1st Question to ask your architect BEFORE hiring them
Suspension House by Fougeron Architecture - Photography ©JoeFletcher
Introduction
This is the first of five blog posts covering key questions clients should ask the architects they are interviewing. It is the result of many conversations we’ve had with clients who were partway through a project with a different architect or home designer but were unhappy or unsure of what’s happened so far and then reached out to us for guidance. If these questions had been asked during the interview process, these clients would've avoided a lot of headaches, stress, and wasted money and time.
#1
Profession and project experience
Hire an architect for their problem-solving and creative skills, not their just project experience. Make sure they have actual architecture education and experience.
Project Experience
One of the most common questions clients will ask their to-be-architect is, “What is your project experience?”. Clients want to know if the architect has done projects that were of a similar size, scope, and style. These are valid concerns, however, this information is actually not as helpful as clients may think.
Probably the most valuable aspect of the question is the style alignment (don’t hire a classical architect to do a modern home), but it should not be a deal breaker if the architect has not done your exact project (type, scale, or location) before.
Most clients believe that if they hire a professional (of any service, not just architecture) who has done the same kind of projects over and over, then they’ll be guaranteed security and efficiency in the project process. However, when it comes to custom homes, this thinking only works to a certain degree. The reality is that project experience built on narrow repetition does not guarantee that the project going to be good and certainly not creative—which, if you’re hiring an architect for a custom home, is a primary reason. The limitations of repetitive project experience even apply to one’s technical efficiency. Being efficient at solving the same technical issues in cookie-cutter homes is not the skillset or mindset required for problem-solving technical matters in custom homes.
Clients might also be interested to know that architects are actually educated and trained to design a lot of different types of structures. And of course, some of the most incredible works of architecture were done by architects who had no prior experience designing that exact building type.
In summary, redundancy is quality and efficiency death in custom homes, so don’t put too much weight on perfectly matched project experience. We’ve seen many clients who hired an architect based on these criteria and then were later disappointed with the results.
Profession-Based Experience
So what should clients ask instead? Rather than just focusing on project experience, it is better to find out if the individual claiming to be an architect has architecture-profession experience—that is if they studied architecture and practiced architecture in an architecture office. It might seem silly to ask these questions, but actually, there are many ‘home designer’ professionals who claim to be an architect and/or allow it to sound like they have architectural experience when they do not.
Why does architectural experience matter? Architecture education and experience are both incredibly specific and rigorous and impart a way of thinking and problem-solving that are necessary for designing buildings—this thinking is really the core foundation for all architects. This background is also very different from other educations and experiences (like construction, interior design, or decorating. Most often when clients hire these other professionals as their ‘architects’, they end up having design or technical problems part way through the project. We’ve seen this countless times.
Here are the different ways the three professionals approach home design:
When contractors design homes, they tend to approach the task from a pragmatic and technical problem-solving perspective. They will solve only certain things and mostly from a functional standpoint. They tend to be hyper-specific in their solutions, and therefore often don't think about the big picture—the flow, the part, the concept, the spatial relationships, the program.
Professionals with mostly interior design backgrounds design a home from the other end of the spectrum. They tend to start with and focus heavily on the visuals—the materiality, colors, textures, cool furniture, etc. The pretty picture. The larger spatial and formal (shape) aspects of the home fall by the wayside, and often the structural and technical knowledge is not there.
The third professional who has an architectural education and has practiced at architecture offices operates more cohesively—they know the many aspects of architectural design—and that's what you want from your architect. You want them to have that big-picture view, problem-solving thinking, and technical knowledge.
Conclusion
Clients often call us in a panic and looking for help because they hired a home designer who the client assumed to be an experienced architect with the education and experience mentioned above, only to realize midway through the project that this was not the case. They end up unhappy with the design or building performance, and/or they have technical, budget, or schedule problems. Speaking as interior designers and architects (and on behalf of the many frustrated clients we’ve met), there is a real difference between the three professionals mentioned above. Avoid problems and find the right architect by asking about their profession-based experience (and not just their project experience).