A small practice, organized around daylight
Lumen is six people working from a former print works on Krusågade in Vesterbro. We take on four or five buildings a year — houses and cultural rooms — and stay with each one from the first walk of the site to the morning the doors open.
“We keep the studio at six so the person who drew your building is the person who answers the phone.”
How we work
Slow at the start, present at the end
Four or five buildings a year is the most we can draw properly, so the work is arranged around the two moments that decide whether a building is any good: the season before the first line, and the year after handover.
We watch the light before we draw a line
Every commission begins with time on site — early mornings, low winter afternoons, the hour when the neighbours come home. We measure and photograph until we know exactly where the daylight lands, then plan the building around those hours rather than around a floor plan we brought with us.
- A full year of sun angles surveyed before schematic design begins
- Shadow and neighbourhood study shared with you inside the first month
- Glazing sized to how each room is used, never to balance an elevation
We stay on the job until the doors open — and come back after
Drawings are only a promise. A principal is on site every week through construction, we price the details with your builder before they are set, and we return twelve months after you move in to read the meters and see what the building has learned about you.
- Weekly site visits by the principal who drew the project
- Details priced with your builder before they are fixed
- A one-year visit, with any adjustments drawn at no charge
- 2009
- Founded
- 41
- Buildings completed
- 6
- People in the studio
- 4–5
- Projects a year
In a former print works on Krusågade
Houses and cultural rooms
Deliberately, and for good
The most we can draw properly
The people
Six of us work here. These are the four you will see most.
There is no team assigned to you and no account manager between us. A principal is on every site visit, and the drawings you receive were made by the person sitting across the table at the first meeting.
Mira Okonjo
Principal
Started Lumen in 2009 after eleven years drawing cultural buildings in Oslo. Walks every site through at least three different hours of the day before the first sketch leaves the studio.
Tobias Lindhardt
Principal, technical
Runs detailing, envelope and the carbon budget, and keeps the DGNB paperwork honest. Reviews every drawing set before it goes out for pricing, and again before it goes to site.
Hana Petrov
Associate architect
Leads our house projects, which means she leads the long conversations about how a family actually moves through a Tuesday morning.
Wren Callahan
Model shop and materials
Builds each project in card and basswood before it is drawn in full, and keeps a material library you are welcome to put your hands on.
From our clients
“They spent a whole winter watching how the light crossed the dune before they drew anything, which felt slow at the time. We have been in the house two years now and rarely reach for a lamp before dinner.”
Tell us about the building you have in mind
Every project here starts the same way: an hour on the site, or at the long table in the studio. Bring drawings, photographs, a deed — or nothing but the idea.
Or call the studio at +45 33 15 01 48, weekdays 9–5 CET.