What is personalised home design to you?

Architecture is a luxury design profession, and design is a solution-based practice, unlike art. At its best, it is grounded on deep listening and understanding, with no preconceived ideas about the outcome.

Design evolves through dialogue with you (the client), the builder, and various trades and regulatory bodies because they all contribute to the final outcome. Unlike art which is often an exercise in self-expression and can push against its environment, design should embrace and even embody these influences. Design is a complicated process requiring the removal of egos. Still, in this, something fantastic can evolve as a building slowly comes off the paper and out of the ground.

This contrasts with ‘Architecture’ as an art form. Home design is a process based in the market, working to truly understand the goals and how it fits on the site and into your budget. Not once but constantly. It is more work to design this way and even more difficult within tighter financial constraints and lower build costs. This means you have to get it right the first time because redesign is extraordinarily expensive and painful for everyone and is where projects go to die.

It is better to do it properly upfront, systematically, and constantly value engineering against the goal because, for me, the core competency of an architect is to get buildings built.

Alexander Hill

Awarded the Architects Board of South Australia Prize in 2001, Alexander is a registered architect, former builder and author of Find Your Way Home.

After beginning his architectural career in Melbourne in 2002, he later gained his builder's licence to better understand how design decisions translate into cost and construction.

Through Three Hat Buildings, he now helps people understand the consequences of their building decisions before they become expensive to change.

https://www.threehatbuildings.com.au/
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Do I need an architect if I have a builder?

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Alexander Hill Residential Architect