About

VILAA – Vernacular, Interior and Landscape Adaptive Architecture – is an international award-winning architectural practice led by Lara Yegenoglu, specialising in radical design solutions that respond to cultural, social, and environmental challenges.

Working across rural and urban contexts within the fields of architecture, interior and landscape design, the studio approaches every project with sensitivity to site conditions, spatial qualities and the evolving needs of its users with a focus on adaptability, material intelligence, and the lived experience.

Specialising in adaptive design strategies that engage cultural, social, and environmental conditions in equal measure, our work explores how architecture can respond meaningfully to transformations in site, climate, and community. This includes passive environmental strategies, locally rooted spatial narratives, and user-focused interior systems that support demographic and cultural diversity. Through iterative analytical, conceptual, and physical processes, we aim to reframe how spaces are used, transformed, and perceived over time. We design for change and accommodate shifts in social behaviour, environmental pressures, and everyday life. The scale of the individual and their relationship to the Umwelt remains central to our work, shaping new models of function, inhabitation, use and interaction.

Inspired by vernacular methods and tactile material expression, our projects foreground sustainable construction, circularity, and a more tangible, embodied experience of space.

Engaging with projects across a wide range of scales and typologies, we work from concept through to construction, guided by our commitment to architecture as a socially and environmentally adaptive practice.

LARA YEGENOGLU is a registered architect in Germany. Prior to founding VILAA she has worked for several years at Serie Architects and WilkinsonEyre on major international projects of various building functions including the Singapore Court Towers, the Salpêtrière Bridge in Paris and the mix-use redevelopment of Battersea Power Station in London. These projects deepened her expertise in spatial strategies, construction and material, complex fit-out, high-end interiors, and sensitive refurbishment within historic and large-scale contexts. With climate change playing a bigger role in the building industry year by year, Lara developed a high interest in combining architecture with a sustainable approach. In addition to economic and ecological factors, her motivation as an architect equally derives from the social aspects of sustainability. Her approach is shaped by a commitment to adaptability, material intelligence, and the lived experience — always aiming to reframe how the built environment is used, transformed, and perceived over time, and to create sustainable, socially and environmentally responsive spaces across all scales. Her work has been exhibited and published in London and Miami. While leading her own architectural practice, she has also acted as an architectural consultant for WilkinsonEyre and Booth Welsh Engineering. She has taught at The Bartlett School of Architecture, Oxford Brookes University and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, where she was a Unit Master in Intermediate 14. Lara is currently leading the BA Architecture Concept Design & Building Typologies Course at the IU International University of Applied Sciences, is a BA Design Tutor at the i.sd Structure and Design at the Architecture Faculty of the University of Innsbruck and teaches at the Institute of Art and Design Research at the HM Munich University of Applied Sciences.

Awards:
Passive House Award Austria
Dennis Sharp Prize Commendation
Henry Florence Studentship Award
Technical Studies Award
Nicholas Pozner Prize Nomination