One main reason to hire a house architect is: you will receive a better design and ultimately a better house because of having that better design.
What constitutes “better design?” Well, how about these considerations:
1. A FLOOR PLAN THAT WAS CAREFULLY CONCEIVED TO PARALLEL YOUR DESIRED LIFESTYLE: The spaces you want, the arrangement of them and their size and features for your maximum convenience, comfort, and functionality.
2. VIEWS: Real architects carefully plan their clients’ homes to take advantage of the special views on that acreage that they bought for their dream home. If you have ever seen a home that ignored its site’s views, you will understand. Such inattention to spectacular views borders on the criminal, from the perspective of a talented residential architect. No self-respecting architect would ignore the wonderful vistas that you have on your land. Your architect wants you to enjoy the views that charmed you enough to buy the land, through the windows and porches built to house you and your family.
3. ENERGY CONSERVATION / HEALTHIER HOME: Real architects are sensitive to energy efficiency and will design your residence with higher quality air-conditioning equipment, higher R-values for your insulation, better windows and doors, better roofing, Energy Star appliances and hot water heaters, and other features relating to the path of the sun and winds around your house, resulting in less expenditures from you to your utility companies. This helps your pocketbook over decades. Now that’s a real lasting value that increases your comfort and lowers your monthly bills, attributable to your hiring an architect to design your house. Real architects are also knowledgeable and sensitive to products and systems that are healthier for your family. For instance, specifying construction materials with little to no off-gassing of vapors that could have effects on your breathing or other life functions. Also, specifying air-conditioning systems with cleaner air machinery so that your children and other family members breathe cleaner air.
4. DURABILITY: Architects typically want you and your residence to have good quality components that will last a long time. Quality and durability are part of an architect’s training.
5. VALUE ENGINEERING: Some architects, like HOME ARCHITECTS ® regularly build Value Engineering into every residence and other projects they create. This results in their clients receiving the highest quality for just about everything, at the least cost. It entails a rigorous examination of nearly every aspect of your project in terms of range of cost versus features and benefits. Nothing is taken for granted, and you are the one that makes the choices as to what you wish to pay for in your house.
6. LOGICAL & PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS & ADVICE TO YOU, RESULTING IN MAJOR COST SAVINGS: Most real architects seriously consider client wishes and then report to their clients the pros and cons of various options. You make the choice; it’s your house but your architect will provide you with wise counsel as to what makes sense and what does not. This advice can save you from wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that you may have thought was insignificant, but which your architect understands in greater depth.
7. CONTROL: Your architect puts you in control of your new home. Not your builder, not your designer, not your Realtor. You. And that’s where you want the control. You are going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars (or even more, if a normal sized residence) and you should feel confident and be the one making the decisions that impact your costs and features that you will enjoy for decades to come. Your architect has no particular axe to grind on your project, particularly an older, well-seasoned architect who has the experience to have “done it all,” and not have any agenda other that to make you happy with the house you want. Your architect will help you understand what others on your project are doing and how your money is being spent. They will help you start out in control and stay in control, throughout the entire process. Now that is worth having your architect involved from start of design to completion of construction.
8. SENSE OF ACCOMPLISHING SOMETHING WORTHWHILE AND SPECIAL: An architect elevates a mere house into the art of becoming “your home.” Your architect makes sure that it incorporates all of your wishes including your functional and aesthetic preferences, and perhaps some of the architect’s particular style as well, which is probably one of the reasons you engaged him or her in the first place: you liked how their projects looked. Architecture is the combination of Art and Technology.
9. A HOME THAT LOOKS GOOD AND WORKS WELL/TRAINING: Your architect will make sure that your home looks good and works well. That is part of their training and their “religion.” Those abilities are part of what helped them excel and graduate from a major accredited university, typically with honors, and helped them pass a multiple-day grueling in-person exam to become licensed. It is also what allowed them to obtain years of internship with other experience architects looking over their shoulders, critiquing their every move.
10. LICENSURE/ PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS: Your residential architects must be licensed in at least one state in the United States in order to even call themselves architects. Mere “residential designers” have no requirements whatsoever and have absolutely no oversight from any official agency watching what they are doing for or to you. Real Architects have to take CEUs (Continuing Education Units) each year in order to remain licensed, continually updating their knowledge about architecture in the world of today. The states in which they are licensed monitor their activities. Architects, like Rand Soellner, that also belong to organizations like ArCH (Architects Creating Homes) and the NCARB (National Council of Architectural Registration Boards),
have additional requirements further polishing their abilities and credentials and subjecting themselves to even greater scrutiny and higher professional standards. That is the sort of professional you want designing the very thing in which you and your family live, isn’t it?
Why hire a house architect source of information:
Rand Soellner Architect: 1-828-269-9046
http://www.HomeArchitects.com