LEDA

Meet our team – Jonathan Lindh

 

We continue to work at home at LEDA, so I’m catching up with my colleagues (virtually of course!) to see how they are managing their work-life balance and finding out about their current projects.

Jonathan Lindh is our co-founding member, LEDA Director and Senior Architect. He is a valued and respected co-operative member, who leads the way with our vision and values, and whom it is a pleasure to work alongside. I caught up with him this week and asked him to tell me about Piel View House, a project he is working on, to create a new working base for sound art and new music organisation Full of Noises (FON).

“It is great to work with a small, successful sound art organisation, it really is a transformative project for FON and the community in Barrow. It has taken 5-6 years to get to this stage, and there is still a way to go. I’m working with Connie and Matt here at LEDA to retrofit the current building, and design a new extension to the old Victorian gothic revival building currently there, to create an arts base, small performance space and two residential rooms for artists. James is modelling the project in PHPP so we can optimise the energy performance” Jonathan explained, “it will enable them to continue creating events and festivals for the local community in a public space” (the building is located in a public park).

Jonathan is our only remaining founding co-operative member still working at LEDA, and I asked him to tell me how things have changed over the last 20 years since LEDA was formed. “Well, we were 3 people, from different backgrounds, who shared a vision to create Sustainable Buildings, and the co-operative structure just made sense to us. It was the nearest structure to what we were – three equal partners”, he explained. “We saw ourselves growing as a business, but we knew that as we expanded, we would need to manage the teams effectively, to continue to collaborate and support each other. I’m proud that we are all still dedicated to delivering high quality work, and always striving to achieve the best for our clients”.

Finally, we discussed the unavoidable – how Coronavirus has changed our lives and our business. Jonathan explained how being a workers Co-operative had demonstrated it had benefits in times of adversity.

“I think we are naturally more supportive of each other; our values have helped us work together to get through it” he told me. “In the future, I think we will be more adaptable and willing to make things work. But I’m not sure if we will ever go back to ‘normal’, we need to address the environmental issues. We do this by changing our ideas of how we design and construct buildings, for healthy people and a healthy planet”. LEDA has had this vision for 20 years, and it has never seemed more important.

Words by Louise