“You can design in so many different ways,” says Thomas Robinson, Founding Principal at Los Angeles- and Portland, Oregon-based firm LEVER Architecture.

“If you liken it to cooking, for instance, you can have sweet and sour flavours; the key is to look at the engine behind what you’re doing and the experience you want people to have that holds the entire dish together.”

Thomas and his team are working hard to clarify the experiences that clients and occupants want to have in LEVER’s spaces by centring engagement as a critical component of their design process. “We see engagement and innovation as tools for design and great architecture,” he says. “A key area of interest for us is engaging with communities that have not typically been part of the design process, and we see those new perspectives as tools that push the design further, enabling us to engage authentically, while also understanding that the project, in the end, needs to stand on its own as something functional and beautiful. The added dimension of true engagement creates better buildings but also provides a place of connection. Using this ethic as our starting point, as opposed to form, helps establish common ground that we can then use to test our design.”

LEVER recently put this to the test in a competition led by Dovetail Design Strategists to design the campus unification and expansion of the Portland Museum of Art in Maine. “We entered the competition as part of a goal we set to start to work more nationally and internationally. There were about 200 entries globally, and we were selected as the winners after a two-stage competition. This project touches on so many aspects of engagement; we partnered with Openbox and Akomawt Educational Initiative to guide an inclusive, culturally responsive, statewide engagement process with the local community, including its indigenous population. Our goal is to create a museum that genuinely reflects the diverse people of the region, allowing them to see themselves and their cultures represented in the new design.”

When Teulo last caught up with Thomas in 2022, the practice was leading the charge in the US mass timber space, an area of focus that LEVER has expanded significantly over the last few years. “In 2023 we performed a 10-story mass timber high-rise test on the largest outdoor shake table in the world in San Diego,” he says. “In collaboration with a consortium of universities and manufacturers, we were able to demonstrate how this building could be hit by multiple earthquakes with no damage. It was incredible to see that test finally happen after nearly seven years of collaboration.

“When we first started testing high-rise timber, we used testing labs across the country, but we’ve now had the opportunity to build some ourselves, with one in Portland for the University of Oregon focusing on acoustics and one at Oregon State University focusing on fire. These facilities will allow people to test the next generation of building products. We’re also building one of the largest cross-laminated timber (CLT) manufacturing facilities in the US, which will enable us to manufacture CLT on a very large scale. We have this established level of innovation; it’s now time to think about how we can go bigger. It’s not just one-off buildings, but a whole international supply chain. It’s mass timber 2.0.”

Thomas is excited to see mass timber becoming increasingly visible in large-scale projects like Portland International Airport. “The terminal project by ZGF Architects is phenomenal and includes timber suppliers who we’ve worked with for many years. It was inspiring to see the Port of Portland try out new ways to connect more sustainable and regeneratively sourced materials. Major civic projects like this one showcase the importance of materials and how much those selections really matter.”

As he looks to the future, Thomas is excited to continue growing both the practice and its capability. “We are 15 years old now, and our goal as a firm is to have a wider regenerative impact and bring our message to a wider audience. We want to demonstrate that engagement and innovation are transformational tools for great architecture that can happen anywhere. You just have to look at the landscape and culture as part of the solution. I’m excited to find opportunities for more work beyond the West Coast of the US; we’re already working in Maine, and we’ve been invited to do some international competitions. I’m excited to see what happens there and where it leads. On a personal level, I’d love to come back to New Zealand and enjoy some time outside of work and establish links with new communities.”

Ultimately, Thomas hopes to inspire others to think of architecture as regenerative, as opposed to simply sustainable. “In a way, that approach helps us to make up for the fact that building is and has been a highly extractive endeavour. As a profession we have to start thinking of small ways that we can make more regenerative decisions relative to our relationship to landscape and climate. Materials matter - where they come from, how they’re produced, who puts them together - and they are connected to the major issues that we face globally, including housing, economic equity, and climate change. Picking a particular material isn’t going to save the world, but millions of people doing the right thing will have an impact. These seemingly small choices ripple across our culture, and we should pay close attention to the currents they create.”

To learn more and connect with Thomas, visit LEVER at https://leverarchitecture.com/.