Expertise: Design & Technical Advisory
Expert strategic guidance and technical insight to improve your project outcomes
Architecture isn’t just about creating buildings – it's about shaping the environments we share, influencing how communities grow, and guiding the future of the built environment.
At LBY, we believe our role as architects extends beyond project delivery. We leverage our expertise to guide industry standards, inform strategic decisions, and support better design outcomes for clients and communities.
Drawing on extensive experience advising government bodies, local authorities, and major organisations, we offer technical insight and strategic design thinking. Through years of collaboration, we've developed an unmatched understanding of sector-specific challenges, opportunities, and innovations.
We’re committed to shaping spaces that are practical, adaptable, and inspiring. This drives us not just to create our own projects, but to positively influence the wider industry.
Education Advisory
Backed by decades of research and expertise, we’re uniquely positioned to provide technical guidance to government and local authorities on school and educational projects.
For over 20 years, we’ve delivered expert advisory services on government-led initiatives, including BSF, PSBP, Free Schools, University Technical Colleges, and SRP schools.
Our involvement covers the full project lifecycle, from initial site selection and feasibility through design development and project completion.
Strategic Guidance
Collectively, our team has advised on over 100 education projects, including Primary, Secondary, Technical Colleges, and SEND schools. Our detailed feasibility studies, accommodation schedules, curriculum analysis, and strategic guidance help shape educational environments that genuinely meet the evolving needs of learners and communities.
Community Project Briefing
We help local authorities turn ambitious community visions into viable projects by providing strategic briefing and robust design concepts, often becoming instrumental in securing funding and enabling further development.
Community Hubs
Our concept design work for Medway Council’s series of ‘Community Hubs’ across Rochester, Chatham, Rainham, Strood, and Gillingham has empowered the Authority to confidently progress its regeneration strategy.
Our schemes explored new-build options as well as adaptive re-use, notably transforming a former Debenhams store in Chatham. Each hub concept creatively integrates a public library, IT centre, flexible community spaces, fitness studios, health clinics, and community cafés.
Each hub concept creatively integrates a public library, IT centre, flexible community spaces, fitness studios, health clinics, and community cafés.
Local Authority and Government Design Guides
LBY regularly develops clear, practical design codes and guides for local and national authorities, influencing standards, shaping policy, and improving built outcomes.
Chatham Design Code
Our work for Medway Council’s urban design team involved creating a robust design code for Chatham’s town centre, testing and refining ideas for future building types, public spaces, and massing strategies to guide sustainable regeneration.
We've also played a critical role for the Department for Education, helping create detailed design standards and technical annexes for the DfE’s Standardisation programme – materials now directly informing future contractor frameworks and feasibility study requirements.
Major Project Design Review
Our practice regularly leads and participates in design review panels, helping to shape significant infrastructure and regeneration schemes across the UK. We believe in empowering clients, planners, and communities with the insight to understand, champion, and defend high-quality design decisions.
London Olympics Legacy
Our directors have played influential roles on panels for the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation, CABE, the Design Council, the Olympic Legacy Delivery Authority, and local authorities including Haringey and Oxford City Councils.
Tunnel Vision
Co-founder John Lyall, as a long-standing member and Chair of Design Council review panels, continues to influence nationally significant infrastructure projects such as the Lower Thames Crossing, the A303 Stonehenge Tunnel, and major reservoir schemes for Anglia Water and Thames Water.
John also provides strategic advice on high-profile housing estate renewals across London, guiding developers and councils towards sustainable regeneration solutions.
Teaching and Professional Examining
Supporting the next generation of architects isn’t just something we do, it’s integral to our practice. Our active involvement in architectural education keeps us at the forefront of industry developments and challenges, enriching our own knowledge and feeding back directly into the profession.
RIBA and beyond
Our team regularly teaches, examines, and contributes to architectural courses at institutions worldwide, helping the RIBA validate international courses. John Lyall, in particular, brings extensive experience as a professional examiner for UK universities, rigorously assessing final-stage architecture students preparing for professional qualification.
For LBY, this engagement represents more than just education – it’s our commitment to the profession’s future and to maintaining the highest standards of architectural practice.
For LBY, this engagement represents more than just education – it’s our commitment to the profession’s future and to maintaining the highest standards of architectural practice.
