What to Expect When Working With A Building Designer - Phase 2: Initial Consultation
Phase 2: Initial Consultation
You’ve gathered your ideas, maybe you’ve purchased your site. Now it’s time to start turning this dream of yours into a reality.
After doing your research to find a building designer you might like to work with, it’s time to schedule an initial meeting.
Referrals or word of mouth are often the best ways to narrow your list, because you not only want to feel confident in your chosen building designer, but you want to feel comfortable with them too. You’ll need to understand each other well in order to get the best product possible, and clear communication is key. This will likely be a long term relationship as you work together to take the idea of your home from scattered sparks to tangible, working plans for a builder to work from.
TIP: To find a qualified designer in your area, word of mouth recommendations are often the best way to go. If you’ve already found a builder you’d like to work with, they will often have relationships with designers they trust.
The Meeting
This is a block diagram of a home concept, and is typically the first way a building designer will begin creating your home. Based on the slope, views, and flora of your lot, a building designer or architect can start positioning your home and the types of spaces you want in order to take best advantage of every angle.
Bring all the ideas you’ve gathered with you from Phase 1, beginning with the critical considerations such as the number of bedrooms and bathrooms required, and any lifestyle criteria including home offices, studios, hobby spaces, living rooms and entertaining spaces you desire. This is what building designers call Programming, and it’s the phase where you’ll figure out a target square footage.
The site or land where your home will be built is also important, if known, at this phase, as this will determine the maximum footprint of the home and any hillside or site considerations or complications to be aware of.
If you have a Pinterest board where you’ve been gathering ideas or a Houzz account, you might want to either make that board public or give your designer guest access at this point so they can better understand what you like.
Architecture by nature is extremely visual and all about evoking the right feeling for the right client. A trained building designer will know how to glean all of this information into an initial concept design for you.
Thanks for joining us for Phase 2! Tomorrow, we’ll be back with Phase 3: Conceptual Drawings.
For your convenience, we’ve linked every phase and post from this blog series below.
Phase 5: Construction Documents
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