Lord Aeck Sargent

Lord Aeck Sargent Planning & Design is an Atlanta architecture practice with six offices, covering higher education, science and laboratory buildings, historic preservation, planning and landscape architecture. The firm is currently architect on the Georgia State Capitol restoration and the adjoining legislative office building, a $392 million program that pairs structural, life-safety and HVAC work on the 1889 Capitol with a new eight-story, 260,000-square-foot building and a 500-space parking deck. Uzun+Case is the structural engineer on that job. The preservation group is a distinct part of the practice rather than an add-on, which is why the firm shows up on statehouse and campus work where existing fabric drives the schedule. Lord Aeck Sargent was acquired by Katerra in 2018 and returned to independent ownership by its principals and directors in July 2021, after Katerra’s collapse.

The practice sums itself up in one line that is more useful than most: an architecture and design firm with a history of creating environments people want to use and preserve.

That second verb is the point. Preservation is not a service line bolted onto a general practice here; it sits inside the way the firm describes its own purpose, which is why the studio turns up on statehouse restorations, campus rehabilitations and historic building conversions rather than only on new construction. The firm says it thrives in the middle of complex projects requiring depth of experience and cross-discipline collaboration, and puts seventy years of responsive design behind that claim.

Two recent items from the firm’s own news feed show the range in practice. Georgia State University’s Student Success Center rehabilitation earned a design award from the Atlanta Urban Design Commission, which is a civic recognition for reworking an existing building rather than for a new one. At the other end of the spectrum, the University of Florida opened the Whitney Marine Research Center in St. Augustine, expanding marine science capacity on the Atlantic coast. A campus rehabilitation and a coastal research laboratory demand almost nothing in common technically, and the fact that both sit in the same portfolio is the argument for a multi-office practice with a science and laboratory group alongside a preservation group.

For owners weighing the firm on a project with existing fabric, the relevant question is usually whether the preservation expertise reaches the engineering conversation or stops at the finishes. On the Georgia Capitol program it clearly does: the scope pairs structural, life-safety and mechanical work on an 1889 building with new construction next door, which only works when the preservation and technical sides are the same team.