Thought you may like to see Knott's response (in bold) to the section I posted the other day:
Since we met earlier this week we’ve had some time to consider the design you presented. Although we said that we would dedicate some time to costings before responding substantively, we have come to the conclusion that the design as presented is ill-conceived and not heading in the right direction for us, and we therefore require rethought plans.
Our main concerns are two-fold. Firstly, we required the design to make “the best use of light and space”. Our primary reason for coming to you was that off-the-shelf providers did not seem to be able to cater for a long, narrow plot, orientated as it is. A key challenge, therefore, was how best to get light into the heart of the house. However, you have presented a two-storey house with virtually no glazing in the south elevation, indeed less than the bungalow it is replacing. The south elevation is overlooking the neighbouring property so glazing options are severly restricted we have indicated high level slot windows where possible and additional rooflights could be incorporated as desired.
We stated that we wished to build an energy efficient house – we do not believe this can be achieved most successfully with so few windows in the south aspect to allow for solar gain. Also, two rooms – the study and open plan landing - are utterly devoid of natural light. The new layout cater for this, please note that the brief did not specify the design/location of the study area and the initial scheme allowed for a glazed partitioned study space very similar in style to our own studio meeting room allowing for the sense of light and space.
Most of all, we were surprised that you have kept the garage on the south side of the property. We could understand this if the rationale was to provide a long sloping roof into which rooflights could be placed providing light, but without overlooking neighbours (a strategy we would be happy with), but this clearly is not the thinking. The reasoning behind this was largely based on rooflines, bulk and massing as a response to the site context to respect the neighbouring property and thus be more likely acceptable in planning terms. The updated plan shows the plan ‘flipped’ horizontally however this does not really assist with light as the southern wall at ground floor will be in very close proximity to the boundary.
Overall, we feel the layout of the house as currently drawn would not meet our requirements and is a worsening, rather than improvement, from the draft floorplan we gave you as part of our briefing pack in July. This is a great disappointment. The draft floor plan was used as a guide in our designs, however since the time of the sketch planning feedback has overridden a number of the components you had allowed for- most critically the integral garage and window (and thus location) of bedroom 2. Our design had to take this into account and address your brief as closely as possible whilst keeping the planning comments and site restraints in mind.
Secondly, and perhaps the style of the drawing is to blame, but the design appears too similar to the 1970s brick-built houses common locally with an offset vertical stretch of tiles instead of your metal sheet. Unless you can provide an alternative means of presenting the design, this looks bland and boring and is not a design we would wish to invest in. We appreciate the Council may have a conservative approach to style and design of the new dwelling but two Council officers have verbally confirmed that a more contemporary design, if good quality, may be possible. We do wonder whether you have taken the overall context of XXXX Lane into account as the current design seems to just deliver a two-storey version, slightly updated, of the current bungalow. The contemporary perception of the scheme as built will rely on the high quality nature of the detailing- i.e. metal cladding, dark grey metal window frames, neat hidden guttering and sharp edged through-coloured render will in no way give the appearance of a ‘standard’ house. we appreciate that at this early stage it is difficult to full appreciate the drawings in this way. The are of course more ways in which we could be creative by way of oversized glazed openings etc however we have held back from this due to budget.
They also indicate that they regard the current phase of work as complete and now require paying. Any further iterations will be charged and, just to introduce a sense of blackmail, they've produced a revised floorplan (worse than before in some ways, an improvement in others) but won't do elevations until they've seen a cheque. And it seems clear that it'll take more than one iteration to get the plans where we want them...
We did try to clarify the deliverables at each phase of the project, but when we were told outline plans would be the deliverable here I must admit assumed the words "to the clients' satisfaction" were taken as read. As a consultant I'd never invoice until the client is happy, or at least until a reasonable number of iterations had been gone through. Is this typical for architects?
