BTE was founded in 2013 by Daniel Bär, Stéphane Toussaint, and Sean Edwards and is based in Glasgow, Scotland and Oslo, Norway.
BTE is an European practice with experience in working in the UK but also Belgium, Germany, Norway, Singapore, and Australia.
Although we are mostly working in Scotland at the moment we don’t see us as a Scottish practice. Working abroad and within a different culture certainly brings a more detached, some might say a less romanticised, perspective. It also allows us to be critical, because we are able to compare. Being critical is one of the core values we took away from our education.
We were able to accumulate a vast amount of experience quickly. Experience ranging from the very beginning of a new project to supervising the building when it’s under construction on both rural and urban sites.
Working for bigger offices besides gives us the advantage to be able to carefully select the projects for BTE because there is no imminent pressure of having to make a living but only to concentrate on the architectural quality first and foremost. It also enables BTE to be embedded within a wider network of professionals working across all sectors of the building industry, a network that can be utilised in form of collaborations in order to get into a position to win bigger jobs.
Practising in Scotland can be challenging as the culture of regulation is strict and often an economic solution needs to be identified in order to realise proposals at all. That constitutes in a certain awareness and focus if one does not want to compromise on the architectural quality of a proposal. The attitude of BTE can therefore be described as pragmatic and result oriented. We also understand that ideas, proportions, and good detailing doesn’t cost any money and have successfully proven on numerous occasions that it is possible to create architecture that is relevant without having a massive budget.
We are interested in a building culture that is progressive. In that respect it is of importance that a younger architects generation are giving a chance to participate by actually being able to build architecture. Architecture that is relevant and reflective of its time.