The team welcomed me in (with a coffee from Brunswick East Cafe of course) and showed me around their bespoke space equipped with furniture they designed and made themselves. I sat with Jerry Tate and Rory Harmer, the two founders—as well as Laurence Pinn, an Associate, and Jo Meyer, a Senior Architect—to talk through the day to day at Tate Harmer and what they have achieved in the past ten years.

Location?

Dalston, East London 

When did the practice start? 

Rory: Jerry started the practice in 2007 and I joined him in 2008. We met at the Bartlett when Jerry was teaching there, he saw my end of year show for my masters and got in touch, we had a long chat and the rest is history as they say! 

Jerry: I was keen for it to be a partnership and the nice thing about that is in the future we can have even more partners.

How many staff? 

Jerry: We are now 19 in total. 

Rory: We are keen to grow organically. We like to take on projects we really care about, so if a big project comes in, then we will take on the staff that we need but in the same way, if we meet a really exciting candidate then we will try our best to take them on.

Company ethos? 

Jerry: Our mission is to create inspirational and sustainable spaces for people and communities that connect with, and respond to the natural environment. 

Rory: We apply this same careful consideration of environment and place when working in an urban setting as well as lots of the projects we work on in cities are sensitive listed buildings.

Current projects? 

In London we are working on:

Jerry: Belsize Fire Station, which we are refurbishing into 20 flats. It is a fantastic Grade II listed arts and crafts building. It is also a seminal building by the original architect, the conservation workers at Camden are very keen for it to be restored very carefully. 

Also, Phase 2 of Brunel Museum. We finished Phase 1 in 2016 but the second part is much bigger so we have been putting funding bids in all through the last six months, hopefully, this will begin early next year. 

Additionally the Museum of Scouting in Chingford, which is really interesting as it is such as sensitive landscape, it is where Baden Powell first started training Scout leaders. It is a Scout activity center which, begs the question how do you create a museum of very sensitive objects, in a place for teenagers who might be there in their thousands? You can’t say they can’t come in, you have to engage them - It’s quite an interesting pedological debate to be working with. 

Elsewhere we are working on:

Rory: York St. John University's new creative centre. The total brief is 4,500 sqft of education space and a 250 seat auditorium with a view of the university. The York St. John is right in the heart of York, right up against the old wall so part of our proposal was to try and frame this view. 

Jerry: The Eden Hotel is a 110 bedroom hotel for the Eden Project which is quite fun. It is the first time Eden has done a big building that is not in the pit, they have only ever done a few bits around the perimeter. This project came out of some masterplanning we were doing on the Green Ribbon, where they want to create an area on the perimeter that is about engagement and community; a learning landscape. Because of this, we realized we needed somewhere for everyone to stay! The hotel is all timber-framed, which is quite hard to do for such a big project, but it will be the most sustainable and accessible hotel in the UK when it is completed. There are about 7/8 different room types to cope with, different socio/economic scales and different abilities, we have had a lot of focus groups about how to make sure we are paying attention to all the necessary requirements.

What was your first office like?

Jerry: We were in London Fields when it wasn’t safe to walk through the park with your wallet! Then E5 Bakery came and the whole area changed and became much nicer but unfortunately, our rent went up and we couldn’t afford to stay there! We were in a brick railway arch which was quite a nice first office, it was a bit rattly though, and if you worked late, extremely loud!

Favorite part of your current studio? 

The people!

Laurence: We arranged the space so that it is very social and everyone can talk to each other. It is important everyone feels involved. 

Rory: When we moved in, it was just a shell, it was used beforehand as an impromptu gallery space, with a dark room, half a kitchen and absolutely no heating! To make it feel like home we have made a lot of the new furniture ourselves.

Jerry: Syafiq one of our architects actually designed and built our big table in the centre!

Jo: It is nice that the table has become an impromptu lunch table where it is easy for people to be chatting, discussing different projects and joining in the conversation.

Jerry: We made the decision just to keep the space completely open, generally it’s very helpful for everyone to know what everyone else is up to when you are this size. 

We also love our bike wall and all our models.

Favorite nearby coffee shop? 

Brunswick East, Melbourne run café situated within our office complex, they do very good coffee! 

Do you eat lunch together? 

Yes, we eat lunch around the main table or out in the courtyard as much as possible. We also hold a monthly team lunch where we nominate an individual to take on the responsibility of organising the lunch and this takes place on the last Thursday of every month. 

Pets allowed? 

We don’t mind pets coming in, although we don’t have an office pet as such. We do have a cat that pops in from next door but unfortunately, it doesn’t help us with any of the work!

Most played song/artist/musician in the studio? 

Bonobo or Nicholas Jarr but we also love natural sounds like the rainforest for example. 

Andy is our resident DJ as he is the only one who knows how to the work the sound system!

Architect/Architectural style you look up to? 

Jerry: Jean Prouvé for his systematic and light touch approach. Imre Makovecz for his use of timber. Rory will probably say something different, very pragmatic…

Rory: …no, I would say them too, I really like both of them! 

Jerry: That’s handy, we are on the same page! 

Favorite building in London? 

Jerry: This caused an argument yesterday! But finally, we decided on Willow Road, by Goldfinger and the Saw Hock Building, O’Donnell & Tuomey. 

Favorite building you have designed? 

Jerry: As a team, we decided Cranleigh Preparatory School, a recently completed educational project in Cranleigh, Surrey as it is the closest we have come so far to tying an educational scheme to nature. A very effective educational environment that we really like. 

Laurence: It is the closest we have come to taking an initial diagram that we really thought was going to work and realising that into a building. We really simplified what the building needed to be and kept what was really important.

My favorite [project] is Brunel... quite a simple design but the number of people I speak to, who have been there and really enjoyed it, is astounding and it just couldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for this little intervention we created.

Jerry: And it’s been really successful, it makes a huge difference when you are in the classrooms. Because we created the space with no internal corridors, every classroom is dual aspect facing the landscape in one direction and the rest of the school in the other so every classroom is actually much brighter. As soon as you go into a one ended classroom you notice the difference and how bad it feels being that closed off. That is the basic move we started with and we kept it all the way through. It’s wonderful to see the benefits this project has made to the school.

Rory: Also, TreeXOffice because we just love it! It is a slightly more wacky project but it was just really fun. We had three months to design it, build it, get it on site and compile it ourselves! It was extremely hands on. 

Laurence: My favorite is Brunel. It is exciting to see something that really affects lots of people. It was a really low budget project and quite a simple design but the number of people I speak to, who have been there and really enjoyed it, is astounding and it just couldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for this little intervention we created. And that’s just phase 1!

Jerry: I’m going to say Hoo House, as it was our first ever project. That was Rory and me right at the beginning. It was a saga at the time but worth it and it was on Grand Designs!