Introduction

Studying the trends of modern architectural practises and with experience of regularly pitching to clients, below I share my top 5 most revealing questions a client must ask an architect before hiring him for his project. They can save a lot of time, money and disappointment later for any client looking to execute a high-quality project.

Architects are one of the key team members when it comes to planned projects. Be it houses, commercial buildings, schools, hospitals, airports and more. In modern contemporary projects especially of larger scale and size, the design and execution team is composed of a larger group of experts like project managers, engineers, sustainability experts, cost consultants, landscape designers, specialist contractors and more. Traditionally the master architect plays the pivotal role of integrating various types of technical and other requirements, while importantly interpreting the client’s vision into his drawings. Hence choosing the right architect is a key decision the client must make before the onset of the design process. Generally, the governing bodies of the architectural profession in a country like Council of Architecture ( COA ) in India, Royal institute of British Architects ( RIBA ) & Architects Registration Board ( ARB ) in the UK and American Institute of Architects ( AIA ) along with individual state boards in the US have publicly available guidance documents which clients could refer to help set up selection process for the right architect. However, in practise the selection of architect for a dream project can often be a more unplanned, sudden and emotional decision than expected by a client. Hence I trust below 5 questions, asked by client to the architect can help.

1) Do you have a license to practice in the country the project is located ?

You would be surprised that many architects work as general designers, in this role they are employed to provide a client with only a set of conceptual drawings. The clients then works with other locally based architects to sign or verify these drawings and execute their project. This model of hiring an architect has a lot more negatives than positives but sometimes its just preferred by client due to non-geographic availability of certain preferred architects. For example, most foreign architectural firms operate in this manner in India. Traditionally and in common experience, hiring an architect who can take responsibility till the execution of building has been found to give superior results.

In developing countries like India sometimes clients don’t realize that they need to check that their architect is licensed or not. This has led to numerous building related professionals misusing the title of an architect to deliver design which may be lower quality or not as per professional standards and ethics. This becomes a real problem when it leads to delivery of low quality architecture and the simplest way around is to confirm your architects license number from the professional governing body of the country or state.

2. What level of service are you able to provide ?

This is a question which most clients ask too late, and its critical to understand this so as to compare the fees offer quoted by one architect against the other. Building projects are long duration and hence divided into work stages like concept design, schematic design , detail design, construction drawings, tender and execution. Good architects these days even offer to remain involved in the building project till sometime after occupancy, often called the post-occupancy stage of work. These responsibilities the architect bears during all these stages should be directly co-related to the fee he quotes. However in common practise, clients can make a mistake of comparing the fees of an architect 1 ( concept & schematic ) to architect 2 ( concept to construction drawings ) or an architect 3 ( concept to execution ). Even within an individual stage for example a concept an architect 1 may want to deliver two options for client to choose from and another architect 2 may budget to deliver three design options, thus making the fee incomparable without diving into these details. Hence clients who are looking for quality output must dive deeper to question the level of service and ask for a list of deliverables for each stage before selecting their architect.

3) Do you have enough time available and a competent team to dedicate to this project ?

A lot of clients, especially for mid and small sized projects, may fail to recognise that architecture delivery is a long term process ( unlike graphic design or a furniture design project) and a popular architect can have multiple projects ongoing simultaneously. So the timely delivery of their project would often depend on their architect or architectural firm having a requisite number of younger designers who will support the design process. In larger architectural firms its common practise for senior architects to delegate design aspects or day to day coordination work to junior architects. Hence a client must access if their chosen architect has enough bandwidth in terms of qualified staff to complete their project in time and with enough quality. Identifying who will lead the project on regular basis should also factor into this decision.

4) What type of built buildings do you hold high in regard?

Each client prefers a certain style, look or flavour of architecture. They may be good in expressing it verbally or not, so architects try to judge and pitch so as to showcase their works which best fits their prospective clients expectations in their understanding. Clients should also do something similar and ask their architect what he thinks is a great built example of a similar type of buildings. Younger architects who may not have enough built work to show early on in their careers, can effectively convey a lot with their choice of a built project. For more experienced architects, its always best to see ( even better visit ) their last few built works to judge their natural style and control on quality. For most good architects, their work is quite personal and hence they easily default to what they hold in high regard. Hence if a client can understand their style and confirm it’s a good fit, it helps immensely. They can also be confident that their architect will hold himself to a similar standard of professional quality and try to embed that requirement into their contracts. Most often clients think that any experienced architect can design to their choice or preferred style but in reality if they find a better natural fit, they stand a much higher chance of getting a final product which fulfils their aesthetic desires.

5) What is your target for sustainability performance if hired ?

Last but not the least important, this question is perhaps the most ignored in client and architect early negotiations. Today the world is under a climate crisis and buildings contribute to about 35-40% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Further building material use has a huge impact on biodiversity. A connected issue is that since people spend 90% of their time indoors, buildings are known to have big impacts on health of its occupants. So today its not mere question of doing lip service to these issues but employing architectural science and new techniques like computer simulations to help design a building which doesn’t negatively impact its occupants and environment. Architects have an onus to deliver solutions with give proven performance during operations. The fact is that most architects talk green but very small percentage are trained to deliver green buildings and even lesser number have any experience of delivering green projects. Evaluating early on, if your architect has the necessary skills to deliver on these critical matters of energy, health and environment should be high on priority of any responsible client these days.

You would think that the issue of fees has not featured in my top 5 questions. I agree it’s an important one, but I must argue that an architects’ fee is only a small percentage of the over all cost of the project and a right architect has the power to save construction costs, manage quality of your project, improve its aesthetics, create a wonderful experience, improve its marketability, deliver a healthy, sustainable building, and also keep to your timelines. Architectural Fees thus should only be evaluated in that context after asking the right questions.

About the Author:Harsh Thapar is an architect and sustainable design expert with 19 years of experience of working on sustainable environmental design of buildings for high performance .