First Design Review

Once the as-is drawing and surveying was complete, our architect began creating conceptual sketches for a new design that would incorporate the existing house.  We then arranged a time to visit the architect at his office for a review session.  Since we had not been to a design review meeting before, our architect took the opportunity to explain that the primary purpose was for him to present his concepts, explain his rationale for each and obtain our feedback.  The intended outcome of the session was to provide a clear direction and next steps to prepare more detailed designs.

Before we went through each concept in detail, the architect first explained his approach to the design.  He noted that he initially imagined the site without a building present and then proceeded to determine how he would have situated a house to take full advantage of the landscape, light and views.  He subsequently overlayed the general shape of a more optimal house onto the existing structure to see where the two overlapped.

The drawings were fairly broad-stroked and mostly hand-drawn but contained a sufficient degree of detail for the purpose of the discussion.  The session was very interactive, as we asked a lot of questions and providing many comments.  However, we refrained at that point from discussing the budgetary implications of the design, as we wanted to broaden the set of design ideas before looking at ways to cut back.  In the end, we came to prefer a combination of elements from two of the concepts.  We suspect that such conclusions aren't unusual and the combination of elements was quite sufficient for the architect to further refine his design ideas.

The meeting lasted about two hours and we agreed to meet again within the next 2 to 3 weeks to allow the architect sufficient time to further the design while ensuring that the ideas and discussions from the meeting remained fresh in everyone's mind.