Studios
TaylorHare was founded by Christopher Taylor and Timothy Hare in Canterbury in 2014.
From the outset, the practice found opportunity in places others might overlook, reinterpreting forgotten agricultural buildings, historic fabric and sensitive rural landscapes, alongside designing contextual modern homes conceived specifically for the people and places they belong to.
In 2016 we converted a small, dilapidated concrete framed agricultural building into our first studio. The Cowshed was modest and deliberately removed from the conventional architectural workplace, but it provided space and room to establish our own identity.
As the team grew, we expanded onto the site of an old pigsty next door, creating Studio #2 — or the ‘Pig Shed’, as it is affectionately known. The two buildings and the courtyard between them remain our UK home today.
(1) The cowshed (UK)
(2) The pig shed (UK)
Our work has grown from those same rural beginnings. From historic houses and working estates to one-off homes and the adaptation of existing buildings, we are interested in understanding what gives a place its character, questioning assumptions and finding opportunities for lasting change.
What began in two agricultural buildings in Kent has gradually extended much further. Not through a conventional expansion plan, but through the people within the practice, the opportunities they have followed and the places they have chosen to make home.
(3) The Hall (UK)
The scale of the work has changed considerably since those early projects, but the instinct has remained much the same: to look closely, question assumptions and find possibilities particular to each place.
OUR PEOPLE
Christopher Taylor
(Founder, Director, ARB, RIBA)
Timothy Hare
(Founder & Director)
Jennie Matusova
(CEO, Director, Architect AIA)
Charlie Hope
(Director, Arkitekt MAA, DK)
Joe Manuel
(Associate, Architect ARB)
Karl Bowers
(Associate, Architect ARB)
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What began with a move to Denmark has grown into a distinctly Danish chapter for the practice.
Clausholm Slot, Denmark
In 2017 Charlie Hope was nominated for the RIBA President’s Medal in Architecture, but decided to follow his other great passion, farming, for a while .That was until one day, while turning straw outside our Cowshed, he pulled up the tractor and came in for a cup of tea to discuss working with us. Chris and Tim immediately recognised the inquisitive, challenging nature of the person who had just walked into their office in muddy boots.
Fast forward two years, and Charlie’s wife Kelly was offered a post-doctorate position at Aarhus University, so they decided to make the move to Denmark. Charlie continued to work between Denmark and the UK, while Chris and Tim travelled regularly to Aarhus. Before long, conversations turned to what a more permanent TaylorHare presence in Denmark might become.
Charlie’s farming background, combined with his approach to historical analysis, drawing and model-making, has found a natural home in Denmark, developing into a growing body of work with historic buildings, working farms and rural estates.
In early 2025, Chris, Tim and Charlie established TaylorHare Denmark ApS as a Danish practice in its own right. Under Charlie’s leadership, the studio now works with some of Denmark’s prominent landowners on the restoration, adaptation and wider stewardship of their buildings and estates.
California offered a different landscape in which to test ideas that had been developing within the practice for years.
In late 2022, Tim moved to California with his wife Jennie. Having grown up there, Jennie was returning home, while for Tim the move presented an opportunity to establish TaylorHare on the West Coast and explore how the practice’s approach might respond to a very different landscape.
Jennie is a registered Californian Architect and accomplished technical architect, with a detailed understanding of how homes are designed, permitted and built in the state. Together, Tim and Jennie established TaylorHare Architects Inc., combining that local knowledge with the design thinking and experience of the wider practice. Now based in Santa Barbara, the studio is developing a growing body of work across Southern California.
From private houses to larger family properties and estates, the work is shaped by the Californian landscape and climate, and by the way people live within them. The studio brings together architecture, interiors and landscape from the outset, working closely with clients, consultants, makers and contractors to create buildings that are highly individual and particular to each place.
One Practice, Three Studios.
Our studios have grown naturally from the people within the practice, the opportunities they have followed and the places they have chosen to make home.
Each is influenced by its own landscape and culture, while ideas, experience and projects move freely between them. Distance has never meant working in isolation.
We deliberately remain a collection of smaller studios.
Close enough to our clients and projects to be personal, responsive and deeply involved, with experienced architects leading each project and the shared expertise of the wider practice behind them.
Together, this gives us the intimacy and agility of a small studio, with the reach and capability of something much larger.
