Our
story

A tale of two architects who believe in liberating human potential.

We’ve grown a lot since our beginnings with spacelab_ back in 2002 – say urbanlab_ co-founders Andrew Budgen and Nathan Lonsdale. For us, it’s all about being curious and challenging convention; constantly asking ourselves if there’s a better way. And almost 20 years later, that question is still the driving purpose behind urbanlab_ and each of the businesses within the lab_ collective.

What excited us then was the potential for how architecture could change people’s lives. And how we could build a dynamic creative culture around this ambition. Central to this, and radically different at the time, was how we used research to drive a more human-centred design approach to architecture. That through design we could improve people’s lives and help make the world a better place.

This remains our core purpose. And we live by these values. It’s more than just words, we’re doing it. With urbanlab_, our property developments are designed to serve everyone, from individuals to the communities they live in. To help us all get more out of life.

Today, we are creating far more opportunities to liberate human potential than we ever had in the past. Today, we are the lab_… a collective: free-thinkers; architects, designers, developers, engineers, social scientists, educators and technologists. Constantly experimenting and reshaping the boundaries so that we can live our lives better.

“Our property developments are designed to serve everyone, from individuals to the communities they live in. To help us all get more out of life.”

Andrew Budgen, Co-founder