.jpg)
AB design studio is pleased to present Patrick Lun, Principal and Studio Director based in our Los Angeles studio!
Patrick, who joined AB design studio in the spring of 2023, is a talented Yale-educated architect and a natural leader, who enjoys coming together with his fellow architects around an idea. It’s not coincidental that when playing hockey, which Patrick has done all his life, he’s known for racking up assists.
“It’s been really satisfying,” Patrick says of his first year at AB. “My days are always jam-packed with stuff. I’m excited about where the firm is at, and the ability to have a direct impact as we grow. And I like the culture here: it’s less hierarchal, and there’s more work-life balance.”
[Image credit: Patrick and wife, Karen - courtesy of Patrick Lun]
Patrick and his wife Karen have just welcomed their first child, Lawson. In fact, that’s part of why Patrick came to AB design studio. While interviewing with AB design studio, Patrick had waited until having an offer in hand to share the news about starting a family.
“When I told Josh Blumer (Founder & Principal Architect at AB) the news of he remarked, “This news actually makes us even more interested in you! People with significant life responsibilities have a compelling need to be more intentional and productive when they're in the studio, so they can maintain a healthy and focused work-life balance,’” Patrick recalls. “That really sealed it for me.”
Michigan Roots
Patrick grew up in Grand Rapids, near the western shore of Lake Michigan. When his family would travel to larger metropolises, like Detroit to visit relatives or Chicago on vacation, “I got a taste of what a bigger city felt like,” he remembers, “a sense of like, ‘Oh, there's a lot more to what's going on in this country. I need to get out and go do some other things.’”
[Image credit: Patrick and his family - courtesy of Patrick Lun]
Patrick comes from a family of hockey players. A younger brother played professionally, and Patrick played on several youth travel-hockey teams. Yet as it became clearer that academics were his strong-suit and a ticket out, Patrick buckled down, hoping to gain admission to a prestigious Ivy League school. He fell a little short at first, but luckily one of the nation’s most highly-ranked state schools, the University of Michigan, was in his back yard, and offered an academic scholarship.
“I had a really good experience there, and I still bleed maize and blue,” he says, citing the Michigan Wolverines’ school colors, “but it also gave me a little bit of a chip on my shoulder. I knew that I was just going to push myself through undergrad to get into a high-level graduate school, even if I had to sacrifice my social life: just dead-focused on architecture. I really honed a passion for it, doing all-nighters and things like that.” Patrick was an Angell Scholar Award Recipient at Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture.
Leader of Teams
After his 2006 Michigan graduation, Patrick was accepted to Yale University’s School of Architecture master’s program. There he was exposed to new ideas and approaches like digital fabrication, advanced drawing techniques and radical architectural theory. Despite being a self-described introvert, Patrick thrived as part of student teams. At Yale, all first-year architecture grad students are required to build a house for the local community, forming design teams competing to become the project that gets built. Patrick’s team was the winner. Another independent study project he worked on was even included in a 2011 book published by the Yale School of Architecture called Composites, Surfaces, and Software: High Performance Architecture.
[Image credit: Charybdis sculpture sketches. Installation featured in Composites, Surfaces, and Software: High Performance Architecture]
“I was often the guy in the middle, navigating group dynamics so we could as a team work together,” he explains. “That carried over to my professional career. I definitely prefer working together to solve problems. Playing hockey, I always got more assists than I did goals. I was always better at setting people up. I realized, ‘I'm not going to be the star guy on the team, but I can be the playmaker. I can get people in positions where they can do really well.’”
L.A. Story
Entering a difficult job market in 2009 amidst the Great Recession, Patrick accepted a friend’s invitation to move to Los Angeles. “I just decided to go have some fun in the sun, and see where that gets me.” Not long after arriving in California, it was through that same friend that Patrick met his future wife, Karen, at a housewarming party.
Patrick also got a job at an acclaimed Los Angeles architecture firm, Marmol Radziner. He worked on 30 different house-design projects his first three years at the firm. “Many of them didn’t get built, but the ones that did, you're talking about great detailing: the way the expansion joint in the concrete aligns with the wall reveal, which aligns with the center line of a door or a row of lights,” he says. “To reduce a space or a house down to three or four lines that all connect takes a lot of work on the front end. I really enjoyed that process.”
[Image credit: Moreno Residence, Santa Monica, CA - Marmol Radziner]
At Marmol Patrick also got involved with an unexpected side project: designing for dogs. After designing a custom doghouse as part of a single-family house, he saw an entrepreneurial opportunity, and partnered on the creation of a design company called Momant. “The goal was to create a product that affluent dog owners could have in their living room in lieu of the typical metal crates that people usually use to crate their dogs,” he explains.
[Image credit above: M-Rad Headquarters, Los Angeles, CA - M-Rad]
In 2016 Patrick became managing principal at another multifaceted L.A. architecture and design firm, M-Rad, Inc., known for a holistic approach including architecture, real estate development, product design, fabrication and branding. Over four years at M-Rad, Patrick designed several multi-million-dollar homes, multifamily and hospitality projects, and even the firm’s new studio. He also delved into real estate consultation, assessing sites’ business potential based on code analysis and programmatic options. “So now with Josh and Clay, I'm doing a lot of this, managing teams to help build stuff in the Funk Zone or other places,” Patrick says, “thinking beyond the buildings themselves to a district scale.”
Returning to Marmol Radziner in 2020, Patrick saw several high-end houses designed, as well as commercial show rooms and homes from the ground up.
[Image credit: Ascaya, Model Spec House, Henderson, NV - Marmol Radziner]
Hockey and Home
Patrick remains an enthusiastic hockey player; at least before the baby was born, he was playing three nights a week. “That's like my therapy,” he says, “just exerting myself physically as much as possible and focusing only on the moment. There’s a lot of noise going on all the time, and if I can just tune all that out for a little while, that really helps.”
Quiet nights at home also recharge Patrick’s batteries—that and the chance to let his artistic side come out. “I'll put on something I've probably already seen on the TV, nice glass of wine, and I just draw,” he says. “"I don't draw anything particular. It's more of a meditative practice, to work on representation and shading: just aimless creation.”
[Image credit: selection of personal sketches - Patrick Lun]
Patrick and Karen have lived in a succession of locales: downtown, Culver City, and now Torrance. “We're exploring a lot of the South Bay, trying to get to know that area better,” Patrick adds. “But we still know we're not going to be there permanently. We have plans to move maybe somewhere closer to the water. I really like Santa Barbara. So for me, the connection to the city has always been about getting to know all of the different parts, and enjoying what you can in that.”
AB design studio is proud and excited to have Patrick as a member of our team, racking up assists as we continue to grow our Los Angeles studio.
Patrick is backed up by the support of our talented and experienced architecture, interior design and urban planning team of professionals. Our 30 person staff is well-equipped to tackle a multitude of signature design driven projects of all sizes and typology. Our team develops well-rounded and thoughtful solutions to today's greatest design challenges. We deliver by leveraging the talent of awesome people, like Patrick, who deliver our proven process each day; we deliver using a simple formula - LISTEN | STRATEGIZE | CREATE | DELIVER.
AB design studio, We produce signature designs for those who want more than just a building!
