How should I prepare a brief for my architect?

What should an architect brief include?

An architect brief is a written description of the home you want and the life it needs to hold. The Australian Government's YourHome guide calls it your wish list, recording your must-haves, your must-avoids and your general preferences. It suggests starting with your current home, since how each person uses each room today is usually the best source of what the next house should do better.

Write about the household before the rooms. Who lives in the home, how you cook and entertain, where you work and where you want quiet all shape the plan more than a list of bedrooms does. Think ahead as well, because YourHome asks whether the home could adapt to changes such as children arriving or downsizing later in life.

Then list the spaces and give each a priority. Most people cannot fit or afford everything on the list. YourHome recommends ranking the features that are difficult or expensive to add later above those that are easy to change. Photos of homes, rooms and details you like will help. YourHome suggests adding photos of what you dislike too, because they tell your architect what to avoid as clearly as what to pursue.

How do you set the budget in your brief?

Give your architect a total budget from the outset, because every design decision is measured against it. YourHome suggests working out your total budget first. Allow for the costs that sit outside construction, such as stamp duty, bank fees, consultant fees and council fees, along with a contingency.

The NSW Architects Registration Board's guide to working with your architect recommends outlining your requirements and your budget at the first meeting. It also acknowledges that what you want may not match what you can spend at first. The board suggests talking through what matters most to you, since that conversation is often where the creative solutions begin.

What should you bring about the site?

Bring everything you already know about the block. The address, any survey, the title details and any reports or existing drawings save time, because the site's fall, orientation, outlook and planning controls shape the design from the first sketch. If you are still choosing a block, our guide to what you can build on a block in Sydney covers the checks worth making first.

The YourHome design guide recommends visiting the site with your designer to work through its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Notes on where the sun falls through the day, where the wind comes from and which views you value are worth adding to the brief before that visit.

How should your brief change during the design?

A brief is never finished on the first day. YourHome describes it as a living document that you update throughout the design as a record of the decisions you agree on. It also recommends attaching the brief to your contract with the designer, since the fee proposal should be based on it.

YourHome expects you to revisit earlier choices as the design reveals new information, so note why each decision was made or changed. The board's guide recommends giving instructions to your architect in writing and keeping your own notes of meetings. Those two habits keep the brief and the drawings in step from the concept to the final design.

How we start with the brief at SHORE

At SHORE Design + Build every home begins with the brief and the block, because orientation, fall, outlook and the planning controls over the site all shape what it will carry. We put early numbers against the brief at this first stage, so the project that leaves it is one we know can be built for its budget.

Most clients come to us with a site and a brief rather than drawings. Share the address, what you want the home to do and any survey or drawings you already hold. We are happy to talk through the site with you before the brief is set. Our registered architect then carries that brief into design and build in Sydney, with our builders pricing the concept as it takes shape.