This isn't a true story. I made it up. It didn't happen.
It's a project for a new house. The clients have thought long and hard about the brief. They want so many rooms; the sizes are specified and they're all quite large. There are plenty of bathrooms. The kitchen is important and consequently the design for this has already been decided. There's a study, a snug and a playroom for the kids. There will be a fancy staircase, similar to an example they've seen on TV. They want to be sustainable, hence the heating will run off a heat pump; they'd like to re-use rainwater and be careful about the sourcing of materials. Natural materials would be good, as would minimising plastic and toxic substances. Overall the design should be sympathetic to its location and blend with the surroundings.
We start by investigating the site to understand it. We lay things out and try some different approaches. We develop a plan that works, and that sits well in the landscape. We have ideas about materials and how the house will look. We think about the tree planting that will soften the building and connect it with the landscape. We incorporate the latest innovations in home automation and green technologies and we have the scheme costed.
It’s time for the first design meeting, which is exciting. Our first time to present something and the client's first time to see how their future home might appear. We explain what we've done and why. We show them how all of the components of the brief have been assembled. This is how they relate to each other; this is how we've treated the external appearance; this is how the interiors might feel; here are the allowances for the plant room, home automation systems and rainwater storage; this is an idea of the planting scheme and how everything sits in the landscape.
We use drawings, models and realistic photo-montages to illustrate the scheme. The clients love it and start to imagine themselves living in this thing which, as yet, is only a first idea. Then they ask about the cost, and the meeting turns. Its approximately double the budget. Things go a bit quiet and gloomy. Some people don't recover from this point, but fortunately, our clients seem pretty resilient. They thank us for what we’ve done. It's what they wanted but, given the costs, they will have to reconsider things. They'll get back to us.
The following week we’re invited back. Surprisingly, perhaps, the clients appear very positive. They explain how downhearted they'd been after our previous meeting. They had built up that picture of their dream scheme for a long time. It was about how they wanted to live; how they wanted to bring up their children; how they wanted to present themselves to the outside world. It was an important, and deeply personal statement.
However, they go on to explain how relieved they were that the process had caused them to reassess things. Having seen the scheme, they’d concluded that it just 'wasn't them', and confessed that many items were in the brief because they'd seen them elsewhere or because friends had them or because they were current and fashionable. They agreed that, whatever they ended up doing, it needed to be about what they really wanted. They felt they were now in a position to start the real project.
This isn't a true story. I made it up. It didn't happen…but a tiny version of it is played out on most projects.
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be".
Kurt Vonnegut
This article was written by Andy Foster for the January ‘20 edition of the Sherborne Times.