STUDIO

LOT-EK is a team of architects, thinkers, and makers. They gather around their love of people and objects—all things made, unmade, seen, unseen, dismissed. LOT-EK upcycles. LOT-EK makes sustainable, soulful architecture through the transformation of industrial infrastructural objects and systems. They work with the ordinary.

LOT-EK’s projects range from artists’ installations with artists; through families’ houses families; through communities’ cultural projects, civic institutions, and museums. LOT-EK’s practice has developed work from their hometown of New York City around the world, from Australia, through China to South Africa.

LOT-EK’s team is a tight-knit group of designers who bring their diverse voices, sensibilities, and heritages to this common project. LOT-EK’s founding partners, Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, live and work in New York; grew up in Naples, Italy; teach at Columbia University’s GSAPP; and have been practicing together since 1993.

LOT-EK’s work has been recognized by awards and accolades, from the Architecture League’s Emerging Voices, to The New York American Institute of Architects (AIA) Honor Awards; and is featured in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. LOT-EK’s second monograph, in collaboration with Thomas de Monchaux and published by The Monacelli Press, is O+O: Objects + Operations.