what are the first active steps you should take to reach your goal?
The Initial Architectural Design Brief
The architectural design brief forms the very start of the design process and setting it down a on paper will help you pull together your ideas, needs, likes and dislikes. It will help you think carefully about what you want from your new house, and it will provide us as architects, a framework to interact with you and work to.
It should be an ever-evolving document as things change and develop and you get a better understanding of your needs. This brief can also be used as a point of reference / checklist thought the whole life cycle of the project to ensure your requirements are meet
So what information should be considered in an initial Architectural design brief?
The following are some of the key issues you will need to consider: Use the links in blue to jump to the corresponding section in the b;log text
NARRATIVE
KEY OBJECTIVES - Verify the objectives and priorities you are looking to achieve from the project.
BUILDING TYPOLOGY
SPATIAL REQUIREMENTS - Type of house, schedule of required rooms and area calculations - Are there any rooms that require privacy, separation or connection?
PROGRAMME
DESIGN DIRECTION – including photos of buildings and features/details/materials
REMEMBER stay strategic - Don’t’ get bogged down into detail
At this early stage, it’s is vital that you keep the fundamentals in mind. Resist the temptation to draw up fully-fledged house plans before you even have a site in the bag or at least one on the horizon. .
There’s not much point in expending energy on final proposals until you’ve least assessed the potential site to see how it provides for your aspirations. .
Once you do have a site in your sights, spend time onsite to understand the contextual opportunities and constraints that the location presents. Things like solar orientation, land levels, trees, neighbouring buildings and views all need to be assessed and fed into the design solution. If you have a pre considered brief, you will have a framework to evaluate the site.
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the seven key issues in a little more detail:
NARRATIVE
1 - KEY OBJECTIVES
(More space/Better space/min m2 (ft²)/End value/Kerb Value/Sustainability)
As above, if you want your project to deliver what you ultimately need, you should have a clear appreciation of what you want and why you want it. You should also consider what the short and long-term benefits are and how ultimately you will measure the success of your project. You may also want to set out the aspects of the project that you specifically do not want to happen.
MISSION STATEMENT
You can start by jotting down a short ‘mission statement’ to explain why the project is necessary and what outcomes you are looking to achieve. It may well be that this is something you come back to at the end of the process, by way of summary.
It may be helpful to think about what changes will happen in your own life while living in the house. Will your new home fit you in fifteen or twenty years? Anticipating your future will help you to design a house that will remain useful over a long period. As part of this process, we advise that the whole family should be involved in listing their needs and lifestyle priorities. Don’t forget about dogs and other pets.
Some suggested headline issues and questions you may want to start to address in this phase, but by no means all (everyone’s situation is different):
Do you want to build your home for your growing family?
How long will you live there?
Is it a home for life?
Should it be adaptable/flexible/future-proofed for different stages of your life cycle?
Could it offer an annexe to make it a multi-generational home or somewhere for guest to come and stay?
Do you want to create a healthy environment?
How important is energy efficiency sustainability for you?
Do you want to reduce your energy bills?
Budget; Is money restricted or not an object?
Will it look forwards to 5G, the internet of things etc. and be a smart home?
Aesthetics: Do you like a contemporary style and lots of glass?
Do you want to enjoy light-filled living?
Do you want a habitable loft?
Lifestyle
A starting point is to analyse your existing home:
What have you always wanted to change or improve about it?
Where do you spend the most time together?
How do you spend your time when relaxing, and how can it be improved?
Measure the building plot and the house and work out approximate areas of the rooms using them as a benchmark for your new choices. Occasionally, our self-build clients are surprised to learn that they don’t necessarily need a bigger house, just one with the space arranged differently.
Who will be living in your house and at what stage of the family’s life cycle? How could their needs influence the design? What follows is some suggestions of the things you might consider.
