Thoughts on selecting an architect

I was discussing this blog with a friend and we started talking about how we chose our architect. Just google “How to choose an architect” and you will get pretty much the same list of things to do. This is about our journey in choosing our architect. It reflects our tastes and working style.

1. Why get an architect

You know what a room should look like. You know what a house should have. Don’t put the doors too close to each other. Try and place the toilets close to each other to make piping easier. That’s about it, right? Why get an architect.

You know what a novel looks like. You know the basic rules of grammar. Don’t make the hero unsympathetic. Try and structure the overall story from the start. That’s about it, right? Why aren’t you JK Rowling?

2. Payment differences

One thing that most websites don’t tell you is the difference in payment and approaches. Here are three comparisons we received from three different firms.

	A	B	C
Fee percentage on total building cost	10%	7.50%	10%
Conceptual Design Stage	15%	10%	10%
Preliminary stage	15%	20%	15%
Working Drawing Stage	15%	50%	25%
Construction Stage	50%	15%	15%
Supervision stage	0%	0%	35%
Last Stage	5%	5%	0%

So, if your house is going to cost 50,00,000...

	A	B	C
Conceptual Design Stage	75000	37500	50000
Preliminary stage	75000	75000	75000
Working Drawing Stage	75000	187500	125000
Construction Stage	250000	56250	75000
Supervision stage	0	0	175000
Last Stage	25000	18750	0
Total	500000	375000	500000

Firms A and C are pretty much the same. Firm B is where the big difference is. They’re charging less overall, but they are saying that once they hand over the technical drawings they’re not going to be involved. This means that through the actual construction, they’re not going to do jack. They won’t help with changes to the plans. They won’t discuss issues with the contractor. They won’t guide the contractor on the minutiae of drawings. They won’t explain what is where.

The design process for a house does not end when construction starts, even if you aren’t making any changes to your plans. You need to decide where piping is going, wiring, what kind of toilets you want. There will always be some change as the house progresses. It could be something as simple as the way doors open, or moving a window from here to there.

A plan is only that, a plan. It’s like the script for a play. There is a lot of work to be done, choices to be made and possible a couple of edits before you have an end product.

Make sure you get an architect who will be available and will visit the site regularly. Their knowledge of the construction process is immensely valuable.

Incidentally, we chose firm A.

3. What to look for

We sat down and listed all the things we wanted from a house. 

We then listed a bunch of architects in town and started the interviews and portfolio viewing. Don’t skip the interview part! You cannot learn what you need from websites and online portfolios. They’ll take great pictures of fancy staircases and not talk about where the washing machine is going to go.

We looked at their portfolios and asked them why they had made certain decisions. This was really useful. We asked an architect why he put a little turn in a wall, changing the room from a rectangle to something resembling a boomerang. He said something like “We wanted to challenge the monotony of the space.”

All this sounds lovely, but honestly, it’s not useful when you are planning furniture and trying to hang paintings.

Looking at the portfolios with the architects you can very quickly see what their standard tricks are and what their design aesthetics are. You know they like to work with exposed concrete, or like blocky houses. You also get an idea of what kind of experience they’ve had. We spoke to one architect who had only done interiors and insisted there was no difference when it came to building a house. The only thing they had built as a small bedroom extension to a pre-existing house.

Most of the architects we met were screened out from the moment we started talking to them. They just didn’t gel with what we wanted.

Once we had shortlisted a couple of architects we made physical inspections of actual houses they had built already. Again, asking questions about their decisions gave more information than the actual house.

We chose our architect because he answered questions with practical answers like “We put the wall there because we needed some privacy in the kitchen” or, my favourtie, “that was a mistake, I wouldn’t do it that way again.”

Don’t go with your first gut instincts. Our architect didn’t make the best first impression, but we’re really happy with the choice we’ve made.

Those are my thoughts on choosing an architect. Sometime later I’ll talk about the challenges of working with one.