So, you've decided on Architecture?

Designing your home, or renovation is harder than buying one from a brochure or display home. But it's definitely worth it. On the one hand, there's a lot of decisions to make but on the other hand, a lot of decisions are completely out of your hands. Each decision you make is the death of another decision and often you won't know what decisions you've killed until it's too late. This is the best reason to engage a professional as early as you possibly can in your project.

The most important thing that we learn is to be open to exploring possibilities and thinking about what creates the most beautiful spaces and how to trade off those decisions against client desires, budget, regulations, site constraints, climate considerations, budget, structural considerations, material constraints, budget, lifestyle choices and budget.

Having a clear idea of what your home will look like before you start is a sure-fire way to make a complete and expensive mess. A much better approach is to have a clear idea of how your home will feel like before you start.

So how should you prepare for your project?

Write your brief

A brief is a document that outlines the key details, goals, and requirements of a project. It serves as a roadmap for your designer, ensuring they understand your vision, needs, and constraints. You can change it! Probably the most famous disregard for the brief was the Sydney Opera House. Jorn Utzon created a design for a building Australia had never seen the likes of, and a building which was completely different from every other submission (see more here). But can you imagine Sydney Harbour without it?

A brief is a living document, it can change, be added to or subtracted but it's your kicking off point. Get everything in it though because it's much easier to take it out than putting something in later.

Understand your needs and wants

• What spaces do you need. Do you need 4 bedrooms, or do you need 3 bedrooms and a place to work from home. Do you need two separate living spaces, or do you need a place where everyone can be together and a small nook for reading?

• How will you use these spaces? Do you want a pool? Great but is it a plunge pool because you just want to cool off or is it a lap pool because you want to keep fit, or is it a natural pool because you like the environmental aspect? How you will use these spaces changes how they will be designed, how much space they require, how much budget they require, etc etc. Knowing how you will use the space is as important as knowing you need the space.

• Have a really good understanding of how you want to live. This is your opportunity to not only design your home but to design your life. You can shape the house to support your wants and needs, you don't need to adapt to it. Your home will be an expression of you and your family and can be as weird as you want.

• Are there any specific styles you love? Gather inspiration from Pinterest, magazines, or other sources, such as archdaily, Dezeen or architectureau. They'll often be contradictory but the more you explore, the more you will like and the more you show your designer, the better they understand you.

  
  

Set a Budget

• Wu Tang was right, "Cash rules everything around me" but it's more complicated than that. Budget is budget but it's not our only constraint. We need to factor in time and quality as well. Can the project be broken up into phases? Can we make material and architectural decisions that will impact cost?

• But seriously, know how much you can spend and be upfront and look for ways that your budget can be managed within all of the other constraints.

Research local designers

• Look at portfolios and see if their style aligns with your own. Meet them, talk about your project. You're about to trust them with a lot of your money and work together to make your project, the best that it can be. They're on your team, so make sure that you want to work with them.

• Why local? They know the climate, they know the regulations, they know the builders and consultants, they're nearby for site inspections and meetings and they know the place.

  
  

Understand the Process

• You will start with big ideas and a site but very quickly that site will determine what you can and cannot do, so we need to work in stages to progress the design. Clients have often thought about their project for a long time before they engage a designer and it's easy to get stuck in the weeds. This is why we follow a process of design stages, which slowly take us from our big ideas and site constraints to selecting our taps. Each project phase makes decisions which allow us to build on those definite decisions to move onto the next project phase. Where the living room sits within your floor plan comes before how big it is. What it's built out of comes before what tiles you have on the floor.

• Sketch design gives us a floor plan. → This gives us enough information to move to Concept design which gives us elevations → This gives us enough information to move to Town planning etc etc etc. Whoever you will be working with has their own process but it's important that decisions are taken in the right order or you simply can't progress your design. You can make changes in the future but you need to proceed as though you won't.

  
  

Gather Relevant Information

• A site survey is the first thing that you will need. Having this before you speak to your designer can help

• Do you have any specific regulations around your project? Your designer knows how to gather council and state and national requirements but if there is anything that you are aware of, get this together.

  
  

Prepare Questions

When meeting you are talking to prospective designers, ask things like:

• What’s your experience with similar projects?

• How do you charge (fixed fee, hourly, percentage of construction cost)?

• What’s your estimated timeline?

• Do you handle applications and consultant coordination?

  
  

Enjoy!

Designing a home or renovation is an amazingly exciting thing. You're about to be a part of creating something that will probably outlast you. Architecture is a profession with thousands of years of precedents and amazing buildings and your project should teach you a little bit about it. You should explore buildings that you've never seen before from all over the world full of ideas from some of the most famous architects that you've probably never heard of. So enjoy the process and trust that you've made a good decision with choosing your designer and trust in the process of your designer to help you deliver.