Architecture House Design
The brief is the document that outlines the client’s requirements and desires for their new home.
This is an incredibly important document as it will form the basis of all decisions relating to the design. A well written brief will lead to better architecture house design than a great architect with a poor brief. This makes it one of the most worthwhile spends of your time and brain power.
Most clients will start by listing out what rooms they want and any features they have seen that they like in homes. However the best brief will outline how the household actually live their lives. What do they want the home to offer and what issues would they like solved?
How The Household Actually Live
The best thing you can include in your brief is a true reflection of how the household actually live their lives. How do they spend their time?
What times do the members of the household get up? What is their first thing in the morning? Where do they struggle in their current home? Do any members work from home? If so what do they need from their home whilst working? How do they cook and eat? What is their typical weekday like? How is this different at the weekend? How do they use their outside space? What is stopping them from using it more?
This will help to create some very specific requirements for your home. If the household cook together as a social activity then their kitchen will need to have a different relationship to their living area than a household who cook alone. If the teenagers need to have friends over without it affecting the rest of the household then they will need a different layout than a household who all socialize together.
Priorities
Every home design will involve some compromise. You have a set budget, site limitations and there will only ever be a certain amount of spatial qualities you can achieve in a given space. A well written brief will give the designer clarity on what is a must and what can be compromised on.
By having a clear brief detailing your priorities you will ensure that your designer is compromising in line with your values. If you tell them that natural light in your main living areas is the most important aspect of your design they will know they can compromise on the entrance sequence to ensure the living area gets the best natural light. If you tell them that the outdoor entertaining area is the most important part of your project then they know where to focus their design and budget.
Sometimes this can be an uncomfortable conversation to have but it will be nowhere near as uncomfortable as finding out during the design review that your designer has compromised in the opposite way to what you would have liked.
Budget
This is often the most uncomfortable conversation to have with most clients. Most designers will also find this the hardest to bring up. However both parties will know it is an important conversation to have.
Clients often worry that by telling them what their budget is they will design to exactly that budget whereas they could have designed a simpler home for less. Designers worry they will get it wrong by giving an estimate early on.
Often architecture house design will end up with a design that can’t be built to the available budget due to a lack of honesty around the budget. This means they will have spent a lot of professional fees to get to the stage of completion of the construction documents but will then have to change the design meaning they will then have spent even more professional fees. The final build will be a scaled back version of the design.
By having an honest budget in your brief you will ensure that your designer is making decisions to work with your available budget. This will mean you have the best design possible to work with the resources available.
Negative Brief
The negative brief details what you don’t want in your home. What aspects of your current home are causing the most frustration? What aspects of the homes you have viewed are making you uncomfortable or not appealing? What have you got wrong in your previous homes that you don’t want to repeat?
Often this brief will be much more detailed and insightful as it will come from real experience. If the client can explain to you exactly what is wrong with their kitchen then you will have more useful information than if they can only give you a general idea of what they want.
Often during consultation with an experienced designer you will find that by knowing the negative brief and having a detailed understanding of how the household live their lives you will have the clearest direction. By solving specific issues faced by the specific household you are more likely to have a truly satisfying design than by designing to match an image.
