Architects with over 50 years of experience working with clients and local communities to design better places.

Poynton Bradbury has spent more than 50 years creating iconic designs, landmark buildings, and innovative spaces across the South West and nationally.

From university campuses and hospitals to historic landmarks and RNLI buildings, we are the creative designers behind many of the buildings people use and see across Cornwall. Our practice and its work have become woven into the places that surround it.

Founded in 1973, our architectural practice began to gain a reputation for community architecture when we worked on the Ludgvan Community Centre in Penzance. Despite a deep economic recession, the project was a success, and it caught the attention of HRH The Prince of Wales (now King Charles III). Poynton Bradbury were subsequently commissioned to design and enable a number of Community Architecture projects on The Prince’s Somerset estates.

News of our work, combined with a steady stream of design awards, attracted talented young architects – many from big city firms – to our firm. In 1997, Poynton Bradbury had grown to become the largest architectural practice in Cornwall. By 2008 our practice had grown to 25 employees.

Having outgrown our offices in the centre of St Ives, we purchased a former petrol station on the main road into the town where we developed our own purpose-built studio. Now one of the largest practices in the South West, Poynton Bradbury currently employs 29 staff.

Poynton Bradbury has delivered significant projects including the Lifeboat College Building for the RNLI, Cornwall Council’s new offices in Bodmin, and Pendennis Shipyard. We also designed campuses for Truro College, Cornwall College, Callywith College and Penwith College.

We are a key architect for the RNLI and helped to write their Shoreworks document (a guide to the design of lifeboat stations). Poynton Bradbury also designed the concept for Cornwall’s new Woman and Childrens Hospital, which received £292 million of Government funding and will be completed by 2028.

Along with the challenges of extreme coastal locations, climate change and sustainability, Poynton Bradbury has managed the seismic impact of CAD, 3D modelling and BIM on architecture, and woven the latest technology into our design work.