bere:architects was founded in 1994 by its principal architect, Justin Bere. The practice has grown steadily and now includes two associate directors, Justin Richards and Dan Gibbons, together with other architectural and administrative personnel, totalling 10 full time staff.

We are currently producing new houses in the UK and abroad (including the tropics), in urban and rural situations, including several in central London and a number of large new rural houses in Surrey, Sussex, Berkshire, Wiltshire, where we are exploring a new approach that combines a sensitive response to the context of the site with strong, contemporary - yet timeless designs. We combine natural, traditional materials and techniques with modern materials where appropriate. Genuine and informed sustainability is central to our philosophy and we are very experienced with extremely low energy housing. We are also skilled at finding solutions to very difficult sites. We take a careful consultative approach to all our work, and we believe that many of our techniques are unique, resulting in highly unusual contemporary buildings that to date have in every case gained planning permission for our clients. Indeed we have always had strong support from planners and from a substantial proportion of local residents and stakeholders in the processing of our design-led planning applications.

Most of our clients employ us for repeat or regular work and this, combined with numerous recommendations, has resulted in the steady growth of our workload.

The practice has featured in the Architecture Foundation's first "Guide to Britain's best young architecture practices”, in the book "Another 100 of the Worlds Best Houses" and will shortly be featured in a new book; “Compact Houses”.