Chris Loyn set up practice in 1987 and founded Loyn + Co Architects in 1992 being at the time, one of the few architects in Wales to champion contemporary design. His first commission for a new dwelling was within a large garden of an existing semi-detached, Victorian house in Llanishen, Cardiff. In a rare twist of fate, although the new owners at the time were unaware, this house had been Chris' family home for the first eighteen years of his life. With the sound benefit of a thorough understanding of the plot, the resulting house responded very successfully to its setting, subsequently receiving the Lord Mayor's Civic Award in 1992 for the 'Best Example of an Individual House or Extension'.