Point Royal tells you something important about Bracknell. An eighteen-storey tower designed by Arup Associates in the early 1960s, it was listed Grade II — a recognition that architecture does not need centuries of weathering to matter. Walk from there to The Bull Inn on the High Street, which has stood since the fourteenth century as a hall house before it became a pub, and the span of what Bracknell contains becomes clear. This is a town that holds a medieval village core and a planned New Town in the same few streets. For an architect, that kind of layering — the inherited and the designed, sitting side by side — is genuinely interesting. It asks you to think carefully about what you add next, because everything here, from the oldest timber frame to the newest neighbourhood, is part of the same conversation about how a place grows.
Award-winning Architects in Bracknell
An Award-Winning Practice Working Across Berkshire
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, with a clear conviction that the most responsible architecture is also the most rewarding to live in — comfortable, efficient, and genuinely joyful. That conviction has shaped everything we have done since. Our Passivhaus home The Deerings in Hertfordshire won a RIBA East Award, and The Old Water Tower was shortlisted for the RIBA South Awards. We were finalists for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the 2018 Building Design Awards, and I served as a judge for the British Homes Awards in 2025. We work with clients across the country, bringing the same depth of care to every project. As a RIBA chartered and ARB registered practice, with membership of SPAB, the Passivhaus Trust and The Green Register, we combine heritage sensitivity with environmental ambition — an approach that suits a town like Bracknell, where the architectural story is still very much being written.
Architecture for Every Chapter of Bracknell's Growth
Much of Bracknell's housing was built in the decades following the 1949 New Town designation, when the Development Corporation set out to create neighbourhoods of around ten thousand people, each with its own schools, shops and community spaces. That housing — the 1950s and 1960s terraces, the low-rise estates, the detached homes of the later expansion — was well planned for its time but was built to the thermal standards of its era. Extension Design is one of the most relevant services we offer for homes in Bracknell, because so many of them were designed for smaller households and simpler daily patterns than the families living in them now. Extending well means understanding what was good about the original — the generous plot sizes, the relationship to green space that the New Town planners were careful to preserve — and adding to it without losing those qualities.
EnerPHit, the Passivhaus retrofit standard, is particularly well matched to the post-war construction that defines much of Bracknell. These homes typically have solid or early cavity walls, single-glazed or early double-glazed windows, and minimal insulation by current standards. A fabric-first EnerPHit approach — upgrading insulation, improving airtightness, installing mechanical ventilation with heat recovery — transforms the thermal performance of these houses while preserving their form. The result is a home that costs dramatically less to heat, stays comfortable year-round, and is genuinely kinder to the planet. For Bracknell, where thousands of homes share similar construction methods, the potential for meaningful improvement is enormous.
Sustainable Design runs through everything we do, and Bracknell rewards that ambition. The New Town planners of the 1960s understood what matters: homes that work, neighbourhoods that function, building to last. That same principle — honest, purposeful design for real people — shapes what we do now. Where growth is planned, as Bracknell Forest Council's Local Plan, adopted in 2024, makes clear, New Build Design gives us the chance to set the standard from the outset — homes that arrive comfortable, durable, and genuinely efficient in their use of energy and materials. PassivHaus Design takes that ambition to its highest expression: homes with exceptional thermal comfort and outstanding air quality built into the fabric itself, not layered on as an afterthought.
For the older buildings that predate the New Town — the medieval and post-medieval structures that survive in the conservation areas across Bracknell Forest — Renovations require a different kind of attention. South Hill Park, the eighteenth-century estate now home to an arts centre, and the listed buildings around Winkfield and Warfield show what careful, informed work can achieve. My membership of SPAB reflects a deep respect for historic fabric, and we bring that respect to every renovation, working with the building rather than against it.
Beyond the town itself, the countryside around Bracknell has real character — wooded, green, and in places subject to significant landscape protections. Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides the route to new homes in the open countryside, but the design must be genuinely outstanding and truly responsive to its setting. We have the design ambition and the environmental credentials that Paragraph 84 demands.
The architectural story of Bracknell is still being written — from the listed New Town landmarks to the homes and neighbourhoods yet to come. Whether your project involves upgrading a post-war home, extending for a growing family, or designing something entirely new for the countryside beyond, we would welcome the conversation.