Journal

How do you calculate if saying yes, green-lighting the project, and making the investment in the build will pay off? The answer is to consider a return over the project’s full lifecycle for you and your family. Both financially and emotionally.

Your architect will use drawings, diagrams, renderings, and other imagery to communicate your next steps and options. Having a basic understanding of these key elements of how architecture is communicated will give you a deeper understanding of what your architect is proposing.

There are a lot of moving parts to this process, and it’s not typically done until the final inspections are complete and, ultimately, your new building is in use. You are not expected to navigate the specifics of building permits alone. Your design team and construction professionals will be better advocates for you, especially when the process feels opaque and is hard to understand.

Given their experience and professional background, your architect should see a path through the project to the end. A good, engaged, and passionate architect should know where you need to get to, even if you don’t yet. They should be ten, twenty, or thirty steps ahead, wanting to figure out everything on the project as if it’s a puzzle being assembled in their mind. It’s this skill that an architect brings to the team.

The language of your project goals is translated into architecture, design, and construction objectives by the project team. The only way this happens is through transparency. Effective communication from all sides will result in a far stronger project and a better experience for the whole project team, including yourself.

Construction is a long-lasting investment that succeeds when the building quality matches the design intent, and because architecture makes a lasting mark on our world, this could be judged over decades, or even centuries. Balancing financial investment, time, and quality therefore becomes complex.

Everyone involved in the design and construction of a building needs to understand the big idea behind it. What is the end goal? What is the project aiming to achieve? The initial idea needs capturing somehow. The tool architects use to do this is often referred to as a concept, or starting statement. This ought to be a short, definitive statement that records a moment in time and grounds the project in tangible language.

Whatever construction style or scope of the construction project you are embarking on, I would encourage you to take Speaking Architecture along with you. Think of it in the same way that you might think of a travel guide to a far-flung destination or a phrase book in a language you haven’t quite mastered yet.

Our goal is to create thoughtful spaces that help people live more purposeful, peaceful, and productive lives. This book is intended to be the guide for this journey.