, the University of Queensland, UCLA, SCI-Arc, and Otis College of Art and Design. Andrew is a Harry S. Truman Scholar, an Oberdick Fellow at the University of Michigan, and a Robert B. Pamplin Jr. Fellow at Lewis and Clark College. He received an M. Arch with distinction from UCLA and a B.A. in Political Science from Lewis and Clark College.