Studios
TaylorHare Architects was founded in 2014 in Canterbury Kent by Christopher Taylor & Timothy Hare. The practice grew steadily operating primarily in the garden of England reinterpreting forgotten agricultural buildings and designing contextual modern houses in sensitive pastoral locations.
In 2016 we conceived Studio #1, converting a small dilapidated concrete framed agricultural building into our office. Not the most visible of locations but it gave us an opportunity to have our own tranquil design space and room to formulate our identity.
We continued to grow relatively quickly and very soon with nine members of the team squeezed into our little Cowshed, we made the decision to upgrade our working environment and expand by building a newer version of the studio on an old pig sty right next door, naturally Studio #2 has become affectionately known as the Pig shed.
These two relatively modest buildings with their shared courtyard between them have been instrumental in shaping our identity and still remain as our office headquarters in the UK today.
(1) The cowshed (UK)
(2) The pig shed (UK)
Our ambition to create meaningful high quality crafted architecture has led us to find new clients and work far beyond our somewhat humble beginnings. In part Tim & Chris have always wished to seek out new and exciting opportunities but much of our expanded reach which now extends from Kent in the South East of England to Bristol in the West, to Aarhus in Denmark and as far as Southern California is because of the incredible talent of the people who have wished to join the TaylorHare team and the practices commitment to supporting its employees wonderful talents.
This nurtured symbiotic relationship between the practice and its people has been the driving force that has seen the practice not only survive the impacts of Brexit and a global pandemic but thrive, reach out to new locations and global markets.
Our ambition to create meaningful high quality crafted architecture has led us to find new clients and work far beyond our somewhat humble beginnings.
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)
View more ↓
Clausholm Slot, Denmark
Charlie Hope was nominated for the RIBA President’s Medal in Architecture in 2017, but decided to follow his other great passion of farming for a while. That was until one day, while turning straw outside our Cowshed, he decided to pull the tractor up and come in for a cup of tea to discuss the idea of working with us. Immediately Chris and Tim understood the inquisitive, challenging nature of the person who had just walked into their office in his muddy boots. In 2019, Charlie let Chris & Tim know that his wife Kelly had been offered a post-doctorate position at Aarhus University and that they wanted to take the opportunity to move there.
The move to Denmark came with specific organisational challenges, from navigating the terms of the Brexit withdrawal agreement to establishing a pre-Covid approach to remote working. During those first few years, Charlie continued to spend time working from the UK studio, while Chris and Tim regularly travelled to Aarhus. Conversation soon turned from how to make the arrangement work, to what a longer-term TaylorHare presence in Denmark might become.
Charlie’s passion for agriculture and the roots of the TaylorHare practice chimed naturally together. A background in farming, combined with an approach to historical analysis, drawing and model-making, has found particular relevance in Denmark and developed into a growing body of work across agricultural buildings, heritage assets 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 is now working with some of Denmark’s prominent landowners — extending TaylorHare’s longstanding interest in architecture, agriculture and landscape into a distinctly Danish context.
California offered a different landscape in which to test ideas that had been developing within the practice for years.
The experience of working across countries had already begun to change the shape of the practice when, in late 2022, Tim moved to California with his wife Jennie. Having grown up in California, Jennie was returning home, while for Tim the move presented an opportunity to establish TaylorHare on the West Coast and explore what the practice’s approach might become in a very different landscape.
Jennie is a registered Californian Architect, designer and accomplished technical architect, bringing 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 particular qualities of 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 homes that are highly individual, quietly resolved and made for the long term.
All of our studios have a personal story.
They 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 developing its own character, influenced by the places, landscapes and cultures in which it works. What connects them is a shared approach to architecture and a set of values that remain consistent wherever we are working.
Ideas and experience move freely between the studios. Projects are regularly shared and discussed across the wider practice, bringing together different perspectives, skills and local knowledge wherever they can add something to the work.
Distance has never meant working in isolation. We remain one closely connected practice, with every project able to draw upon the collective experience of the people within it.
We deliberately remain a collection of smaller studios — close enough to our clients and projects to be personal, responsive and deeply involved, but connected as a wider practice with the experience and resources to take on work of considerable scale and complexity.
It gives us the best of both: the intimacy and agility of a small studio, with the reach and collective capability of something much larger.
