Coombe House
2024Somerset · Private house
A house on a steep north-facing plot, stepped into the slope so every room reaches south light. Airtightness came in at 0.4 ACH.
RIBA Chartered Practice
Buildings that suit the people who use them and the place they stand in
A small practice working on houses, retrofits and the occasional public building across the South West.
First conversation is free and usually the most useful one.
Selected projects
The work, which is the only real argument
A small practice with a long back catalogue. These are recent, and we are happy to put you in touch with any of the clients.
The Malt Store
2023Bristol · Grade II retrofit
A listed store turned into four flats. Original roof structure kept and exposed; heating demand cut by roughly seventy per cent.
Wheal Rose Pavilion
2023Cornwall · Community
A single-storey hall for a village that had been fundraising for eleven years. Delivered inside the budget they had raised.
Tanner's Yard
2022Bath · Mixed use
Workshops below, six flats above, on a plot everyone had written off as too tight to build on.
16
Years practising
94
Projects completed
7
Awards
31%
Repeat clients
What we do
Six kinds of work, and we turn down what does not fit
Private houses
New build and substantial alteration, from first sketch to handover. We stay involved on site, which is where drawings meet reality.
Retrofit & conservation
Listed and historic fabric brought up to modern comfort without stripping out what made it worth keeping.
Low-energy design
Passivhaus and EnerPHit, modelled properly rather than assumed. We publish the numbers we predicted alongside the ones we measured.
Feasibility & planning
Whether a site can carry what you want, and what the local authority is likely to accept, before you spend money finding out.
Public & community
Schools, halls and small civic buildings, on public procurement and to a fixed budget that we treat as fixed.
Interiors
Joinery, lighting and material palettes drawn to the same level of detail as the building around them.
Why people pick us
The bits that go wrong on a build, written down before we start
We argue with the brief
You are paying for judgement, not drafting. If we think you are asking for the wrong thing we will say so, once, with reasons.
A handful of projects at a time
Six people, six or seven live jobs. You will deal with whoever drew it, not an account manager.
Numbers we publish afterwards
Predicted energy performance is easy. We measure it a year after handover and put both figures up.
We stay on site
Through to completion, not until planning is granted. Most of what goes wrong in a building goes wrong after the pretty drawings are done.
Reviews
What customers said afterwards
They pushed back on half of what we asked for, and they were right about most of it. The house works in a way our brief would not have.
We had a fixed pot of money raised over a decade. They designed to it, and they told us early when something we wanted would not fit inside it.
The energy modelling was not marketing. They published what they predicted, then measured it after a year and published that too.
Where we work
Based in Bristol, working across Somerset
We keep our patch tight on purpose. Everywhere below is within an hour of the yard, which is why we can get someone to you the same week when something needs looking at.
Not on the list? Call anyway. If we cannot take it on we will usually know someone local who can.
- Bristol
- Bath
- Somerset
- Devon
- Cornwall
- Wiltshire
Start a conversation
Tell us about the site and the brief
First conversation is free and usually the most useful one. We will tell you if the project is not right for us, and often who would be better.