Fair warning notice for my architect

Architects are brilliant, creative people. They have huge amounts of experience and expertise, and are often able to point out the errors in your plans from simply glancing at them. It’s all this expertise and more that you’re paying for when you ask them to design your house, and ignoring their advice can prove costly in terms of time, money and/or quality.

However…

On some of the tv shows I’ve seen, the architect brought in to advise on a project has ended up being a bit of a bully. They have seen something which they don’t personally like, or an opportunity that they’ve been dying to try out for ages, and have simply browbeaten the client into accepting them

Take this example: on one show a couple were building an eco-home and had planned out their kitchen to include an American style double fridge freezer. They had located this fridge/freezer in a place which would create a bit of a pinch point in terms of getting into the kitchen, though nothing which would result in seriously restricted access. Upon seeing this the architect convinced them to get rid of it entirely and instead install a smaller, integrated fridge and integrated freezer. You could see that the wife wasn’t happy with this, but the husband was more easily convinced and they ended up doing it. At the end, it was clear that they regretted their decision; it wasn’t that the final option wasn’t any good, just that it wasn’t what they wanted. As they said to the architect; “that’s your opinion and now we’ve got to live with it”.

I don’t think that’s right at all. Architects should definitely highlight issues and flag up potential problems, but to stop people from installing the appliance they want just because they don’t think it’s a good idea? That’s going too far.

At most they should help the client come up with some viable alternatives. Why did they so badly want such a large fridge freezer in the first place? Was it something they felt strongly about, or would they be happy to look at alternatives? If they really did want it, why did they want it there in particular? Where else in the kitchen could it go instead? Does it actually need to go in the kitchen?

It’s little things like that which can quickly build up resentment and become big issues when in fact they aren’t big at all. It’s something I’m desperate to avoid with whoever ends up putting my designs and thoughts onto paper (or whichever design software has replaced paper these days). The trouble is, after planning this house for so long in my head I fear we will be at loggerheads from day one.

Advice from architects on how to keep a positive relationship going always starts with “give us an outline and then trust us to deliver”. From what I can see, architects like the freedom to put their creativity into action, understanding the gist of a client’s needs and then fulfilling them in a way they could never envisage themselves.

Trouble is, I’m also quite a creative person, and have been distilling my ideas since 2005. I have nothing by way of experience when it comes to building houses, with only the internet and the back catalogue of every self-building show in the UK to go on. However, the floorplan I have in my head has over this time become more than a little defined. I can sketch it in minutes, detail out the dimensions of every room as I see them, tell you what type of staircase I want, talk through the benefits and drawbacks of the sunken floor I want in the living room. I have walked through it so many times in my mind and described it to people in such detail that I am confident I could bluff my way through a presentation to councillors at a planning control meeting.

This blog itself gives such a clear indication of my ambitions and thoughts that it shouldn’t be a surprise to a good architect what I’m after. The trouble is, a good architect will not want to simply recreate my own plans but to design their own, and a bad architect won’t take the time to go through any or all of this at all.

That’s not to say I am not open to changing my mind however. Over all those years a number of key elements have changed significantly as new opportunities came to mind. Integrating the spiral staircase with the wine cellar, removing one of the basement toilets, adding the laundry chute, the sunken floor, the sloping back middle section of the house, the staircase configuration; all this and more has come about through inspiration at trade fairs and research. I’m convinced that a good architectural consultant could easily suggest some simple changes which would make a big deal, or even some big changes too; the challenge will be in finding an architect who is happy working with what is I fear quite a restrictive brief while still retaining their ability to improve it and add their own creative elements.

As a creative person who has worked in roles where all semblance of creativity has for one reason or another been slowly squeezed out of me, this situation is one in which no-one wins.

I just want to make sure that my architect knows just what they are getting themselves into when they agree to take this project on!