Processes involved in an Architecture Project

Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash

Project enquiry is generally made over phone prior to meeting the architect in person.

An appointment for the meeting is scheduled. Architects present their work profile. You discuss about your needs of the project, budget, aspirations of how it should be and so on.

Now this lays the foundation of the project more like prepping up before assembling a motor engine or knowing and getting all the ingredients in place to be on hands reach before cooking. It is ensuring all its parts/ ingredients are available to be assembled/ fixed up as per the manual /design. In other words, data collection+ research + survey stage.

Every relevant client’s information pertaining to the project is learned by the architect through her or his interaction with the client in person. The why’s, what’s, how’s are answered not ignoring the reasoning and clarification of the if’s and but’s. The project aspirations of the clients are precisely captured by the architect along with their lifestyle, likes and dislikes, personality, needs, present and projected spatial requirements, etc basically all about the client can influence the design. Now this is what we covered in our previous blog post, and this is why the meeting has to happen in person or at least via a video call.

This in turn gives rise to the program of the project, which, put in terms of the language of an architect’s drawing – no of users*, their spatial requirements, nature and functions of the spaces intended, their sizes, proximities and so on. (The term users shall not only include residents but also accounts for the visitors, service people, admin staff, pets, postman, milkman, the newspaper boy, the guy who is going to come and maintain the septic tank and the overhead tank, those birds that are already visiting that large tree in the existing site, allllll who are going to use the space within the given dimensions of the site)

Next to client, the most important aspect in a design that is to be addressed is THE SITE. In contradiction, site happens to be the most ignored one mostly. Site visit is made by the architect to record the possible data foretold by the site and her relationship with the surrounding, environmental and social context. Now why is this important? Well! No one wants to marry a person before meeting in person at least once and having a conversation. We want to understand the nature and the background of the person we are going to travel with in life. Visiting the site and understanding her context is more or less the same. Also, one doesn’t want to miss the warmth of the morning sun’s rays energizing your living room every morning after your night’s sleep, the evening breeze passing through the corner of the site funneled into your bedroom windows after your day at work or the view of that lush tree home to many beaked visitors. Okay, what if the site allows no view AT ALL! Constraints brew up opportunities only if looked upon with the right perspective. A thoughtful design attempts to CREATE views WITHIN the site with courtyards or stepped gardens and terraces, vertical garden, treatment of roof with open to sky courts and many more such approaches. And the worse is what if without visiting the site, master bedroom window is planned to face an existing garbage dump yard abutting the site? While in this case the positioning of window is dictated by the site’s abutting conditions, visiting and analysis of the site gives more valuable clues and leads to direct and influence the design. BUT only if we are willing to listen to them!

A land surveying done by a licensed land surveyor completes this stage’s list of requisites.

The project is awarded to the architect by a formal agreement made, signed and mailed between both of them and an advance payment is done before proceeding onto the next stage.

We just talked and met once and why does an advance payment has to be made before any deliverable from the architect end is given to us? Such a thought may arise. Dear readers, for us architects or any businessperson for that matter, time is money. Let’s value it. We do not want to commence work before getting the commitment from the clients that we are on board.

A formally signed agreement with the fee proposal and an advance payment done is the first step of ensuring this commitment.

The stages briefed in the blog are relative to the fee payments which simply means after completion of each stage an invoice will be raised and the architect has to be paid!

This majorly holds good for any architect or designer that you work with.