Residential Architects Near Me
AURA Architecture are an award-winning residential architects firm with a dedicated team of architects, surveyors and interior designers. In this article, we discuss:
- Should I use an Architect Near Me, and the advantages of using a local architect
- Tips on how to find the best architect
- What to do if you’ve found an ideal architect far from your home location
Should I Use An Architect Near Me?
There are many advantages to using a local architect, but we understand it’s not always easy to find architects who are highly recommended, understand your needs and provide a clear fee structure, and cover your area. Here, we seek to help those struggling to find a good local architect and give some tips on doing your background research on any potential architectural firms you might find when searching ‘architects near me’.
Advantages Of Using Local Architects
- The first step to making architectural design plans is to perform a thorough measured survey of the existing building and a topographical survey of the site. Whilst this survey doesn’t need to be conducted by your local architect (often a separate specialist surveyor)some architects will want to do it themself, or if using a separate surveyor, will likely have a favourite in their local area.
- A good ‘residential architect near me’ will spend time discovering how you want your new home or alteration to feel and look like. If they are local to you, face-to-face meetings within the property will enable them to see how best to use the existing aspect and features to match your lifestyle and aspirations.
- Planning permission is handled by local area councils and each one takes a localised approach to the National Planning framework. Your local architect will naturally have more understanding of the council’s Local Development Plan and the nuances of recent planning decisions.
- How involved would you like your architect to be? Architectural firms such as AURA Homes offer give you the choice of using their Site Monitoring Service to take away the hassle of managing the builders in the construction phase. This involves regular site visits from your architect, so using one in your area saves excess travel time and cost.
- A new home build, refurb or house extension involves many specialists in various areas; Structural Engineers, Building inspectors, Interior Designers, Party Wall surveyors, Electricians, Plumbers and many other tradespeople. Architects get to know the best local building professionals and develop effective working relationships with them, meaning your job gets completed to the highest standard and within the shortest time frame.
Finding And Choosing The Best Local Architect
Finding an architect who you can trust, and who has a track record of achieving similar to what you’d like for your own property development takes a bit of background research. Thankfully, the web makes this much easier, from reviewing the architect’s past project gallery (which gives you a flavour of their style and scope) – to checking their profile and reviews on third-party platforms.
Local Google Search for architects’ listings
Google uses known registered business address data to show local firms on a map. Searching ‘residential architect near me’ usually brings up dozens of nearby architects (you may need to click ‘allow’ to let Google know your location).
This does however only pinpoint the firm’s main location, it doesn’t show the region that they serve. Take AURA Architecture for example, searching google shows our head office location but we have local architects who serve the Home Counties and most of the South of England.
Google Reviews for verifying your local architect choice.
Google is open to everyone, reviewer identity is verified by google although its only by reading the actual review that you get a feel for its trustworthiness.
See AURA Architecture’s review on Google.
Houzz – One of the largest Home Improvement platforms
Houzz helps you find inspirational house design ideas plus all the professionals you need for just about anything House and Home improvement related.
It’s is the marketplace of home architecture; here you can find hundreds of local architects, see examples of their designs plus read verified reviews. See AURA Architecture ratings on Houzz.
Facebook hardly needs an introduction, but it is a great community to find local services such as architects in your area. You can often get a good idea of the architect’s style and professionalism and also find reviews and helpful comments from other local facebook users. Check out AURA Architecture on Facebook.
LinkedIn – Review the Architect’s business profile
LinkedIn might not be the first source of information you’d turn to when looking for an architect locally. However, once you have found a potential architect then looking them up on the business platform LinkedIn can help verify their authenticity, especially so if their posts have comments and ‘likes’ from other well-known professionals. See for example the LinkedIn profile for AURA Architecture.
What if your ideal residential architect is not local to you?
Whilst, as we’ve pointed out, there are many advantages to finding a local architect, it might be that you like the approach and design of an architect who is based at the other end of the UK to your home or project.
During the 2020 – 2021 pandemic, many creative ways of providing architectural services to clients without site visits were developed. Using their professional network and modern technology, architects can now serve clients remotely by:
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- Having a full site topo survey plus a detailed measured survey conducted by a surveyor near you. This enables the architect to work from the drawings, using Point Cloud technology
- Holding video meetings with you, the client.
- Producing a 3D walk-through of your design to ensure you are delighted with the plan’s concept.
- Recommending trusted contacts from their professional networking circles.
- Helping you with Interior Design and the sourcing of furnishings and materials.
- Creating a set of architectural drawings and specification of works, plus helping you obtain quotes during the tendering stage from local builders and trades-people.
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Watch the video about AURA’s design process below, you can also access our Home Design Guide which we trust you will find helpful. If we can assist your home development project further, please contact us today.
Areas We Cover
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Making Everything Transparent
We often hear from our clients that speaking to architects is daunting and confusing, as they often use industry terminology, making the process unnecessarily complicated and hard to grasp.
Our Director, Ben Richards, when he set up AURA Architecture back in 2017, was set on solving this issue for homeowners wanting to make improvements to their home.
That is why we share our Fees on our website, create Blogs and FAQ articles to share industry insights, and have created the 10 Step AURA Process which is explained via Youtube or can be Downloaded for Free to read anytime.
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