As we noted in the last issue of Su Casa, getting good advice and building a strong team of designer, banker, and builder are essential for building a house. Later on it will be equally important to properly manage the project, with its too-huge budget and ten thousand details. But as you set about designing, here’s the truth of the matter: exceptional houses are always the result of an exceptional vision, clearly communicated.

Not knowing how to articulate their vision, many home builders simply leave everything to the architect. But if you want your house to truly reflect what’s important to you, then you’d better get involved. Somehow, you have to be able to transmit to your designer not just your “wish list,” but the essence of your self and of your dreams. These intangibles are extremely difficult to communicate, belonging as they do to the realm of the intuitive, the artistic, and the right brain—qualities in short supply in a brick-and-mortar industry and in our culture at large.

Of course all of this is going to be much easier if your architect is open to your ideas and is intuitive enough to sense the aspirations that you just can’t put into words. The best architect is also part psychologist, part visionary artist, and part psychic. Yet even that ideal person will probably agree that the most important component of the design is you, the client. Architects dream of attracting clients who demand a really great house, communicate effectively, and then empower the designer to dig deep and produce a stunning design.

 

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