Work

Houses

2019

Los Angeles, CA

House in Los Angeles 5

2018

Los Angeles, CA

House in Los Angeles 4

2018

Los Angeles, CA

Van Ness Residence

2017

Los Angeles, CA

House in Los Angeles 3

2017

Los Angeles, CA

House in Los Angeles 2

2016

Los Angeles, CA

House in Los Angeles 1

2014

Los Angeles, CA

Armstrong Ave Residence

Retail

2017

Whistler, B.C.

Surefoot Whistler

2014

West Hollywood, CA

FrontRunners West Hollywood

2013

New York, NY

SuperRunners 14th Street

2012

Santa Monica, CA

Surefoot Santa Monica

2010

Beaver Creek, CO

Surefoot Beaver Creek

Restaurants

2019

Venice, CA

Ospi Restaurant

2019

Los Angeles, CA

Auld Fella

2018

Malibu, CA

Restaurant in Malibu

2017

Los Angeles, CA

Restaurant in Los Angeles

Landform Installations

2017

Coachella Valley, CA

Projects for Coachella

2016

Los Angeles, CA

The Kid Gets Out of the Picture at...

2016

Cambridge, MA

The Kid Gets Out of the Picture at...

2014

New York, NY

3 Books 9 Tchotchkes 3 Tables 2 Lumps

2014

Ann Arbor, MI

In the Garden Grows a Lump

Research Studio

2019

Cambridge, MA

Falling Studies 2

2019

New York, NY

MOMA PS1: A Fall, a Fall, an Arrest

2018

New York, NY

MOMA PS1: The Raw and the Cooked

2018

Velkio Tarnovo, Bulgaria

Projects for Veliko Tarnovo

2018

Cambridge, MA

Falling Studies 1

2017

Chicago, IL

A Cast of Things (Bulthaup)

2017

Chicago, IL

A Cast of Things (Osterhofen)

2017

Los Angeles, CA

Digital Casting Studies

2016

Los Angeles, CA

Studies for a House

2016

Los Angeles, CA

Tchotchkes

2014

Chicago, IL

Chicago Kiosk

2014

Los Angeles, CA

The Oyster Gourmet

2013

Ann Arbor, MI

48 Characters

Complete List of Projects +

News

06/03/2019

Essay "Whatever Happened to 'Whatever Happened to 'Whatever Happen to Total Design''" published in Harvard Design Magazine 47, along with a reprint of 2016 essay "Notes on More" and response by Sylvia Lavin

05/30/2019

Andrew Holder promoted to Associate Professor at the Harvard GSD

04/24/2019

Andrew Holder speaks to Mark Linder's seminar on imaging at the Syracuse University School of Architecture

04/13/2019

Andrew Holder offers a critical response to Princeton M. Arch II students' Too Fast / Too Slow installation of thesis work at pop-up gallery in New York

04/12/2019

Andrew Holder responds to Adam Nathaniel Furhman's lecture at the Harvard GSD

04/07/2019

Andrew Holder co-hosts "Family Dinner," a colloquium on queer design assembled by the Queers in Design at the Harvard GSD

02/08/2019

Andrew Holder co-hosts Practice Sessions Nos. 7 & 8 with Ellie Abrons and Adam Fure at the University of Michigan, featuring work by Laurel Broughton and Andres Jaque

12/1/2018

Andrew Holder speaks at the Cooper Union "Thesis Now" symposium

11/12/2018

Andrew Holder speaks to Preston Scott Cohen's Pro Seminar at the Harvard GSD

09/13/2018

Gallery opening for "Adjacencies" at the Yale School of Architecture

More +

The LADG

The LADG
(Los Angeles Design Group)

251 Hampton Drive
Venice, CA 90291
e: office@theladg.com
t: (323) 570-0487

We are a design firm that makes
strategic models for architecture.

We create ways of working and thinking to open new possibilities, construction methods, and aesthetics in highly constrained contemporary environments. New models are produced in our Research Studio, which undertakes blue-sky enquiry in technique and form for the built environment. The Studio draws on human talent and intellectual resources from the world's foremost universities.

Most of our clients commission buildings based on existing strategic models that have already been refined over time through research in the Studio. There are currently three. "Shell and Liner Retail" is a model developed for the fast-track design, fabrication, and installation of highly customized interiors for existing white-box tenant spaces. The system allows for aesthetic refinement and customization, taking advantage of CNC fabrication technologies and horizontal integration across multiple trades in order to drive down costs, speed up construction, and produce compelling interior organizations. "Niche Houses" rework the single-family home to allow California-style living on the infill lots typical of contemporary third-wave residential development in Los Angeles. "Massed and Gathered Restaurants" is a model currently in the final stages of development. It uses tectonic assemblies of minimally-altered stock materials to create diverse micro-environments within an ordered, functional service environment.

Institutions, museums, galleries, and patrons commission ideas directly from the Research Studio. These projects allow first glimpses into future-focused thinking that will ultimately influence the production of full-fledged architectures.

What is a strategic model for architecture? Our models combine:

A typology
A market segment
A geographic region
A formal mechanism
An aesthetic sensibility
An imagination of how to live

More about the Firm

Established in 2004, The Los Angeles Design Group (The LADG) is led by principals Claus Benjamin Freyinger and Andrew Holder, with offices in Venice, CA and Cambridge, MA. The founders see their work as contributing to a longer history of ideas, and draw on this history to craft unexpected solutions to conventional problems in architecture and design. The firm works at all scales, with completed projects in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, and the United Kingdom. Recent work includes a free-standing indoor-outdoor restaurant in Southern California and the installation of a contemporary picturesque garden in Loeb Library at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. The firm has received numerous professional honors and recognitions, 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.

More about Ben

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.

More about Andrew

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 & Clark College. He received an M. Arch with distinction from UCLA and a B.A. in Political Science from Lewis & Clark College.

Currently in the office

Hamza Hasan, Ashley Hickman, Remi McClain, Matt Moffitt, Samantha Radice, Xavier Ramirez, Jonathan Rieke, Morgan Starkey, Son Vu

Formerly in the office

Jesus Aguilar, Courtenay Bauer, Jacob Bruce, Lori Choi, Kevin Chong, Julian Daly, Ciro Dimson, Esra Durukan, Stella Dwifaradewi, Martin Fernandez, Jamie Goldsborough, Steven Guban, Taylor Halamka, David Harrop, Kenji Hattori-Forth, Michael Hayes, Troy Hillman, Hiroshi Holloway, Erin Horahan, Molly Hunker, Andrew Jennings, Yilip Kang, Andrew Kim, Jonathan Lain, Michael Loverich, Lauren Lynn, Brandon Maike, Dan Marty, Amanda McGough, Spencer McNeil, Jena Meeks, Matthew Moffit, Evan Orf, Stefano Passeri, Thomas Pompeani, Alexander Porter, See Hong Quek, Noah Rubin, Nick Safely, Jacob Sertich, Tyler Smith, Morgan Starkey, Antonio Torres, Darryl Weimer, Ryan Wilson, Siyuan Xi, Trenman Yau, Homayoun Zayouni, Snoweria Zhang