The Business Of Design

Christine Hau, co-founder and executive director of lead8, loves sharing the power of great design for the benefit of cities and communities.

- Stephen Crowe

When common interest and ambition intersect, the outcome can sometimes reach far beyond any expectations. So it was when eight friends and colleagues had a bright idea back in 2014 to start their own business and combine their varied areas of expertise. Their idea was simple – to create the freedom to work on projects together, expressing their own visions in design, commercial opportunities, and community space.

From those early meetings in 2014 Lead8 was born, and today boasts more than 250 staff in offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and London. It’s a band of design specialists and multi-disciplined professionals ready to transform the built environment – something they are already doing, with more than 260 live projects around the world.

The name Lead8 is derived from ‘living environments architecture design’, says Co-Founder and Executive Director Christine Hau, and is a succinct summation of its priorities. Lead8’s cross-pollinating expertise, under latest Co-Founders and Executive Directors Christine Hau, Claude Touikan, David Buffonge, Meeta Patel, and Simon Chua, has led to its involvement in high-profile projects in more than 40 cities around the world.

Lead8 takes once traditional utilitarian projects such as airports and shopping malls and transforms them into vibrant experience-led, mixed-use, transit-oriented destinations for millions of people.