— The Process

Seven
phases, in
order.

Every full commission moves through the same seven phases — beginning with a long conversation we call Inquiry, ending with the post-occupancy work we call Stewardship. The duration of each phase varies considerably. The order does not.

— A note on duration

A typical residential commission runs twenty-four to thirty-six months from inquiry to occupancy. Restorations run longer. A working hotel runs longer still. We do not knowingly accelerate a phase before it is done.

01
— Phase One

Inquiry & Acquaintance

Every commission begins with a conversation, usually over coffee at one of the studios. We are not, in this first conversation, taking on the work. We are determining whether the work is right for us and whether we are right for it. Most of these conversations take ninety minutes. A small percentage end the engagement before it has begun, which we consider a kindness to both parties. We follow with a written letter of acquaintance and, if both sides wish to proceed, an engagement agreement.

— Duration 2 – 6 weeks
— Deliverable Letter of acquaintance
02
— Phase Two

Site Study

Before we draw, we walk. A site study is not a survey — surveys come later, from licensed surveyors. A site study is the slow accumulation of the things one cannot draw without first standing in: where the light falls at four in the afternoon, what direction the prevailing wind comes from in October, what kind of soil the property holds, how the neighbors arrive home in the evening, what the place sounds like before dawn. We typically make four visits, at different hours, weather, and light conditions, before any pencil touches paper.

— Duration 6 – 12 weeks
— Deliverable Site Document & Programme
03
— Phase Three

Schematic Design

The first pencil drawings, the first physical study models, the first long arguments. Schematic design is the phase where the building's intention is set — its volume, its relationship to the site, its essential plan. We draw by hand for at least the first six weeks. We build study models in chipboard, basswood, and museum board, often six or seven of them. We do not move to digital tools until the building's intention is settled, because digital tools have a way of settling intentions before they have been fully argued.

— Duration 3 – 6 months
— Deliverable Schematic Design Package
04
— Phase Four

Design Development

The building, having declared its intention, must now be made specific. Every material is sourced, sampled, and held in the hand. Every joint detail is drawn at full scale. We typically commission between forty and eighty material samples in this phase — stone from quarries we have used for fifteen years, plaster mocked up on test panels, hardware in three finishes for the same door. We meet our consultants — structural, mechanical, landscape, lighting — and bring their drawings into ours. This is the phase clients sometimes find slow. It is not slow.

— Duration 4 – 7 months
— Deliverable DD Set & Material Library
05
— Phase Five

Construction Documents

The drawings the builder will work from. Two hundred to four hundred sheets for a typical residence, drawn to a level of specificity that leaves the contractor very few questions and us, the architects, very few surprises. Every dimension. Every material. Every detail at the resolution it will be built. We review every page, twice, in pen, before issue. The construction documents are, in our reading, the book that we are writing about the building before the building exists.

— Duration 3 – 5 months
— Deliverable CD Set & Bid Package
06
— Phase Six

Construction Administration

We are on site weekly during framing, twice weekly during finish work, and unannounced whenever a critical detail is being executed. Margaret or Theodore — never a delegate — attends every owner-architect-contractor meeting. Where possible, we work with builders whose standards are known to us, and we prefer to help shape the construction team before the work is priced. The work of an architect, during construction, is largely the work of saying not yet to things one is not certain about.

— Duration 12 – 24 months
— Deliverable A finished building
07
— Phase Seven

Stewardship

A building is not finished on the day the family moves in. We return at three months, at one year, and at five years, on our own time, to learn what the house has come to know about itself. We adjust hardware, repaint a wall that the light has shown us was the wrong tone, swap a piece of cabinetry hardware that the family has worn to a finish more honest than the one we specified. Stewardship is, in our reading, the longest phase of the work. It does not, properly speaking, ever end.

— Duration 5 years & beyond
— Deliverable A house that ages well
— Engagement Four ways we work

How we structure
an engagement.

Most commissions take one of four shapes. Open any card to read its scope, deliverables, and the kind of project for which it is suited.

— Begin

If you are uncertain
which engagement is right —

— it is almost always the first conversation that resolves it.

Begin an Inquiry →