The Family Life Cycle
Babies and toddlers
You will probably want to be near them much of the time. Think about locating the playroom close to where you will spend most of the day possibly adjacent to an open plan kitchen area. As they get older, you’ll probably want the children to be able to enjoy the garden again under your supervision-so windows and/or glazed doors should be located to enable this, possibly looking out from the main kitchen workspace.
Teenagers
You will still want to keep an eye on teenagers but not necessarily in the same room. Having a quiet study zone just around the corner of an open plan living space could help, or desk space in their bedroom. Consider separate areas they can use away from the space you want to enjoy when they have friends over. This might be housed in a loft or a basement, which could have soundproofing beefed up to reduce noise from drum kits and guitars.
Adult children
Your offspring might need to stay at home while they save for a deposit for a place of their own. You may, therefore, require space to enable them to live with you longer. This could even be accommodation for them and their partner.
Parents
Families now span multiple generations. Consider the possible needs of your parents and how space can support older kin if required. This could even be yourself if you see the house as a home for life. For instance, are there rooms on the ground floor that can become bedrooms to enable easy access?
An easy feature to include could be an accessible shower room on the ground floor, which could be fitted out now or later. This might be located within your downstairs cloakroom, close to any potential future bedroom space, which might start at life as a study or a TV room. By ensuring corridors and doors are wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair, don’t forget the turning circle, the house, you need radical structural changes later on. This could mean your home is useful due for longer.
To read more on creating a home for life, see our articles XXXX & XXXX
Daily routine
When you are not there, you may be surprised at what happens in your home, or when you do something and when you do it. Discovering and being aware of the family life cycle sequence could influence the plans of the new house.
This is not to suggest that you need to prepare a detailed “time and motion study”. For example, the family needs a place or places where the TV can be watched without disturbing others who are asleep or doing homework. Likewise, individuals need to be able to come and go in the night or early morning, without disturbing those who are asleep. You may want a room to be used as a study, away from the rest of the house. Again, these requirements could influence the design of the house, and its construction, for example, is there a strong case for solid walls insulated against sound transmission.
Flexible living
If you wish to accommodate some or all of the above considerations, we would always encourage you to think about adopting a construction system that allows for flexibility of layout and simple extension or reduction further down the line. The initial design of your home could be influenced by how it might be revised and adapted over future years. Bear in mind that no matter how distant future stages of your life may seem, considering them now makes it far easier to future-proofing.
This relates to both your needs and those of other members of the family. Would an open-plan kitchen zoned into three; a dining space and a sofa area mean that you can cook together with your family and entertain visitors? If you are a fan of watching films, you may think about a home cinema. Or if you like BBQ’s, and as such would find it valuable to have a sheltered area outside with say a gas fire pit, and an open kitchen including a static barbeque, and pizza ovens, all of which are currently on-trend.
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BUILDING TYPOLOGY
2 - SPATIAL REQUIREMENTS
(List of general rooms and activities required)
So how do you present all the thoughts above?
Think about internal spaces that you feel you need, then rather than how they will be planned as rooms, this can later be developed as part of the actual design instead consider them in the following two ways:
1. How they relate to each other?
2. How they relate to the activities going on inside them?
A simple bubble diagram can help to explore connections/relationships between rooms:
Create a spreadsheet with eight columns with headings as below:
Populate the first column with a list of rooms/spaces you would like to have, then tick one of the three adjacent columns titled “essential”, “desirable” and “luxury”. Keep in mind that most of the category “luxury” are likely to be crossed off the list as the design work starts and budgets begin to bite, but you may at least be able to include one or two.
If you’re thinking in terms of open plan zones/areas earmarked for a particular use, rather than actual rooms, it could be that some of them can be merged. For instance, many families now prepare food, eat it and socialise in a space which used to be called the kitchen, but is nowadays best described as the family room/kitchen/dining area. You may want to have a large living room with two zones, one dedicated to reading and chatting and the other for the TV, rather than to separate rooms.
