Engaging an Architect

By July 2015 we’ve sold the house at Colonel Light Gardens, renting just down the road at Kent Town wondering when is the right time to get started. Clearly, the answer is now, why wait?

How do you pick an Architect?
Find a house or project you like, find out who did it and speak to them? Tried that.

Speak to someone in the industry who works with a wide range of Architects and ask them? That someone was Janet Thompson, a structural engineer who was also our neighbour for 28 years.

Janet knows us fairly well and while the Architect she recommended was retiring, we met with Keith Teagle, an associate of said retiring Architect from Billson Sawley and we were comfortable from the outset discussing our requirements.

The sketches we had done were shared, we had a site visit and measurements were taken.

Early September 2015 Keith presented his initial drawings. 17 was pretty well as expected but 19 was a bit of a surprise.

Gone was the curved roof of the first floor in the centre of the development to a boxy design as much to the south as possible. With the view that 19 and 17 may well become separately titled properties, the first floor extension had to be set back from the northern boundary.

With polished concrete flooring specified from the outset to be a source for thermal mass, Keith's diagram showing the extent of the winter sun onto the floors made perfect sense with great simplicity.

We’d given up on the idea of a walk-in wardrobe and "Craft Room" looks so much better on a plan than "Bike Room", time will tell its actual use. The cellar has reached swimming pool proportions but with a lack of a shed, will no doubt fill pretty quickly.

Before we got too much into the finer points of the design, the next step was to find out what the City of Norwood Payneham and St Peters thought of our proposal so a meeting was convened to discuss the first draft plans with the urban planner.

We were very pleased with the reception received and with advice that it should only require Category one planning permission, we wasted no time and had the development application lodged by the middle of September.

Things dragged on for a few weeks and another site meeting was arranged with the council and shade drawings were presented to ensure the council that the additions would not adversely effect our southern neighbours. The good news came on 17^th November with Development Plan Consent being granted, it was now down to some detailed planning before seeking Development Approval.