The Role of an Architect

04 Understanding the role of your architect

Your architect will do a lot of work for your project. A huge amount of work. Even describing it feels like a daunting task. The key fact to remember is your architect is your primary advocate on your project. When an architect first hears of a project, it ought to feel exciting. The initial meeting should feel like a creative beginning that can be made real – something that resonates with both parties. 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 discipline an architect ought to bring along with this creativity is a well-defined and documented process that means you can see it step-by-step too.

The initial phases of the project should begin conceptually or broadly and include lots of client participation. They are the phases where you will be asked to make key decisions and approve work before moving into the subsequent phase. It is important to make sure your architect doesn’t get too far into the process without approved direction. Heading down an undesirable path without checking in with you could cause unnecessary, expensive, and time-consuming redesign and redrawing. When the project begins, it is worth checking that you understand the deliverables the team will be working on and presenting to you. Your architect will use drawings, diagrams, renderings, and other imagery to communicate your next steps and options. The process works best with swift feedback and approval, so understanding how to read and interpret basic drawings, imagery, and documents plays a large part. The architect can adjust their communication style to suit the project needs to a degree, but may be unable to accommodate specific requirements. Again, it is important to discuss your requirements upfront. Architectural drawing comprehension is not common, so you should not feel remotely embarrassed about asking for help. Although they are ‘easier’ to read, it can be challenging to review 3D renderings, artists’ impressions, and photo-realistic graphics. Especially early in the project, it is important to remember architects are presenting possibilities rather than finalized ideas. The best advice is to ask your architect to see the drawings, renderings, and documents they have created from a project that is similar to yours in scope prior to starting work. You can talk through what was involved with making them and how they were used. Your architect is here to help you at every phase of the design and construction activity. They will want to be a resource and your advocate. They will have been through the process of delivering a project many times before. If you have the right conversations at the beginning of the project and find the required alignments, you’ll succeed.

These phases may encompass all appropriate work your architect (and general contractor) will deliver to complete your project, and they may adjust as necessary – for instance, your project may not require all of these phases. This should be determined with your architect at the beginning of your process. The key is appropriate work. It is important to remember the architect is not working to their own agenda. They are not even working directly for you, per se. Once the project is defined, and set in motion, it becomes its own entity, with its own energy. Your architect ought to work in the project’s best interests at all times. They ask questions directly to ‘the project’ and look for responses. It is an architect’s role to decide what is and what isn’t appropriate. They ask ‘the project’ if a certain design move is warranted and then see the resulting outcome. This means good architects are not always in the business of giving clients what they want all the time. They always prioritize their projects and develop relationships with them in a manner that means emotional and irrational decisions are reduced or removed. Importantly, this is most effective with a well-defined project where objectives have been clearly established at the onset.

The architect is the advocate that balances the project’s needs with your desires in an unbiased manner. Their role is guiding all parties to the best results as they simultaneously manage all aspects of the project. The collective stakeholders on the project will no doubt input their views, but it is the architect that conducts the complex series of overlapping layers to keep the project on track. Communication and organization skills are often as important as technical skills here, so it is vital that you feel comfortable with your architect playing this central role.

Most architects are invested in their work and want to do the best job they possibly can. They also need to balance the project with the client’s expectations and available investment. Things can, and do, change too. With so many moving parts, any architect’s agreement needs to have a mechanism for accommodating the fact that projects evolve. It pays to have an understanding and flexible working relationship knowing that demands on time and resources become clearer after early project phases are complete. Architects typically work a few different ways. These can be broadly split into three categories: a fixed fee, hourly rates, and a combination of the two. If it’s a fixed fee, it is often based on a percentage of the overall hard costs of construction. This will be based on the architect’s experience of similar project expectations, and will likely include a contingency figure. With a fixed fee, asking for work to be repeated or reviewed because you change your mind or circumstances alter will normally come as an additional cost. It is important you agree on how changes are to be managed and paid for with your architect. An architect can also simply tell you how many hours they’ve spent on a task and ask to be reimbursed. This is typically on a monthly basis. They still ought to be able to estimate a maximum fee based on a percentage of the hard costs of construction for planning and budgeting purposes. You might be lucky and the architect uses less than the predicted hours, but you may overspend. A good, reliable architect should minimize any surprises. Your architect may also vary their fee approach depending on the phase of work. They may prefer to be reimbursed on an hourly basis for phases that have a heavy or open-ended design and decision-making process. Once the project is defined and it’s a matter of completing all the technical and coordinating work, the design team can provide a more accurate timeline and the fee can be fixed.

Architectural drawings will form part of the discussion with your architect. They are the work product that will get your project constructed. It is important to agree on the appropriate number of design iterations or changes for each project element. Redrawing or amending them takes up billable hours. As a client, it can prove costly to fret over small details and change your mind too often. Not all drawings are equal. Every architect approaches this part of their craft differently, but they will generally produce drawings in a series that builds in information as layers that become more detailed as they develop. The drawings are the graphic representation of the project, which represents its goals and objectives. They are submitted to regulators (AHJs) for approval, and they describe what is to be built by the general contractor and their subcontractors. The project agreement with your architect ought to, therefore, include a drawing list, or matrix, defined by phase. This will allow you to follow your architect’s processes and track their work. It will also give you an understanding of the amount of work required to complete the project from start to finish.

Architectural drawings, renderings, and specifications come in many forms. The general term ‘blueprint’ is still used more often than necessary and is a legacy term for a basic set of architectural drawings or prints. These initial drawings are submitted with your building permit application. They provide basic dimensions, specification information, and the overall look of your project. They are also used by the general contractor and their subcontractors to calculate their prices and then start building. They are two-dimensional, depicting plans, elevations, sections, and other details. The drawing sets will also include notes, diagrams, lists, and specifications. These specifications (often shortened to specs), can be contained in a separate document that is read together with the drawing set. Your local AHJ will also require certain drawings and specifications before assessing a project and approving any building permit application. As well as delivering these as a statutory minimum, architects will provide drawings to communicate the project’s goals and objectives. These goals and objectives are unique to each project. There are many drawing conventions, and each project can, to a degree, define a graphic language of its own to communicate how it is to be constructed. Architects don’t rely on these drawings alone. They typically use presentations to communicate project ideas. A combination of floor plans, elevations, sections, and detailed drawings as well as renderings, visualizations, material palettes, etc, are used in these presentations.

It is worth remembering that seeing and understanding three-dimensional space based on two-dimensional drawings is a skill that can be learned. Renderings are also not required for the AHJ or contractors. As a result, it is worth being sensitive about how the rendering process is used. The desire to see a finished image too soon can put unnecessary stress on your project without achieving a result. Is creating a three-dimensional image the best use of your architect’s time? It might seem so in the short-term, but it is much better to let the process continue towards a complete drawing package uninterrupted.