LAVA Laboratory for Visionary Architecture

LAVA, the Laboratory for Visionary Architecture, is a global network practice that questions, explores, and innovates through architecture.

Leading Expo 2030 Riyadh’s concept master plan, LAVA pioneers a nature-led, intelligent urban future.

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Key themes

LAVA examines eight universal themes that serve as a lens into thought-provoking inquiries that reveal architecture’s potential to respond to spatial and societal complexities.

Creative energy thrives in connections and collaboration at the workplace of the future.

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Public spaces and buildings designed for dynamic interactions and close-knit communities.

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When explorative ideas animate architectural concepts, imaginations become agents of innovation.

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Architecture driven by technology, data, and AI revolutionizes both design and production.

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Reimagining healthy and intelligent urban landscapes for tomorrow’s expanding metropolises.

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When typologies and functions fuse, architecture forms multifaceted spaces beyond mixed-use.

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Holistic, architectural ecosystems that replenish and enhance the earth beyond sustainability.

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Private environments that supercharge health, happiness, comfort, and well-being through design.

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Featured Projects

Regenerative Design

Expo 2030 Riyadh

What if a World Expo could transcend the temporary to become a living framework for enduring urban life? For Expo 2030 Riyadh, LAVA envisions a lasting global village and a future-ready blueprint for the cities of tomorrow.

Cognitive Workscapes

KACST Innovation Tower

What if architectural form could facilitate communication? Inside a modern office tower in Riyadh, a series of stacked atria translates traditional vernacular to encourage serendipitous exchange.

Future Cities

Concentric Ripple City

Can the form of a ripple—dynamic, organic, and full of energy—transform the common car-centric, gridded city ever-expanding in a monotonous sprawl into a polycentric city for future intelligent and environmentally-conscious growth?

Regenerative Design

German Pavilion Expo 2025

Imagine a post-anthropocene future where the built environment supports a closed-loop, zero-waste system in which materials and resources constantly circulate and equitable societies prosper.

Featured Articles

Conversation

Future By Design

Can architecture shift from matter to metabolism? Caia Hagel traces LAVA’s origin and trajectory toward an adaptive and computation-driven planetary future.

Interview

Architecture for Complexity

How can AI and algorithmic design transform architecture into a dynamic system? Alisa Andrasek redefines the field as connective intelligence at a planetary scale.

OUR BOOK WHAT IF

What if architecture informed my scientific inquiry and imagination could redefine our understanding of the built world? Neither an archive nor a retrospective, this book asks speculative, thought-provoking questions about the future of our built environment.