Lumen House

Lumen Capital came to us with a site, a headcount, and a date — no drawings. Under a single design-and-build contract, our in-house design team developed the brief into a four-storey headquarters while early works began on site, compressing a conventional two-stage programme by roughly five months.

Because designer and builder sat in the same meetings, decisions that usually take weeks of correspondence were made in the room: the structural grid was set around the client's open-plan requirement, and the services strategy was priced as it was drawn. The contract sum agreed at stage two was the sum paid at final account.

Lumen House was occupied nineteen months after the contract was signed. The client got the building that was drawn, at the price that was quoted, on the date that was promised — which is the entire argument for design and build, delivered.