Architecture unlike other arts requires a client. And clients are tricky buggers, they possess something which, to misguidly utilise a gevorkiasim, is called potentiality. That is a capacity that most of us rarely achieve, and it involves the potential and willingness to invest large sums of money in order to develop something that the client has decided they need, ie, a house for their family and themselves.
Now as architects when we step in to guide the creative process, usually the client has purchased a site for this thing that they need created, but they have now made a fantastic decision and begun to involve us, they have had the good sense to steer clear of the crap project home designs, avoided the backyard drafters and building mis-designers.
We as architects ( and I use the term loosely in my case having been weighed, measured and found wanting by the gods dwelling in the ACCA headquarters) have been approached, heard through the grapevine, had organised for us, inherited, weaseled or lucked into a commission to design a building. This is the sort of thing that we have invested six years, x dollars, sleepless nights, cranky and enlightened tutors, tangles, whistles, merry go rounds, roundabouts, excessive navel gazing all in the interest, exploration and dream of.
For once we are in the position to bridge the gap between dream and reality. Between the ability as designers we have developed and cultured and the hard light of building day. As seasoned critics we will need to be kind on ourselves as we take the first steps into a building culture hundreds of thousands of years old dealing with the age old complexities of site, design, materials, money, approvals and builders.
My first building is about to come out of the ground, and I have begun to experience its spaces.
Three years ago a family friend came to me, he had decided that I would design his new family house. They had purchased a block high up on a ridge, with a mountain hanging over the top of it. The site had views out to another mountain, a lake, an escarpment in the distance and finally the ocean. Essentially a spectacular site. The brief was for a four bedroom rendered house. I promptly researched the best rendered houses in a classic modern vein that I could lay my hands on. The clients found most appealing a collection of houses published in a book called Casa Moderna
What slowly evolved was an L shaped building drawing on this building language, a testamount to my clients confidence and courage is the fact that the design is totally personal and original. The design presented the top of the L to the street, the level change from street to the site is atleast 1.5 metres. The foot of the L creates a courtyard space, this in contrast to the typical houses that plonked in the centre of a site creates a front and rear backyard. The foot of the L also houses the dining room, linked on the one side to the paved area in the courtyard and through a glazed wall on the other to the long views to the south. There is also an external curved staircase linking the courtyard to a roof terrace above that commands the long views fromthe site.
Its funny, standing in the spaces defined form work or by the subfloor brick work, the skeleton of the building exists. In a way the abstract nature of these elements creates almost the drawn plan on the site at 1:1. The spaces can be imagined and existed within, perhaps for the first time. The client and his family came with me to site and occupied the building, sitting on the walls, walking through the spaces, excited, discovering the nature and location of the rooms and their aspect. Soon they will occupy the finished building and the building will merely frame their lives.
It was very was cool to rediscover the design, the study better appointed than I anticipated, the vague space connecting the lounge, kitchen and dining room works/feels good, the roof terrace is the right size/ not oversize as I had worried about, the dining room is spacious and relates well to the courtyard space and the view.

I am looking forward to discovering my design and how it feels as the building process continues…it is a first work and a real pleasure to watch unfold