Why Choose a Small Practice?
Architecture practices come in all shapes and sizes. There are a whole range from one-hundred person companies, to five-person teams and architects working alone. The ‘one person practice’ is the only one where the person you meet at the start will still be with you at the end.
Large Practices employ ‘Project Architects’, the individual employee tasked with following the project from start to finish - except that in a large practice that’s not always possible. Architecture projects take several years to complete, and this often means that projects are passed around the office. Projects can be neglected and important details can slip through the gaps. That key element that made a design special can be easily forgotten when the design is going through multiple pairs of hands.
Often practices grow out of the ‘sole practitioner’ model. But staying small has advantages too. Small is nimble, flexible and innovative, ensuring a focus on quality and innovation rather than quantity and cash flow. Smaller also means less overheads.
This means you’re getting much more ‘bang for your buck’ when you hire a sole practitioner. Your money goes further and you’re getting more design time and a more experienced pair of hands for every pound you spend, and this is a good thing. All design gets better when more time is spent refining the details, and the designer handling them knows what to look out for, ensuring every last bit is ‘just right’.
I enjoy seeing projects through from start to finish, from making the key architectural moves to translating them into the tiniest detail, the nitty gritty of every nut, bolt and sequence of how it all comes together. I have less HR, people managment and monitoring demands on my time, freeing up my time to be creative and to create fantastic projects. I enjoy considering how the play of daylight on a material can create a seductive atmosphere, or how the window reveal can be made ultra slim to reduce visual clutter when framing a key view. I’m driven by the outcome and process of delivering of my projects; beautiful well designed buildings that are a pleasure and joy to live in.
“Creative persons differ from one another in a variety of ways, but in one respect they are unanimous. They all love what they do. It is not hope of achieving fame or making money that drives them: rather, it is the opportunity to do the work that they enjoy doing.”
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Creativity
Whatever the size of the practice you go to you are starting a conversation about specifics of the place you are in and the way you want to live. Let that conversation be with a sole practitioner, one person working for you – your friend and guide, helping you through the process every step of the way to create a space that is just for you.
