CEO Middle East · Legacy Edition · July 2023
CEO Middle East Cover Story: A Legacy of Vision
In short
CEO Middle East gave its July 2023 Legacy Edition cover to Jesper Godsk. It is the most detailed published account of how LW came to exist and who runs it: the story starts in 1976, when Lars Waldenström took five flights from Sweden to Dubai for a business meeting and ended up designing custom-built palaces, and it traces the practice from three people in a small office behind the Dubai Zoo to 160. It also sets out, name by name, the leadership transition that Jimmy Hansen managed over the preceding eight years.
The projects this piece is about
July 2023 · 4 pages
The work in the piece
Bab Al Shams · The Dubai EDITION · Waldorf Astoria · Raffles, Shenzhen · Bushra by Buddha Bar · Chic Nonna · City Social · Blind Tiger
Where does the practice actually begin?
Two decades before it was founded. The article traces LW back to 1976 and Lars Waldenström’s journey from Sweden to Dubai in search of work for a Swedish company, a trip that led to commissions designing custom-built palaces and, eventually, to meeting Morten Hansen and Jesper Godsk. LW Design followed in 1999; Colin Doyle established LW Architecture in 2003, which is when the practice became able to deliver a building and its interior together.
Who was named as the next generation in 2023?
Four people: Adrian Battisby, Rachel Kidd, Pooja Shah-Mulani and Andrew Harms — a transition Godsk describes as carefully planned over eight years with Jimmy Hansen, Partner and CFO, at the helm of it. Battisby is described as Partner and Senior Director of Interior Design, heading the Hong Kong studio; Harms as Partner and Technical Design Director, which is the role his biography still describes and the reason the title on his entry reads as a progression.
We see ourselves and all of our colleagues as a family, who care for each other and enjoy creating fantastic projects together.
Jesper Godsk, in CEO Middle East, July 2023
What is the stated ambition?
Depth, not scale — the same position Godsk would give Sleeper eighteen months later, which is worth noting because it means the answer has been consistent across two independent interviews.
To continue to develop our legacy, LW’s priority is to get stronger, not bigger.
Jesper Godsk, in CEO Middle East, July 2023
What is the story behind Bab Al Shams?
A narrative of a lost princess and her souvenirs. That single line is the only published statement of the concept behind the Bab Al Shams re-envisioning, and it comes from this article rather than from anything on lw.co.
What this piece establishes
The printed article
The page above is a summary with attributed extracts, not a reproduction: the copyright in this article belongs to CEO Middle East. The scanned pages are served from this site so the printed object stays available to anyone who wants it.
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