From high-profile companies to local businesses, Lawrence Griffin serves his clients as an experienced architectural designer. He developed his tireless work ethic at The University of Florida and Southern California Institute of Architecture and cultivated a deep commitment to design while developing an array of professional relationships in architecture. Lawrence established himself gaining years of experience in the architectural and digital design of Homes as well as University Buildings, Command and Control Centers, Curved and Complex Buildings, Retail Displays, Sets, Stages, and the Digital Fine Arts.
PHILOSOPHY
The design process should remain improvisational. A concept is a proposition to be tested, not a command that every later decision must obey. Site, structure, material, budget, and the rituals of the client may redirect the work. Improvisation is not the absence of order; it depends on an underlying structure and the ability to recognize when a departure strengthens the whole.
Honesty and clarity guide that process. The first task is to understand the client’s vision and needs, not to impose a predetermined one. Direct conversation, collaborative charrettes, and three-dimensional studies allow ideas to be tested while they can still evolve.
Style has a place in architecture, but it should be an active field of exploration rather than a fixed signature. A project may be quiet or iconic, familiar or unconventional. Its style should emerge from its conceptual foundation, local conditions, and the people for whom it is made.
Technical knowledge allows this exploration to become real. A complex form has meaning when its geometry, material, and method of assembly reinforce one another. Technology is not an architectural position by itself, but a means of extending what can be imagined, tested, and constructed.
A building also exists in time. Its success cannot be measured at completion alone, but by how well it continues to perform, adapt, and support daily life. A home should be specific enough that it could not have been designed in quite the same way for anyone else or anywhere else. It should look like where it is and who lives in it, not simply like the person who drew it.
Architecture is not a singular practice, but several interlocking ones. Landscape is inseparable from structure, ecology from building requirements, and form from the lives it is meant to support. Improving human relationships—between people, place, and the way they live—is the ultimate goal of any project.
Architecture begins with formal relationships. At times, those relationships produce an icon: a distinct object set against the landscape. At others, they allow a building to merge with the land and become part of a larger field. Architecture can belong through contrast or continuity. What matters is that the relationship is intentional.
Context is not a stylistic instruction. It is a condition to be interpreted.
Siting is therefore more than finding a location where a building fits. A house can frame a horizon, intensify a rock formation, establish a relationship with a forest edge, or create shelter within an exposed landscape. The land shapes the architecture, and the architecture changes how the land is perceived.
I think of architecture as a composition rather than a fixed image. Like music, it creates meaning through rhythm, repetition, variation, tension, pause, and release. A compressed passage can slow the body before a room opens toward light and landscape. A view can be offered immediately or withheld until it carries greater force. The strength of the composition lies in the relationships among its parts.
ABOUT:
120 Projects · 32 Residential · 64 Commercial + Institutional · 7 Furniture · 17 Set & Experiential
I am an architectural designer whose work has developed across architecture, fabrication, research, furniture, set design and custom residential design. That range has given me an unusual way of approaching a home: not simply as a building, but as a coordinated environment in which site, structure, interiors, materials and construction support one another.
I studied architecture at the University of Florida, where I became interested in musicality, culture, landscape and the improvisational nature of the design process. Research into modern Cuban architecture deepened my understanding of how climate, social life, movement and cultural identity can shape a building. I also served as a teaching assistant in undergraduate design studio and a graduate seminar on Cuban modernism.
I later continued my architectural education at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles. The school encouraged an unconventional and highly individual approach to architecture: developing a personal theory of design, exploring style as an evolving field and working at the edge of form, computation, materials and construction technology. As a teaching assistant in materials research, I continued investigating how experimental ideas could be translated into physical systems.
My professional work has moved between many scales and project types. I have contributed to university and healthcare buildings, historic renovations, hotels, museums, secure technical facilities, exhibition environments, theatrical installations, custom furniture, millwork and complex fabricated assemblies. Some projects required coordinating entire buildings; others demanded close attention to a single surface, stair, cabinet, object or connection. I have worked with conventional construction documents as well as projects composed of hundreds or thousands of uniquely shaped parts.
These experiences taught me that design and construction are not separate acts. A strong idea must eventually become geometry, structure, materials, tolerances, sequences and information that builders and fabricators can use. Technical knowledge does not diminish creativity; it allows an idea to be developed with greater freedom, clarity and precision.
After moving to Bend, I founded Griffin Home Design to bring these experiences together through custom residential work. Since then, I have designed new homes, additions, remodels, accessory dwellings and site-specific structures throughout Central Oregon and beyond. My work often involves complex sites, demanding design-review requirements, custom interiors, detailed cabinetry, advanced visualization and close coordination with builders and engineers.
Residential design is where the many parts of my background become most connected. A home is both deeply personal and technically complex. My role is to help clients clarify what they want, understand the opportunities and limitations of their project and develop a coherent design that can move from the first conversation through construction without losing its central idea.
I do not believe the designer’s identity should overwhelm the people or place for which a home is created. My goal is to bring curiosity, experience, honesty and technical rigor to the process—and to create work that is specific to its occupants, its landscape and the way it will ultimately be built.
Professional Experience
My work is informed by experience on more than 120 projects spanning custom residential design, higher education, healthcare, hospitality, historic preservation, themed environments, complex geometry, digital fabrication, furniture and set design.
These projects have allowed me to work across a wide range of scales—from furniture, cabinetry and individual building components to custom homes, university buildings, museums, hotels, stadiums and large public environments. My responsibilities have included early feasibility and programming, schematic design, design development, construction documents, visualization, code analysis, value engineering, fabrication documentation and construction administration.
This range of work has shaped the way I approach residential design today. I understand a home not only as a composition of rooms, but as an interrelated system of site, structure, enclosure, interiors, materials, fabrication and construction. I have worked through projects from initial concept to completed construction and have also participated in highly specialized teams where precision, coordination and buildability were essential.
Project Catalogue
120 projects across three principal areas
Residential — 32 projects
Custom homes, remodels, additions, guest houses, ADUs, barns and pergolas throughout Central Oregon and beyond. Roles have extended from feasibility and schematic design through construction documents and construction administration.
Commercial and Institutional — 64 projects
Experience includes higher education, research and medical facilities; commercial, retail and hospitality projects; historic preservation and adaptive reuse; themed and experiential environments; complex geometry and fabrication; and confidential technical facilities.
Furniture & Product Design — 7 projects
Custom furniture and functional objects developed through concept design, material selection, three-dimensional modeling, visualization, construction documentation, fabrication files and cost estimating. Projects include credenzas, armoires, desks, shelving, tables and site-specific seating.
Set, Exhibit, Experiential Design — 17 projects
Theatrical environments, broadcast sets, branded events, exhibit displays, temporary installations and independent formal investigations developed through concept, modeling, visualization, fabrication and installation. Experience includes spatial planning, stage and set design, signage, wayfinding, geometric and surface studies, CNC-fabricated components, lighting integration, life-safety coordination and production support.
Areas We Serve
Awbrey Butte · Awbrey Glen · Brasada Ranch · Black Butte Ranch · Broken Top · Caldera Springs · Camp Sherman · Crosswater · Deschutes River Ranch · Detroit Lake · Juniper Preserve / Pronghorn · La Pine · Madras · McKenzie River Corridor · Northwest Crossing · Pacific Cascade Heights · Powell Butte · Prineville · Ranch at the Canyons · Redmond · Sagewood · Sisters · Terrebonne · Tetherow · The Tree Farm · Tumalo · Westgate
Central Oregon and The Cascades
GHD explores design remotely and in person. Let’s explore what dreams you have for your future home in Central Oregon.
