Process

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A good design starts with a clear and well thought-out brief. Understanding your vision and how you want the design to enhance your life is essential, which is why time is taken to truly get to know you before any work begins.

• Motivations: What inspires and drives you.
• Lifestyle: The way you live, move, and interact with your space.
• Routine: The rhythms and routines that shape your day-to-day life.
• Story: Your personal history and how it can be reflected in the design.
• Building Requirements: Considerations like family size, entertaining needs, and functionality.
• Specifics: Unique interests, hobbies, and spatial requirements that matter to you.

By understanding these key elements, the design can truly reflect your vision and serve your needs in the most meaningful way.

Every site presents its own unique opportunities and challenges. A successful design responds accurately to these factors, which is why I place great emphasis on a really thorough site analysis. This ensures a full understanding of the site’s potential and limitations, allowing the design to maximise its advantages while addressing any constraints.

Key considerations in the site analysis include:

• Climate: Temperature, humidity, and seasonal variations to optimise comfort and energy use.
• Views: Key vistas and sightlines to enhance connection with the environment.
• Prevailing Wind: Wind patterns to inform ventilation and outdoor spaces.
• Sun Exposure: Daylight and shade to optimise energy efficiency and comfort.
• Topography: Slopes and contours to inform layout and accessibility.
• Privacy: Screening and spatial planning to ensure privacy and minimise overlooking.
• Access & Circulation: Pathways and entry points for smooth movement through the site.
• Ecosystems: Existing flora, fauna and natural features to preserve or integrate.

By carefully analysing these factors, the design can be fully aligned with the site’s distinctive characteristics and surroundings.

Alongside a solid response to the brief and site, I take pride in being able to offer a specialised design service that can incorporate the following.

Natural Beauty

Each design is inspired by the site’s unique natural features to complement the land it rests on, and to create seamless connections with the surrounding nature.

• Topography: Drawing from the landscape’s forms to shape the architecture.
• Materiality: Using local natural materials so the building appears to grow from the land - I have plenty of knowledge in designing with rammed earth, straw, wool, lime, native timber and stone.
• Ecology: Observing nearby ecosystems to inspire colour palettes and sensory experience.

By harmonising architecture with the land and using sustainable materials, I strive to create spaces that feel rooted in place and in tune with nature.

Passive Design

Harnessing the site's specific natural forces & resources - like sun, wind, and thermal mass - to prioritise the creation of healthy, comfortable spaces while also reducing energy consumption.

• Solar Gain: Maximising the sun’s energy for heating.
• Shading Design: Preventing overheating through strategic shading.
• Thermal Mass: Using dense materials carefully to stabilise temperatures.
• Natural Ventilation: Promoting airflow for cooling and air quality.
• Renewable Electricity: Integrating solar, wind, and micro-hydro power where possible.
• Natural Light: Optimising daylight and reducing the need for artificial lighting.
• Off-Grid Services: Incorporating systems that enable self-sufficiency & closed cycles.
• Mechanical Additions: When the site's natural resources doesn’t fully meet energy needs, mechanical systems like heat-exchange ventilation and energy-efficient heating/cooling are incorporated.

This approach ensures each project is designed for long-term comfort and sustainability, with minimal environmental impact.

Environmental Impact

Through thoughtful design, a building can greatly reduce its impact while ensuring comfort, function, and aesthetics. This is addressed in three ways.

1. Embodied Impact: Minimising the upfront environmental cost of the construction through the careful consideration of material types/sources, durability/lifespan, construction waste, and even beauty (beautiful buildings are preserved, rather than demolished).
2. Lifetime Impact: Designing for operational efficiency to reduce building's on-going impact & resource use.
3. Ecosystem Impact: Minimising the direct impact on the site's ecosystem by considering earthworks, construction phase site disturbance, surface water paths, shading, toxicity, and ecological balance.

The concept design stage is the first of two key design phases, with this stage focusing on the fundamentals of the project.

• Functionality
• Site response
• Spatial layout & flow
• Passive design
• Exploring initial form

The concept design is presented and discussed with you to ensure that the core opportunities and constraints of the project are clearly understood and thoughtfully addressed according to your brief. It's about setting strong foundations: shaping the big ideas, aligning with the natural features of the site, making the critical decisions that guide the design before any finer details are developed, and ensuring that the project continues in a direction that resonates with you.

Following concept design, the developed design stage refines and resolves the ideas into a more detailed and coordinated architectural proposal - taking clearer shape in order to ensure that the design is more grounded in reality and aligned with the project vision.

• Adjustments according to Concept Design feedback
• Refined form & layout
• Final material selections
• Structural considerations
• Internal finishes
• Integrated building systems

Again, the plans and 3D renders for this stage are presented to you to gather your feedback for any last changes before committing to the following Cost Estimate and Documentation stages.

Ensuring that the design is within budget before committing to the final, and most involved, Documentation & Consenting stages. This involves the preparation of preliminary plans, collaborating with quantity surveyors, and presenting findings.

• Adjusting the design as per feedback from the previous stage
• Preparation of preliminary plans containing the relevant information for the cost estimate
• Engaging a quantity surveyor to carry out a cost estimate
• Reviewing the cost estimate results and discussing the findings/best path forward with you

Only once the design and cost estimate has been approved by you will the project continue.

Preparing the final plans and documentation necessary for construction and consenting (resource and/or building consent), and taking care of the whole consent process on your behalf. Ensuring a stress-free process for you, while I take care of all the bureaucratic and administrative complexities, so you're free to enjoy the excitement of your project approaching the construction stage!