Sizes
Remember the exercise describe above about analysing your existing home. Many self-builders believe that their new house should be no less than 232m² (2,500ft²) ideally 282m² (3,000ft²). In reality, the approximate national UK average for a three-bedroom/two-bathroom dwelling is around 88–100m² and an average four-bedroom/three-bathroom dwelling is approximately 100–140m², the perceived ideal starting point is a fair bit larger.
It is worth reviewing size and space as you work through the design phases. If you can build a smaller house to a higher specification, then this would be worth considering —smaller homes tend to be cheaper to run.
Be clear what ‘area’ you are measuring. There are two ways to calculate:
Gross External Area (GEA), measuring everything, including the thickness of the external walls.
Net Internal Area (GIA) excluding the thickness of the external walls, as this can result in a difference of between 10–12% of the final sum.
Estate agents will be in the mindset of expressing the project on net internal, where main contractors will work on the gross external area, as this is what they are supplying.
We would suggest for your initial briefing purposes to start from the following typical nett internal sizes (GIA) :
There are no minimum statutory room standards, but again we would suggest starting with the following:
Add your choices to the spreadsheet.
PROGRAMME
3 - DESIGN DIRECTION
Record and describe your aesthetic preferences, preferred architectural styles and materials. (Contemporary, Traditional, Timber Cladding, Render, etc.)
If you can, put together a collection of images of houses you like and the products and materials you want to use to illustrate and communicate your preferences. This could be a simple scrapbook, or we suggest setting up two boards on Pinterest of images of things you do and don’t like.
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4 - SUSTAINABILITY ASPIRATIONS
Green or sustainable design is now an essential consideration, thanks to a growing awareness of the climate emergency and increasing regulations and energy costs. It is likely in the new post-COVID-19 normality will further push sustainability and health living even higher up the agenda. If you are serious about these issues it is vital to take these issue on board as early as possible – Your choices will come down to how far you want to go, and how much you can afford.
There’s no one definition of what an eco-house is. There are several interchangeable descriptions — from “ecologically sensitive” to “sustainable” which generally means using materials from well-managed sources to “green’ and ‘environmentally friendly”.
An eco-house will reduce its environmental impact, for example by minimising energy consumption and or replacing the lost ecology when the house is built, for example by the use of a green roof.
The key to designing an eco-home is determining what you want to achieve: a healthier internal environment, reduced energy bills or perhaps a sustainable way of living? In many ways, an eco-house can be anything you want it to be.
There are several approaches to eco house design, including:
Fabric first approach - involves maximising the performance of the components and materials that make up the building fabric itself, before considering the use of mechanical or electrical building services systems (Passivhaus is an example)
Healthy homes - designed, constructed, maintained, in a manner that is conducive to good occupant health.
Biophilic - combines natural light, natural materials, nature views, vegetation, and other elements of the natural world, bringing them into the built environment. (linking the house to nature)
Carbon neutral - defined as substantially reduced energy consumption merged with the greater use of low carbon sources of energy to meet the remaining demand. This means that while some emissions are still being generated by a building/process, these emissions are being offset somewhere else, making the overall net emissions zero.
Cradle-to-cradle (C2C) – is a philosophy which promotes the use of materials and products that are recyclable or if at all possible can be upcycled. Upcycling means recycling a used product into a new product with better properties than its predecessor (the lifecycle of materials).
Earthship Biotecture - is a type of passive solar house that is made of both natural and upcycled materials such as earth-packed tires (entirely using natural and recycled materials).
Holistic design - looks at the impact of the house on both the local environment and the people living in it promoting preventative medicine by maintaining the health of all aspects of the self—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
Our experience is that an eco-house might include some or all of the following key elements:
High levels of insulation
Better than ‘standard’ (i.e. current Building Regulations’ standards of) airtightness
Passive solar gain — glazing oriented south for light and heat. Plus, minimum north-facing glazing to reduce heat loss
Brise soleil, deep overhangs, air conditioning as well as other elements to help manage overheating.
