ABOUT
Founded in 2003 by Charlie Lazor, Lazor/Office is a dynamic design practice committed to producing spaces that enhance our lives. We place primacy on place-making and developing sensitive, integrated responses to the sites we work on. The synthesis of form, material, and site is the constant focus of our endeavors, from research-driven investigations to realized projects. Interdisciplinary in nature, Lazor/Office has resisted becoming specialized in any particular aspect of design. The office handles a range of residential, commercial, and theoretical projects, with a scope that varies from furniture to architecture to building systems.
We seek design directives from bold clients and beautiful landscapes. Collaboration is essential to our relationships. Together we focus our experience, expertise and imaginations to achieve projects that surprise and delight.
some thoughts about architecture
“Who We Are & What We Do”
We are dreamers and pragmatists, idealists and realists, thinkers and doers, makers and believers. These traits are essential to the design of architecture. We like constraints and we like freedom. Our work relies on space to expand ideas and reasons to contract them.
We listen. We want to make spaces that enhance our ability to work, learn, and live together. Clients are part of our team. By turning over rocks and suspending assumptions, together we start a dialogue. From dialogue emerges a way of doing. A way of being. A way forward.
We develop spaces, relationships, adjacencies, orientations, openings, material moments. We put ideas to purpose. We seek logic: the rules that order space, site, climate, culture, history, imagery, proportion, budget, beauty and delight. Each project has its own logic and we seek to uncover it and distill it to an elegently simple conclusion.
We sketch. We make diagrams. We make physical models and digital models. We click with a mouse and draw with a pencil. We study all this; we iterate. We discover things. We share our discoveries with you, talk about it together to iteratively develop the design.
We love the sky and trees, we love water. We prefer to be outside. We love to hear birds and feel the breezer. We love light.
We love stone and steel and wood. Dead flat steel, wavy steel, perforated steel. Smooth concrete, impressed concrete. Thick felt, chain mail, patinated brass and zinc, leather. We love glass. A material that you can see through? Think about it!
We like buildings that are quiet, silent even. Buildings that do not announce themselves but rather reveal themselves slowly over time.
We believe architecture is felt more than it is seen. We believe buildings should frame nature, the world outside, and help us see it in a way that we didn't before.
We love what we do and we hope you do too.
CHARLIE LAZOR
Charlie Lazor is the founder, principal and design team leader at Lazor/Office. He is also a co-founder of Blu Dot furniture and designer of the FlatPak House system.
Lazor/Office has completed work across the United States and Canada, primarily on the East and West Coasts and the Upper Midwest. The practice pursues a diverse array of programs and building types with a focus on residential design, investigating design as a process of making synthesized with site, program and local culture. The office design philosophy places primacy on “place-making” or developing a sensitive, integrated architectural response to the design challenges we are given. Our primary focus is listening closely to the client to develop a design that reflects how they want to use spaces as well as an appropriate aesthetic sensibility. We tailor each project to the client, resulting in customized spaces that reflect the individuals using them and their unique environmental positioning.
Lazor/Office was selected for the Cooper Hewitt National Design Triennial in 2006 and Charlie was a finalist for RISD's Athena Award for emerging designers in 2005. The work of Lazor/Office has been exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; National Building Museum; Walker Art Center; Vancouver Art Gallery; and Yale School of Architecture.
Charlie is actively involved in academia, teaching and lecturing at the local and international level. Over the years, Charlie has been the Professor in Practice of Architecture and Cass Gilbert Chair at the University of Minnesota College of Design. In dialogue with his practice, his studios engage manufactured building systems. Charlie has also taught at the University of Michigan as the Max Fish Visiting Chair and at the University of Arizona. He has been an invited juror at schools including Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of California at Berkeley, and lectured extensively on the firm’s work at institutions including Harvard, Yale, Northeastern, and RISD.
The work of Lazor/Office has been published in Dwell, The New York Times, Newsweek, and Time as well as in books published by Taschen, Rizzoli, DAAD, and Phaidon. Lazor/Office was chosen for the Cooper Hewitt National Design Triennial in 2006, and Charlie was a finalist for RISD's Athena Award for emerging designers in 2005. The firm's work has been exhibited at venues including The Museum of Modern Art; Centre Pompidou; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; National Building Museum; Walker Art Center; Vancouver Art Gallery; and Yale School of Architecture.
Charlie spends his free time fly fishing, playing ice hockey, and hammocking.
Brent Holdman
Brent Holdman is a Minneapolis-based architect who brings over twenty years of experience to Lazor Office. His diverse architectural background has led him to work on a wide range of projects, including multifamily developments, private residences, landscape design, and real estate developments.
Prior to working as an independent and consulting architect, Brent worked as a designer and project manager for several internationally recognized architecture and landscape architecture firms, including VJAA and Coen+Partners. He has completed numerous award-winning projects as a design team member at firms including Michael Maltzan (Los Angeles), Studio Gang, Brininstool + Lynch (Chicago), DIRT (Charlottesville), Grimshaw, SPAN (New York City), and Moshe Safdie (Boston).
As a licensed architect, Brent now works collaboratively as a design team member with architecture firms and design studios across the country. Brent has been a PHIUS Certified Passive House Consultant for nine years and is a member of the Passivehouse Alliance US, dedicated to highly efficient net zero building envelope design and technology. Brent has worked with Lazor/Office since 2020. Brent earned his Bachelor’s of Architecture from North Dakota State University.
Brent is a retired punk guitarist and now plucks pop songs on a classical guitar for the entertainment of his family. He’s a fly fisherman and avid fly tier.
BENJAMIN OLSEN
Benjamin Olsen is a designer at Lazor/Office. He holds a Master of Architecture from Yale School of Architecture and a Bachelor or Arts from St. Olaf College.
In addition to exciting design work with L/O, Ben co-leads Office Hughes Olsen (OHO), a practice committed to architecturally-considered projects large and small. OHO’s Two-Level Infill House won AIA-Minnesota’s 2022 Affordable Housing Design Award, the first single family home to be recognized in the history of the award. His residential work with OHO focuses on designing the next generation of attainable housing.
In addition to working as an architectural designer, Ben teaches an introduction to architectural drawing and design course at St. Olaf College. He is also an active stage designer with credits at Theater Latté Da, Artistry MN, and Chicago Opera Theater. Upcoming work includes set designs for the world premier of Twelve Angry Men: A New Musical at Asolo Repertory Theater.
In his spare time, Ben enjoys painting, traveling, and playing with his Cocker Spaniel, Arden.
TYler Snell
Tyler Snell is a designer at Lazor/Office. Tyler brings experience in multi-family apartment house design including the use of modular pre-fabrication methods. His projects have not only ranged in function and type but have been designed for sites across the country.
In addition to his work with Lazor/Office, Tyler has a multi-disciplinary arts practice working in architecture, sculpture, and digital art, with a focus on spatial experiences that explore topics of growth, decay, and memory, along with other temporal issues.
He holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Minnesota. He is a recipient of the Thomas F. Ellerbe Scholarship and a Student Academic Excellence Award from University of Minnesota College of Design, as well as a Student Design Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects.
Outside of his work Tyler is an avid cook and baker, continuously exploring different cuisines and trying to master everything from handmade Japanese noodles to pumpkin pie, along with home brewing saison and other farmhouse beer styles.