Are you thinking of building a dream home in Canberra? Exploring different building designs is a crucial first step. What are the benefits of using an architect/house designer in Canberra? How can working with a Canberra Architect help transform a house into a home, creating a truly unique building experience?

When thinking about building a home in Canberra, there are generally 3 options available to people;

  1. Working with a pre-designed home, usually through a building company;
  2.  Working with a building designer or house designer that prepares drawings based on a set of selectable options or;
  3. Working with a Canberra Architect.

It is quite evident when looking at the current housing stock that sprawls through the landscape like an endless tapestry, options 1 and 2 seem to be the options attractive to most people. It could be the convenience of a pre-designed home with a fixed option of finishes, available at an assumed lower price that tends to win out against engaging an architect for custom house designs.

Some pre-designed homes do come with clever and considered floor plans. These homes to suit various lifestyle can adequately respond to people’s needs and do come in a number of ‘styles’ and colours that are attractive to people. Their mass-produced nature also creates an economy of scale which also results in an ‘affordable option’ for a lot of people.

So, if there are so many benefits to not using architecture firms in Canberra – why on earth would you use an architect to design a home for you and your family? What are the benefits of using an architect?

The important discussion to have around this topic is ‘what is a home/family home?’

Is it a ‘house,’ some random structure where we sleep and eat? Is it a status symbol that we use to impress our neighbours and friends? Or, is it merely a stepping stone on our path towards financial enlightenment and freedom?  For some people, it may just be these things. However, for other people, it could be something much, much more.

Is a house a home?

To start, let’s look at how we inhabit houses or homes. Let’s look at what we do in them. Take a look at our furniture and the colours of our walls – we picked them because we feel comfortable and secure in them. It reflects our personality in some way. See pictures of our family that hang on our walls – icons or trophies that we surround ourselves with to create a sense of belonging. How do we feel when we lie in our bed? I guess we feel like it is ‘our’ bed – our special place. What does our house smell like? It smells like us, doesn’t it? We know this because when we go into someone else’s house it smells different.

Every weekend Bunnings is a bustling chaos of people buying more “stuff” for the ongoing quest to improve and transform their houses. Generally, there is no overarching strategic plan to what we buy or why we buy it. This act is an organic never-ending process of converting our house into a physical representation of who we are as people or families at a particular place in time. It is part of the ongoing act of building a home. It is something unique, primordial, personal, and with a sense of profound intimacy.

Go to your parent’s house. If you lived there at one time in your life, you feel a connection with the past, who you were as a child. Again, feelings of connectivity and belonging emerge when you look at the photos, the furniture, and when you take in the sounds and smells.

The Architecture of Building Your Home.

If you decide that working with a Canberra architect to design your home, you embark on a journey of creating a map of who your family is as physical and psychological beings at a certain point in time. An architect’s role can be to translate this map into a series of structured and ordered forms. These are experiential spaces and materials reflective of you. When you move through this space, it recreates the experience of who you are. Light filters through this space almost like it dances around you. It hugs you and holds you to the space.

Twenty years later if you walk through this space again you can be transported through time back to the person you were when you first walked through the space. It almost feels like you are being embraced by a long-lost friend or lover. The space talks to you, it intimately connects with you. It becomes your own unique space – the space where you belong. No one else can experience this feeling expect for you and your family.

This is the ‘architecture of building your home’.

Finally imagine if ever a neighbour in your street decided that working with a Canberra architect was the best way forward. How enriching and diverse would that street become? How many stories could be told by just walking through this street?

A new tapestry can be made, and when you walk through your front door. Do you feel like you have walked into a house or a home?

Canberra House Designers: Your Partner in Creating a Unique Home – Let’s Discuss Your Project

TYPOLOGY Architecture is focused on exploring ‘the architecture of home’ and can assist you with the design of your next project in Canberra or the surrounding regions. If you need more help on working with an architect, you can go to the Australian Institute of Architects.