Charles Tashima Architecture is a London-based studio of architects and designers founded in 1999. Over the years their practice has developed a reputation for adapting existing materials, buildings and structures, conjuring new uses and atmospheres rich in quality and experience.
As a studio, they believe creativity is born out of adaptation. It is through an organic, problem-solving method that they approach all their work. In process they celebrate diversity, textural richness and materiality with a heightened attention to detail. Their ethos is open, adaptive and resourceful as they seek timeless atmospheres, rich in qualities and spatial experience.
Taking inspiration from their surroundings, they start their projects by first understanding and revealing what is already there. They thrive in the re-use of existing materials and spaces, whether salvaged breadboards, a fragment of furniture or disused building structure. They embrace what others may find difficult, limiting or no longer useful. It is through this open, resourceful approach that they appropriate and transform organically and imaginatively.
The rich environments they create are the result of a lively negotiation between parameters and their perceived constraints set against the new requirements, needs and ambitions of their clients. Beyond their practical and environmental commitments, they strive to craft an architecture that is timeless – mixing the contemporary with historic and traditional. The results are layered, diverse and atmospheric, with the aura of space in time.
The unifying quality of their work is based on an approach and ethos that thrives on design through complex conditions, often found in conflict or opposition to each other. It is this playful yet rigorous resourcefulness that sets them apart as a practice. For Charles Tashima Architecture creative conflict is an inspiration and opportunity, not a limitation or compromise.