Good levels of daylight
Good double or triple-glazed windows
Thermal mass to take in solar heat
A healthy indoor environment, possibly including an MVHR system (mechanical ventilation with heat recovery) in a highly airtight home
Heating and/or hot water provision from solar, heat pump or biomass
Obtaining electricity from a ‘green’ supplier
Use of natural materials and avoidance of plastics
Rainwater harvesting and the reuse of greywater
Off-mains.
We feel it is a good idea to consider this list as a menu rather than a shopping list, choosing those most suited to your project, the site and yourself as occupants.
However, the reality is that many of these options are/ can be expensive and are not cost-effective for the ordinary self-builder, but we feel that by careful design, it is possible to integrate some without blowing the budget.
If reducing running costs is the only criterion, then “fabric first” is the way to go.
To read more on Eco Homes, see our articles XXXX & XXXX
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5 - CONSTRUCTION SYSTEMS
There are lots of other options rather than the use of conventional masonry (brick and block), the UK’s most popular construction method. Whatever system is selected, it is likely to have a significant effect on the project. Preferably the selection should be made before the design starts because it could limit or benefit the design.
Other construction systems include:
Timber frame systems
Steel frame
SIP’s - structural insulated panels
CLT - cross-laminated timber
Oak frames
ICF - Insulated Concrete formwork
And many different variants and combinations on these themes.
For those with a green bent, there are alternative materials such as straw bales, cob (mud) and even lorry tyres filled with earth.
Life is never this simple, but the actual cost difference between the systems is not that wide. The overall build cost variance will come down to:
The morphology of your design. The most efficient being a square box, with a flat roof on a level site.
Your choices and level of specification of how you clad the building and the how you fit out the interior
Your choice and cost will also be affected by other site/project-specific issues you consider, which could include:
Thermal performance — all systems must meet Buildings Regulations standards, but some systems, such as SIPs, achieve high levels of airtightness more readily.
Timber frame and ICF builds are arguably easier to manage at superstructure stage.
Speed of erection. How easy is it to put up in bad weather?
Is a crane needed for construction?
Your design may dictate the construction (for instance, large expanses of glazing may make a steel frame a sensible choice).
The site may be a factor in your decision. On narrow sites, the wall thickness may be critical, while builds requiring a basement, or sloping sites, may require a particular build system.
Sustainability/Eco-friendliness
Experience of and skill set of whoever is going to build the project
On-site improvisation
Post-construction alterations - How easy it will be to adapt/extend in the future?
Up-front costs
Delivery times
Retention of moisture after construction
Quality control
External appearance.
Ease of fixing shelves, etc. to internal walls.
Sound insulation between rooms.
Sound transmission from outside.
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6 - BUDGET
A typical project can be split into three main cost centres:
The cost of the land,
The cost of the build
Additional costs (for example professional and statutory fees, demolition service connections, external works, warranties and insurances, and many more)
The aim should be not to spend too much on land, leaving too little for the build, so be pragmatic about what it actually costs to build and don’t rush to buy the first plot you see. Remember, a build always takes longer and costs more than you think. The key is always to buy the land at the lowest price possible.
Our Site Appraisal consultation will inform you what you could fit on the site
Working out your budget
You will have to work within your fixed financial limits. The worst thing to say is the project will have to cost “X” because that is the amount of money you have. It is better to calculate as follows:
Monies available – land cost – additional costs divided by cost per m2 (see table below)
= the size of house you can afford to build (in m2).
Figures current Feb 2020 - Pre COVID-19 and Brexit
7 - TIMEFRAME
On average, from finding the site to moving in, it takes about two to three years to build a home. Usually, just over half this time is spent securing planning and other building permissions and lining up suitable contractors. Then about 6-12 months is spent onsite constructing the house. However, be aware that sites with planning issues can take longer.
As far as the brief is concerned, note the date by which you would like to complete the project. Also note any circumstances that will dictate when the project needs to be completed, or particular milestones are reached.
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