A lot of our clients love the design process. It’s fun to brainstorm, point to things in 3D and imagine how wonderful it will feel to see the project built. Architecture brings out the child in all of us! In the ideal world, creating architecture is as joyous as you and your Architect building sandcastles together.

However, because it is a group project, design process of a building or site can go wrong in several distinct ways, usually traced back to poor communication. Here are the three most common mistakes to avoid when working with an Architect:

Let’s say, you’re the owner of a plot of land and you hire an Architect to design you a house on this land. At the beginning of the project, you agree on a certain defined scope of services: the Architect will help you come up with the program (a list of rooms and spaces you might want in the house, their sizes and relationships to each other); they will design a house that fits your program; provide you with a set of construction documents that you can take to the contractor and build it; and finally, the Architect agrees to visit the construction site every other week and help you and the contractor resolve any issues that might come up during construction.

You happily sign the contract, deliver the retainer check and get to work. After some back and forth discussion, the program looks good and you agree that the design of the house should commence. It’s beginning to look like the house of your dreams! It has bedrooms for everyone, including the occasional visiting in-law, a home office far away from the noisy common areas, and even the two-story living room with a fireplace you’ve always wanted. It’s very exciting!

Right about this time, your partner comes back from a trip to Greece and they are full of new ideas! They tell the Architect that they also want to include a courtyard in the layout of the building, a big porch for outdoor entertaining right next to where your office would have been, and a terraced backyard with a pool.

All of these ideas may be great, but here’s where we are looking scope creep straight in the face: at this stage of design, adding spaces and reorganizing them will require the Architect to go far back to the beginning of the design process, essentially restarting it. Now, maybe your Architect included a limited number of design changes early on, before you settled on the two-story living room and the corner office. At this point, however, accommodating the new ideas from your globetrotting partner will stretch the initial scope of services beyond what you and the Architect agreed on.

There is no shame in not exactly knowing what you want - and your Architect will help you narrow it down during the early design phases. To avoid scope creep, do your best to communicate what exactly you are hiring the Architect to do for you and do not assume that they include everything in a fixed fee. Similarly, the Architect needs to ask a lot of questions and not assume that your project will follow the linear path they are used to. It’s better to increase the scope of services early on than arrive at a misunderstanding later.

2. Interference from someone who is not part of the project team

At a very early stage, a design project can benefit from an abundance of ideas thrown at it from all kinds of direction. In architecture school, this stage is called “ideation.” In layman’s terms, it’s brainstorming - the more the merrier. If you have a creative cousin who loves DIY home improvement, by all means, let her give you some ideas.

The Architect serves as a facilitator of this brainstorming session, gathering all of the input from you as the owner and anyone else you want to be a part of it. It is the Architect’s role to filter through the ideas, the good ones and the bad ones, corral the winners and make recommendations. Their recommendations are based on understanding your needs as a client, their professional experience, and your desired outcome. It may sound corny, but a good, responsible Architect will always have your best interests in mind. And that means clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of the project team members.

Once the ideas crystallize and the development of the design begins, it is time for your DIY cousin to go home. They may mean well, but unless you also engaged her as a general contractor, their input beyond the brainstorming stage will only harm the project (and may lead to scope creep - see above).

Having someone outside of the project team involved in its development would be like performing a surgery following advice from the internet. In this case, you, the owner, would be on the operating table, your Architect would hold the knife and your DIY cousin would keep trying to “help” with their bare hands. For best results, the “operating room” of your project should be reserved only for the stakeholders with contractual rights and responsibilities.

We hear this more often than we would like to admit. Someone calls, tells us about this piece of land they’ve acquired and what they would like to build on this land. They call an Architect because they “just want some blueprints.” It may even be the case that they already called or even worked with a drafter, and those “blueprints” required an Architect’s stamp.

Now, imagine this scenario: you have a toothache. You google the symptoms and arrive at the internet diagnosis of, let’s say, a cavity. And then you call a dentist and tell them that what you need from them is a filling of such and such size.

The dentist, a licensed professional with a sense of responsibility and looking out for your best interests, is not likely to “just give you a filling.” That would be some seriously bad service, and maybe even an example of malpractice.

What they will ask, instead, is why. Why do you think you need a filling? What are your symptoms? You are back at the beginning, assessing the symptoms. They will then examine you and figure out the likely causes of your toothache. And only then will they make a diagnosis and recommend the appropriate course of treatment that will take you to the desired outcome of zero toothache.

It could even be, indeed, a filling of such and such size. If that’s the case, congratulate yourself on your excellent web search skills and luck of having an easily treatable condition.

Or it could be a number of other causes, which would need a completely different approach, where a filling would be the wrong thing to pay for.

Like dentists, Architects are licensed professionals looking out for your best interests and bearing the responsibility of figuring out the best “course of treatment” to help you arrive at your desired outcome. So, to revisit the request for “just some blueprints,” a better approach would be to have a conversation about the Why. Tell us about your vision. Walk us through the future you are setting out to create. Is it a peaceful family home where both partners enjoy the convenience of separate home offices and the joy of entertaining guests in their beautiful backyard on the weekends? Is it the optimal cash flow from a fully leased apartment building, requiring minimal maintenance? Is it a walkable neighborhood where people are happy, healthy and thriving?

What is your desired outcome?

The Architect’s task is to understand the causes and goals of your project and recommend a service that will address those causes and achieve your goals.

It may even involve some “blueprints” - though these days, we use the word “drawings” (and this word is likely to become obsolete soon, too, as more and more architects work with 3D models instead).

So, these are some of the pitfalls to watch out for during your project’s development. Your Architect will love you for being merely aware of these, and they will return the favor by being flexible with small design changes, transparent with their fees, and respectful of your goals. At the end of the day, we all want to make great things happen and work in harmony together. A utopian view of the industry, perhaps, but one that is worth striving for nonetheless!

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