Practice Brightwell
Our story
How Brightwell works
Brightwell takes on a small number of projects at a time and stays with each one to completion. That is a deliberate limit: the difference between a good building and a disappointing one is usually decided in the last twenty per cent, when the drawings meet a real trade on a real site, and that is exactly when most practices have moved on. We are interested in light, in how a building is entered, and in what it will cost to run in fifteen years. The rest follows from those.
How we work
What working with us looks like
Four stages, and you will always know which one you are in.
01
Brief & feasibility
What you want, what the site allows and what it is likely to cost. Sometimes the answer is not to build.
02
Design & consent
Design development through to a planning submission, with pre-application engagement wherever it helps.
03
Technical design
Drawings and specification a contractor can price and build from, coordinated with the engineers.
04
On site
Tender, appointment, inspections and certification, through to handover and the defects period.
Studio
The people in the studio
Add your studio's names and photographs in Content — for most visitors this is the page that decides it.
Principal
Design direction and client relationships
Founded the practice and leads design on every commission.
Associate Director
Technical design and delivery
Takes a design from planning consent to a building that was actually built the way it was drawn.
Project Architect
Planning and consultation
Runs projects through planning — pre-application, consultation, committee — and puts together the drawings and statements that get a scheme consented..
Head of Sustainability
Fabric, energy and materials
Makes sure a low-energy claim survives the modelling.
Why us
What makes us different
01
Few projects at a time
A deliberate limit. It is the only way the same people can still be on it at the end.
02
Light first
How a space is lit does more for how it feels than almost any other decision, and it is nearly free at design stage.
03
Honest about budget
We will tell you early if the brief and the budget do not meet, rather than after you have paid for drawings.
04
On site to the end
We stay through construction. Buildings are decided in the last twenty per cent.
Inside the company
A look at how we work
Thinking about a project?
The earliest conversations are the most valuable ones. Get in touch before the brief is fixed.
Discuss a commission