Working With an Architect on a Claremont House

Owners often approach an architect the way they approach a contractor: with a picture of the finished thing and a request for a price. That framing wastes the most valuable part of the relationship, because an architect's real contribution happens before anybody knows what the building is - in the questions asked about how you live, what the site can do, and what problem the house is actually solving.

This deepens the new-construction guide and follows on from the choosing a builder, since the designer and the builder are separate relationships that have to work together.

The phases, and what each produces

Programming

The interview stage. How many people, what rooms, what routines, what the current house gets wrong, what the budget and schedule are. The output is a written program - a description of requirements, not a drawing. Owners frequently want to skip this and go straight to sketches. Do not. A design built on an unexamined program produces a beautiful house that does not fit the household.

Schematic design

The first drawings: massing, layout, orientation, how the building sits on the parcel and relates to sun, view, street and neighbors. Options get explored and discarded here, which is exactly where they should be discarded, since changing a drawing costs almost nothing compared with changing a building.

Design development

The scheme gets resolved. Dimensions firm up, materials are selected, structural approach is settled, systems are located. Consultants enter - structural engineer, sometimes civil, sometimes landscape or lighting. This is the last comfortable point for significant change.

Construction documents

The drawings and specifications that get permitted and built from. Detail level is the point here. Underdrawn sets create change orders, because every question a drawing does not answer becomes a decision somebody makes in the field, usually under time pressure and often at cost.

Permitting

Submittal, plan check comments, corrections, resubmittal. Requirements and review paths vary by parcel and project scope, and the City of Claremont's building and planning counters are the authority on what applies to a specific property. Clarify early who manages this process: the architect, the builder or the owner. Assumed ownership of permitting is a real source of delay.

Construction administration

The phase owners most often cut, and frequently the one they should keep. The architect answers questions from the field, reviews submittals, observes whether the work matches the drawings and helps evaluate changes. Without it, interpretation of the drawings falls to whoever is on site, and the person who understands the design intent is no longer in the conversation.

How architects are engaged

Fee structures vary: a percentage of construction cost, a fixed fee, hourly, or a combination by phase. None is inherently better. What matters is that the agreement names the phases included, the deliverables for each, the number of design revisions covered, which consultants are inside the fee and which are separate, and how permitting and construction administration are handled.

Ask for the scope in writing at that level of specificity. Most disputes between owners and designers are scope disputes wearing a costume.

Being a good client

Three habits make the difference.

Be honest about the budget from the first meeting. Owners withhold the real number believing it will be consumed. What actually happens is that a design gets developed to the wrong scale and has to be cut back later, which wastes design fees and produces a compromised building. An architect cannot design to a number you have not said.

Give feedback on the design, not on the drawing. Saying that a room feels dark, that the entry is confusing, or that you never eat in a formal dining room is useful. Redesigning it yourself between meetings is usually not.

Make decisions and keep them. Reopening a settled question in a later phase is the single most expensive habit an owner can have, because everything downstream of that decision has already been drawn.

How the architect and the builder relate

Two arrangements dominate, and they distribute risk differently.

In the traditional arrangement the owner holds two separate contracts, one with the architect and one with the builder. The advantage is independence: the designer reviewing the work is not employed by the party doing it. The disadvantage is that the owner sits between them when the drawings and the field disagree, and that seat is uncomfortable if you are not prepared for it.

In design-build, one entity carries both. The advantage is a single point of responsibility and usually better cost feedback during design, since the builder is in the room while decisions are made. The disadvantage is the loss of an independent set of eyes on the work.

Neither is right in general. What matters is knowing which one you are in, and if it is traditional, deciding in advance how disagreements between drawings and field conditions will be resolved and who has final say.

Do you need one?

Not every project does. A production home is already designed. Many additions and remodels are handled well by a designer or a design-build contractor. In California, whether a specific residential project requires a licensed architect depends on the scope and the structure involved, and the building department is the right place to confirm the requirement for your work.

Where an architect earns the fee most clearly is on a difficult parcel, a complicated program, a project with real design ambition, or any job where the coordination problem is larger than one trade can hold in its head. Sloping ground, tight lots, unusual shapes and additions to existing houses all qualify.

The sequence that works

Program honestly. Explore in schematic. Resolve in design development. Detail thoroughly. Permit with someone clearly in charge of it. Keep construction administration. And when the drawings become a building, use the new-construction inspection guide to verify what was built against what was drawn.

For the wider picture, see the building and buying new. Anthony Grynchal has been licensed in California since November 2009.