architect's service

The time that the architect spent with us to bring out the very best in our home was invaluable – he listened to what we wanted and worked with us to achieve our aims whilst remaining sensitive to the age of the house thereby bringing out its maximum potential/worth. It was a great experience all round.

We are very pleased that we found you. Your approach was creative, sensitive and highly professional. You did not opt for the easy option: “OK I will extend the room with a skyline”. Instead you gave us ideas which we have not thought about. Fantastic.

We have used AYH to support our building projects twice: ten years ago for a side-return extension to our ground floor flat, and most recently a loft and side return extension to our family home, plus internal renovations. The architect we chose for our first project was excellent and we were very happy with how the build went but when we revisited the AYH site to contact him once more, saw he had retired. We browsed the site for a possible replacement and chose to meet with the Camden office to see if we'd hit it off in the same way. We had a good initial meeting with Andris so decided to go ahead and begin planning the work. We then mainly worked with Nick and found him very easy to work with and felt he had a good understanding of our aspirations and constraints. We found the AYH model to be as straightforward as we had the first time around, with the menu of services being explained at each key stage and us choosing which items to commission Nick and his colleagues for. The first time around we were more time-rich so did a few elements ourselves (like the planning application) and particularly liked how the structure allowed us to do that. This time around we were ten years older, renovating a whole house instead of a flat and with two young children, we used a fuller range of services but the process still suited us well; we could see what the costs were at each point and progress accordingly. We couldn't afford to move out while the work was done and at the strong suggestion of our builder, Nick provided Project Management for the build which is retrospect was invaluable and meant we managed to live at home throughout the 9 month build in reasonable harmony with the building team! Nick managed the project with a light touch and with an eye on our budget so I felt like we got very good value for money. We are really happy with the finished house and have subsequently recommended AYH, Nick and our builder Max to friends who have engaged them and been similarly happy with the results and I think that speaks volumes. We'll be back in touch again if we embark on more building work in another ten years!

We had just bought a new house and wanted to renovate it to suit our lifestyle and family requirements. We wanted to get ideas from an experienced professional to ensure all of our needs were met and the Architect Your Home service did exactly that. We got great ideas, a clear vision of the project as a whole and they worked with us to create what we wanted. It was so reassuring to have them on board.

It was great to know that at each stage there was the flexibility to decide to 'go it alone' & dispense with Architect Your Home's services, but we consistently found that the value outweighed the cost and the architect's involvement was invaluable - from planning, project management, through to completion.

I really liked the service, thank you Clara for such great designs and helping it all make sense to me.