About
At Leben Design,
this isn’t just a house.
A home is where you’ll spend Thanksgiving, raise a family, connect with nature, mark your child’s height on the door jamb, and recover from your four hour long zoom call. It’s the place you’ll think of fondly while coming back from vacation. It can lift your mood and give you peace and comfort. At Leben Design we recognize the power of home.
The designs we offer are inspired by the fuss-free, clean lines of minimalism while also embracing the beauty of imperfection -- or wabi sabi. We hope to reinforce a direct association with the natural world and evoke a lifestyle in thoughtful dialogue with the environment. You’ll always find outdoor living spaces incorporated into our designs, along with large, operable windows to reinforce this connection. Our experience of the world is often considered only through visual means, but the simple act of opening the window during a rainstorm can transform a space from static to dynamic instantaneously. The sounds and smells connect us to nature in a way that our eyes cannot. We consider all the senses in our designs and we hope your experiences are richer for it.
I’m Kelly Mitchell and I founded Leben Design in 2021 with a passion to provide minimalist, high quality design at a fraction of the typical architectural cost.
Since graduating from Virginia Tech in 2008 with a Bachelor of Architecture, I’ve spent a large chunk of my career doing custom residential design. I am a licensed architect in Virginia and have worked closely with homeowners and builders from conceptual design through construction.
My approach to design is rooted in pragmatism. My father was a custom home builder for over 40 years and I spent summers in college working on his jobsites. Since then, as an architect I have years of on-site experience fielding construction questions and working closely with contractors. My husband and I even renovated our Richmond, Virginia home built in 1836, completing most of the work ourselves. We quickly developed the saying, “the third time’s the charm”. I have a deep respect for what it takes to construct a house. That acquired knowledge is the grounding force to all of my design work. It’s one thing to create a pretty picture and quite another to build it.
That’s where Leben Design hopes to serve you better.
We offer not only concise, detailed plans but we also allow you to experience the home through photo-realistic renderings. This visual imagery is meant to give you a sense of place and help you better understand what you’ll be getting at the end of construction. After all, this is not an insignificant purchase and it shouldn’t be treated as such.
By using one of our pre-designed house plans as a starting point, you can more quickly and economically get to a custom design that fits your family’s needs. Customizations can be as extensive or minimal as needed. We can help with kitchen layout changes, adding a first floor master bedroom, relocating the laundry room, or even creating ADA accessibility.
Leben Design is committed to being a partner not only during design, but also in the construction process. We stand by our house plans and that’s why we offer free construction clarifications. Call anytime and as often as needed. We’re here to help.