The Practice
We take on only a few carefully chosen projects each year and see them through personally from the first feasibility study to the last interior detail. For commercial clients the corporate identity and graphics are part of the scheme and we draw upon a pool of consultants with whom we have worked over the years. With the use of up-to-date computer aided design and an in-house plotter we can combine modern technology with a complete crafted design process.

This philosophy has resulted in the RIBA National Architecture Award, Cornish Building Group and Civic Trust Awards, in recognition of our unusual breath of talent and strong commitment to quality and creativity.

CV
We welcome clients with the vision and confidence to create the next generation of successful modern architecture”
Barrie Briscoe was born in Gloucester, England in 1936 and moved to Western Canada with his parents at 13.After a high school education in Calgary, Alberta, he took three years out before entering university, two years in the oil fields of Alberta and Saskatchewan and one year working his way around Australia.
At university he read Fine Art (painting), Architectural Engineering at Washington State University, Architectural Design at the
University of Pennsylvania, then took a Master of Arts in Architecture and City Planning at Yale. Between Washington State and the University of Pennsylvania, he worked for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in New York City as part of a design team on large scale urban projects. Upon graduation from Yale University in 1966 he worked in several large offices across Canada as Designer in Chief. He moved to England in 1972 to teach at Sheffield University in the Department of Architecture.The following year he moved to Cornwall.Continual involvement in architecture, graphic murals, teaching, painting and drawing have carried him to New York, Toronto, Provence, Brittany and Tuscany.There have been several mixed and solo painting exhibitions in England, France and Italy.

Philosophy
My working life has always been a balance between art and architecture, which I consider to be indivisible. In painting I am concerned with the underlying structure of the natural world and with making objects of beauty as an antidote to the disharmony and wastefulness I see around me. So it is with buildings.
I spent my formative years making abstract paintings and practicing architecture in the modernist hot-house of 1960’s America and Canada. My tutors were Giurgola, Kahn, Moore, Chermayeff, Venturi and Stirling. But I became disenchanted; the search for novelty was producing buildings which were irrelevant to their surroundings and ignored what I feel to be the central duties of architecture, that is, sensitivity to the personal and natural environment. When I moved to Cornwall I began to paint figuratively and to practice architecture on a different scale. I learnt from other artists and from Cornwall’s rich architectural past,assimilating the Cornish vernacular. I made extended visits to France and Italy, drawing and painting the Mediterranean countryside and medieval hill towns which fir so gracefully into the landscape.
The resulting body of work is a synthesis of my early modernist training, which was an excellent one, and years of experience. for me, modern versus traditional is not a relevant debate. The missing ingredients in modern architecture are craftsmanship and sensitivity to environment both in design and execution.
I never merely copy the past and I welcome technology but use it with discrimination and judgment. A bespoke building does not have to cost more if skill and judgment are used in the design. My Cornish buildings have a strong vernacular feel because of their surroundings but they are eminently suited to their contemporary purposes. On a suitable site I would not hesitate to use the most modern approach”.