Who we are
David Ackers UNAID - BIID
David Ackers Design Associates
After graduating from Birmingham School of Art & Design in 1979, David worked on « Intermediate Technology » NGO clients’ projects developing appropriate building materials and production methods, leading projects in Africa, South America and Asia.
His drive and design talent have focussed on renovation and restoration. Setting up his design studio in Normandy’s Cotentin in 1987 he has specialised in projects integrating antique materials or new durable alternatives. Quality is at the heart of his projects, whether historic or contemporary.
He’s uncompromising in his choices of great materials, a defender of the authentic - the beautiful - the noble. His clients are anglophone or francophone, looking for high quality combined with good design.
His style is simplicity, often stripped away, sobriety with unexpected surprises, creating comfortable reassuring environments, enhancing light, views and space, always designed and built to last. He brings innovative ideas for upgrading historic and vernacular homes, with works undertaken by skilled artisans. David takes care about conserving buildings and their details with timeless classic quality, indeed most recent projects are within historic buildings’ conservation zones.
For many years David Ackers has also been BCA Matériaux Anciens’ consultant assisting their English-speaking clients’ specifying projects across France and around the world (BCA is France’s principal supplier of antique reclaimed materials).
With parallel and complementary competences, the David Ackers and Olivier Bermond team have worked together for over twenty years. Highly motivated about saving and sympathetically upgrading historic and vernacular buildings and their landscapes, they are also available for relevant consultancies on other projects across France and overseas.
Olivier Bermond
Architecte DPLG
Architecte du Patrimoine
Having graduated from Lyon’s School of Architecture in 1993, Olivier Bermond straightaway set up his own architectural studio, designing public and private buildings with a highly developed functional aspect to his projects making all the difference compared to his peers. Listening to the client, with an open mind allied to an anticipation of their needs, progressively built the reputation of this architect and his passion for the profession.
This passion for the subject has progressively lead into the needs of restoring and updating old buildings to present-day requirements. It was a logical progression for Olivier Bermond to be accepted onto the prestigious Paris Ecole de Chaillot post-graduate course specialising in historic buildings, and thereby lead to new horizons for the prestigious nature of projects and contracting authorities. Since 2015 this talented architect is a qualified « Architecte de Patrimoine » enabling intervention on listed historical buildings in terms of planning, aesthetics, technicality and structure.
Full studies of diagnosis and feasibility are the starting points, through complicated planning applications in consultation with the regional « Architecte des Batiments de France » (ABF), leading through to project management and completion.