The practice
What we do
We work on heritage and character homes. Listed buildings, houses that have been lived in for generations, places that already hold something worth keeping, in Switzerland, Tuscany, France and Devon.
The size of the work changes nothing about how we begin. Whether we are drawing a whole building, a single room, or simply being asked what we think, we listen to the place first, and we pay close attention to how it will make you feel.
There are four ways we usually work together.
ARCHITECTURE
From the first drawing to the last detail
An extension, a transformation, sometimes a new building where the place asks for one. We begin with the studies and we stay through the permits, the tender, and the site until it is finished.
The hardest part is almost never the new work, it is understanding what the existing building is really doing, and what it needs to keep in order to still feel like itself.
You will have the same person at the first visit and at the handover, and that person will know why every decision was taken, because they took them with you.
INTERIOR DESIGN
The rooms you live in every day
The plan, the materials, the joinery, the light, and all the people who make them, brought together so that the whole thing feels like one thought.
In a listed building this is often the entire project, because the outside cannot change and everything that matters happens inside.
It is also the most personal work we do. We ask how you wake in the morning, where you read, who comes to stay, and the plan follows from the answers rather than from a style.