Slough is a town that rewards the architect who looks carefully. The first impression — the office parks, the trading estate, the busy arterial roads — can obscure what is genuinely here, and what is genuinely here is more interesting than most people expect. St Laurence's Church in Upton dates from the mid-twelfth century. Upton Court, just nearby, has parts built in 1325. The Kedermister Almshouses on St Mary's Road in Langley have stood since 1617. And then there is the Horlicks Factory on Stoke Poges Lane, with its distinctive clock tower and chimney — a building now being carefully converted into homes rather than demolished, which says something about how Slough is beginning to value its own architectural story. I find that combination compelling: medieval fragments, industrial confidence, and a town that is actively rethinking what it wants to be. That is exactly the kind of place where good architecture matters most.
Award-winning Architects in Slough
Why People in Slough Trust Gresford Architects
We understand towns like Slough — places where the architectural interest is real but not always obvious, where the challenge is to work sensitively with what exists while bringing genuine quality to what comes next. I founded the practice in London in 2006, driven by the conviction that sustainability and thoughtful design are not opposing forces but natural partners. That approach has been recognised with a RIBA East Award for The Deerings, a Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, and a RIBA South Awards shortlist for The Old Water Tower. 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. As a RIBA chartered and ARB registered practice, with membership of SPAB, the Passivhaus Trust and The Green Register, we bring heritage understanding and environmental expertise to every project — whether that involves a listed building in Upton or a new home on the edge of town.
How We Work with Homes in Slough
Slough has been growing and changing since the Trading Estate transformed it in the 1920s, and much of the town's housing stock reflects that pace of development — interwar semis, post-war estates, and newer builds from the decades since. Sustainable Design is central to how we approach every project here. For the interwar and post-war housing that makes up so much of Slough, the question is almost always the same: how do we upgrade homes built for a different era without erasing the character that makes them worth keeping? Energy performance and material choices are the tools we use to solve that problem — not as regulatory hurdles but as a chance to make homes demonstrably better to live in.
EnerPHit, the Passivhaus retrofit standard, is particularly well suited to the interwar and post-war homes that make up a significant part of Slough's housing. These houses — typically cavity-wall construction with limited original insulation — can be dramatically improved through a fabric-first approach: upgrading insulation, improving airtightness, installing mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, and replacing windows with high-performance units. The result is a home that stays warm in winter and cool in summer, with energy bills that reflect the twenty-first century rather than the twentieth. For the older buildings within the Upton Conservation Area, where St Laurence's Church and Upton Court sit within a landscape of genuine historic value, Renovations require particular care. Slough Borough Council rightly applies additional scrutiny to work affecting listed buildings and conservation areas, and we welcome that — the discipline of working within heritage constraints consistently produces better design.
Extension Design is one of our most requested services across towns like Slough, where homes that were generous by the standards of their era can feel cramped for the way families live today. Extending a 1930s semi or a post-war detached house well means understanding the proportions and materials of the original building and designing something that feels like it belongs — not a bolted-on afterthought but a natural continuation of the home. For new buildings in Slough, PassivHaus Design achieves the same rigour — homes that arrive already performing at their best, with exceptional thermal comfort and outstanding air quality built into the fabric itself rather than layered on as an afterthought.
New Build Design in Slough is shaped by the town's ongoing regeneration — the transformation of the Queensmere and Observatory shopping centres signals a genuine shift towards thinking carefully about what Slough builds next. That ambition runs through every new home we design: comfortable, built to last, and genuinely light on the planet.
Slough's setting matters more than its reputation suggests. To the north, the Chilterns landscape has genuine presence and character, and building here requires an exceptional design hand. Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework is the route to rural building in this landscape — but only if the design is genuinely outstanding and truly responsive to what is already there. We have the experience and the design ambition that Paragraph 84 demands.
Slough is a town in the middle of a significant chapter — rethinking its centre, valuing its heritage, and building for the decades ahead. Whatever your project here, whether it involves a sensitive renovation in Upton, an extension to a family home, or something entirely new, we would welcome the conversation.