Our collaborative approach makes the process of transforming your aspiration into your completed home easy, clear and exciting. This helps you to achieve a healthy, spacious and comfortable home with lower energy bills, without the process being confusing or stressful. During our five step process, we are dedicated to providing you with designs that truly reflect your unique style and personality using virtual reality. We want to ensure that every aspect of your project is carefully considered and executed. We take pride in our ability to create robust designs that showcase the beauty of the materials used, and we’re passionate about expressing how buildings are made.
Your project will be tailored to you. Once we get to know you and understand your aspirations and requirements, we help you form a strategic brief. The design and construction process can be confusing if you haven’t worked with an architect before. To simplify it we have a five stage process explained on the following pages. We let you know what we will be doing at each stage and what you are required to do. During the concept design stage, we present ideas you may not have thought of in a clear and transparent way. We like to be transparent in our designs too by making the history of your home legible, restoring period features and making a clear distinction between those and any new modern additions.
The journey begins with getting to know you, your aspirations and your project site. We visit you at your home and spend 2 hours with you discussing your dreams and answering any questions you have on the process, the opportunities, costs and timescales. Our research and this initial meeting is summarised in a feasibility report which firms up the project brief and gives direction to what you want to achieve.
We then return to present drawings and images of at least 2 options at the concept design stage which meet your brief. You can either choose one or a combination of both cherry picking your favourite parts.
At the detailed design stage, we draw up your favourite design in more detail and produce planning drawings and documents required to submit a planning application to the local authority. We can also submit the application for you and negotiate with the planning officer.
Once we have the necessary approvals from the local authority, we begin the technical design phase. We produce a pack of drawings, schedules and specifications to send out to the preferred contractors so they can return a cost to build your project. Once we receive the prices back from the contractors, we compare them and help you decide who you want to choose.
Once the preferred contractor has been chosen, we can be there to manage your project on site and administer the building contract. This involves site inspections to make sure the design is built correctly and to value the work completed on a monthly basis to make sure the interim payments reflect the work that’s been completed. A changes on site are negotiated variations and issued as instructions to the contractor. We would then issue the Practical Completion certificate on completion of the works which would be just before you move back in to your transformed home.