What strikes me about Reading is how many times this town has rebuilt itself. The abbey that Henry I founded in 1121 defined it for four centuries, then the wool trade reshaped it, then the railway arrived in 1840 and by the turn of the century a market town of around nine thousand had become an industrial centre of over seventy thousand — new streets, new terraces, new industries layered on top of everything that came before. Walk through the centre today and you can still read those layers: the Georgian formality of Eldon Square, the confident red brick of the Victorian terraces in Kendrick Road, the remnants of the abbey ruins in Forbury Gardens. Reading is not a town that stands still, and that is precisely what makes it interesting to work in. The best architecture here has always responded to what already exists while finding room for something new — and that tension between preservation and reinvention is at the heart of what we do.
Award-winning Architects in Reading
Heritage Knowledge and Environmental Rigour in Equal Measure
Reading demands both. The conservation areas that protect the Georgian terraces, Victorian streetscapes and industrial buildings tell you what this town values, while major regeneration projects like Station Hill show you where it is heading next. Working here means understanding how a listed Victorian terrace in Kendrick Road behaves differently from a Georgian townhouse in Eldon Square, and how both can be brought into the twenty-first century without losing what makes them valuable. I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006 on the conviction that sustainable, heritage-sensitive architecture creates homes that are more comfortable to inhabit, more economical to run and more joyful to live in. That conviction has been tested and recognised — with a RIBA East Award for The Deerings, a Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, a RIBA South Awards shortlist for The Old Water Tower, and a place as a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the 2018 Building Design Awards. As a RIBA chartered and ARB registered practice, members of SPAB, the Passivhaus Trust and The Green Register, we bring the heritage understanding and environmental expertise that a town with Reading's complexity genuinely requires.
Architectural Services for a Town That Keeps Evolving
Much of Reading's housing stock dates from the Victorian and Edwardian expansion that followed the railway, and Extension Design for these properties requires an architect who understands their construction inside and out. The red brick terraces that line streets across the town were built to a consistent pattern — solid walls, slate roofs, timber floors — and extending them well means working with that rhythm rather than against it. In Reading's fifteen conservation areas, including Kendrick and Eldon Square, Reading Borough Council applies additional scrutiny to ensure extensions respect the character that earned these areas their designation. We approach that not as a constraint but as a design opportunity — the discipline of working within a conservation area often produces better, more thoughtful architecture than an open brief would.
EnerPHit, the Passivhaus retrofit standard, is particularly relevant in Reading because so much of the town's character comes from its older buildings. A Victorian terrace with solid brick walls and single-glazed sash windows can be beautifully proportioned but punishing to heat — draughty in winter, uncomfortable in summer, expensive year-round. EnerPHit provides a rigorous, building-specific path to transforming that performance: careful improvements to insulation, airtightness and ventilation that dramatically reduce energy use while keeping the home comfortable in every season. The key is doing this without erasing the qualities that make the building worth keeping — the proportions, the detailing, the way it sits within its streetscape. Renovations to homes in Reading often involve similar considerations, particularly where the building is listed or sits within a conservation area. With over five hundred listed buildings in the borough, the need for architects who understand historic fabric is real and ongoing.
Reading is also a town that continues to grow, and New Build Design here benefits from an understanding of what has worked over the centuries. The Station Hill regeneration at the heart of the town is perhaps the most visible example of Reading's willingness to build ambitiously, but new homes on smaller sites — infill plots, garden land, sites where a building has reached the end of its life — present their own design challenges and opportunities. PassivHaus Design brings exceptional thermal comfort and minimal energy consumption to new-build projects, achieving consistent temperatures and outstanding air quality through the fabric of the building itself. Sustainable Design runs through every project we take on, treating environmental performance as a creative force rather than a box-ticking exercise — homes that are warmer, quieter, built to last and far lighter on the planet.
For sites in the countryside around Reading, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework offers a route to building exceptional new homes in the open landscape, provided the design is truly outstanding and sensitive to its setting. The land surrounding the town includes areas of real landscape quality, and the planning bar for new dwellings here is deliberately high. We have the experience and the design ambition that Paragraph 84 demands.
Reading is a town that has reinvented itself more than once — from abbey town to wool centre to railway hub to the place it is today. Whatever your project here, whether it is extending a Victorian terrace, retrofitting a period home for the next century, or designing something entirely new, we would welcome the conversation.