About Us
Born out of our parallel educational and professional backgrounds, we share an innovative design vision, architecture training, and passion for music, art, and hand-crafted sensibilities. We believe our best work comes from studying time and place, intent and culture — ultimately creating spaces that offer unexpected playfulness and timeless charm.
Since founding OFFICE La in 2021, we have slowly grown our New Orleans office to engage new project types every year. Our work has expanded from an early focus on adapting historic buildings in New Orleans to include commercial and hospitality spaces, and freestanding homes in other states and cities across the American South.
Our trademark is work that marries confidently voiced aesthetics with technical excellence, often alongside or in dialog with a historical fabric. Not all our work involves old buildings but everything we do has an awareness of the built environment and material culture in which it is situated. OFFICE La is an office built on built work.
Creativity is central to everything we do.
Core Services
Architecture & Building Design: We design ground-up residential, commercial, cultural, and mixed-use structures. Our portfolio covers custom single-family homes as well as large-scale developments and master planning.
Adaptive Reuse & Historic Restoration: A core specialty of our firm is marrying contemporary design with historic preservation. We regularly work with local historical fabric, managing complex restorations—such as breathing new life into shotgun houses and converting century-old industrial warehouses.
Interior Design: We create custom interior spaces for residential homes, commercial and hospitality spaces.
Lauren Hickman, RA, NCARB
Founding Partner
Lauren Hickman is a registered architect in multiple states and a founding partner of OFFICE La. She serves on the Facilities Committee for the New Orleans Career Center.
Lauren’s architecture education began at Tulane University and took an unexpected turn when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. She completed her B.Arch. and B.F.A. at the Rhode Island School of Design, then earned a Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia GSAPP. There, she explored the copy, the ironic, and the cliché as tools for questioning how architecture shapes cultural identity, ideas that still run through OFFICE La’s work today.
Before founding OFFICE La, Lauren worked at New Orleans firms OJT and BILD Design. She has lectured at Tulane and Georgia Tech and is a frequent guest critic at architecture schools.
Over her career, Lauren has helped clients realize cultural, institutional, hospitality, and residential projects. She is always looking for innovative and playful ways to reflect and inspire communities, especially those of the American South.
Robert Baddour
Partner
Robert Baddour is a partner at OFFICE La with 15 years of experience in architecture. He serves on the board of Docomomo Louisiana – Gulf South.
Robert came to New Orleans to study architecture at Tulane University just as Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf South. Being in the city during that formative recovery period rooted him firmly in New Orleans and, more than anything, shaped his understanding of what architecture should give back to communities.
He went on to earn both his Bachelor and Master of Architecture from Tulane, where he took part in the URBANbuild design-build program, helping revitalize New Orleans’ rich heritage.
Before joining OFFICE La, Robert worked at OJT for 14 years, and was a crucial part of growing the award-winning firm.
Robert traces his deep appreciation for the intersection of the built environment, cultural identity, and civic engagement to his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, and his adopted home of New Orleans.