Simplicity. Honesty. Cuteness. Subtraction. Refinement. Clarity. Minimalism. Presence. Absence. Economy.

Since founding Bradley Edwards Architect in 2008, Bradley has perpetually redefined a design approach that combines playfulness, practicality and collaboration. Encompassing a diverse range of scales, materials and project types, every design proposition is an opportunity to embrace the unknown, the emphatic or the awkward. A graduate of the University of Arkansas BARCH program in 1993, Bradley has remained firmly committed to designing and learning from the building culture, landscape and peculiarities of the Ozarks. Prior to establishing Bradley Edwards Architect in 2008, Bradley was a Project Architect for Architect226, owner and designer of Studio BE, and intern architect for David French Architects and Fay Jones + Maurice Jennings Architects. From 2002 to 2013, Bradley concurrently practiced and taught Architecture Studio classes at the University of Arkansas.

Always beginning with the adage “make more with less”, our firm’s design philosophy pivots on economy and experimentation.  Whether out of necessity or desire this is a primary fulcrum for arriving at a solution. The overarching inquiries in this practice are: “Can we do without this?”, “Can this thing do that thing too?”, “How can we make the most space with the fewest things?” This is a way of making that promotes good design, sustainable design, and an economic advantage for the client, builder, and site. 

Not everything in the budgets we are given can be pristine or precise but they can always be emphatic. These relentless material figures and articulation form the basis for much of our investigation; indeed they are often the lynchpin of the project’s identity and are formulated through a close collaboration with the craftsperson and fabricators. One of our goals is to bring contemporary design thinking and making to Northwest Arkansas. To that end, much of our process is finding individual makers who are willing to take risks to develop interesting, or non-standard, systems. The design process is a give and take between speculation, education, and experimentation.