How Do I Brief An Architect For My Home Extension?

When considering a home extension, it's essential to provide a clear brief to the architect responsible for designing the project.

A comprehensive brief will ensure that the architect understands the goals of the project, your preferences, requirements, and budget constraints. All architects do this slightly differently, here is how we determine the brief with you:

1. Defining the project:
We’d start by defining the scope of the project, the specific challenges that your house has, and how the extension aims to address these. They may include expanding a living room area, providing additional bedroom space, adding a home office, a playroom, or transforming a kitchen, or making best use of an unused or poorly arranged spaces.

2. Budget and timeline:
We will have a preliminary discussion about budget and timeline, establish realistic expectations about the scope of work the budget will allow, and the timeframe for the project. We will be upfront about your budget and discuss how best to achieve what you need within the parameters you have set.

3. Provide Inspiration Materials:
We ask our clients to create a mood board of their desired aesthetic. This can be done by collecting images of elements that appeal to you, whether it be a style, a type of materials you want to use, finishes or colours you prefer. Anything that grabs you, they can even be contradictory! It’s about finding the spark that you want. This will help the us capture your vision for the project.

4. Site Considerations:
We will discuss site factors that the we will need to consider when designing your extension, generally these will be land levels, orientation, light, ventilation, and privacy. This information will helps us meld the extension to fit with your house and its surroundings.

5. Collaboration:
Collaboration is critical to the success of any home extension project. We will ensure that there is a clear line of communication between you and us; this will enable you to evolve the design throughout the design process to ensure that the final design meets (or hopefully exceeds) your expectations.

The more defined the brief at the outset, the better the result!