Choosing a design studio specialised in high end residential design rather than a generalist studio operating in various architectural and interior design sectors is essential.
Finding the right design partner.
Making the decision on whom to entrust with the design of such a personal building is never easy. Our homes represent our security, our independence, our identity, our status, our achievements, leisure, play and family, they also represent, for many, one of the biggest investments we will make in our lives and maybe even the legacy we will leave behind for younger generations.
Selecting the right team to guide you on the lengthy journey towards your new home, is the single most important decision you will make.
With something as important as your family’s home and a considerable investment at stake, seeking the services of a specialist rather than a generalist design studio will give you an immediate advantage.
High end residential design is very different from luxury commercial design such as hotels, public buildings, apartments etc. There is commonly less repetition in the design, a higher quality of materials, more bespoke finishes and very customised detailing to be considered, designed and redesigned until it meets with your unique requirements. This requires passion, intuition, specialised knowledge and patience if your dream home is going to be truly representative of who you are and who you will become. The design of a hotel, and other public use structures, poses other challenges, their objective is to satisfy many users and thus are designed to a completely different set of criteria, which is why your designer of choice, should be sector specific.
Selecting a design studio that has 10+ years of almost exclusive experience in high end residential design and an impressive portfolio of published luxury home designs is a good indicator that you are in safe hands.
Our award winning design services have been carefully curated over the last 20 years of working predominantly in the field of luxury private residences. At the start of every project we spend time getting to know you and your family in order to tailor your project and the services we will provide around you in a very bespoke manner. Some of the questions we will ask may seem unusual, possibly requiring you to think about something you had never considered but designing dream homes is as much about the feelings and atmospheres the home will stir in you, as it is about the appearance of the residence. Many clients don’t actually realise this until they are stood in their completed home. Rather than asking “how do you see your dream home?”, we prefer to ask, “how do you want to feel in your new home?”
Everyone needs to make their money work for them and with the effort that has gone into finding the perfect site and the sizable investment you will be making in building your home this an important consideration for the future, even if you have no intention of selling it today.
Great design; whilst not necessarily costing more to build than poor design, pays dividend. There is a significantly lower supply of really specialised luxury residential design, therefore higher demand if and when it is presented to a discerning market.
The majority of our completed private residence designs are never sold - testament (we hope) to the enjoyment that the homes bring to the clients living in them. However on the few occasions that a property has been placed on the market, our clients have informed us, whilst working on their new design, that they have been impressed by the considerable return on investment made.
Without a carefully structured, highly sector specific design process, you may that find your architect or interior designer has misunderstood something or not given sufficient attention to a feature, space or function that is indispensable to you
Our architectural and interior design processes have been developed to start with detailed discovery and research sessions before a line is ever put on a drawing. We must understand what makes you tick. From there, a team appointed exclusively to your project, will advance through different stages of increasing complexity, only moving forward on the base of your complete satisfaction to our earlier drawing and image releases. If something needs to be changed, the earlier this is done, the more advantageous it is for your overall design. Our inhouse team of professional architects, interior architects, interior designers, FF&E designers and 3D renderers are all specialised within their own micro niche and work together feeding ideas and information back and forth for the cohesive advancement of each stage of your design. In the Middle East and East Africa, we work with a trusted group of structural, mechanical and electrical engineers, cost consultants and project managers whom we have built long standing and highly cooperative relationships with to ensure a dynamic project team.
Your dream plot may be situated on a master developers property such as:-
UAE.
Meraas’ - La Mer Island Peninsula’s, Dubai.
Emaar’s – Dubai Hills, Dubai.
Nakheel’s – The Palm, Dubai.
Kenya - Vipingo Ridge, Kilifi.
Mauritius – Anahita, Beau Champ.
If this is the case, your luxury home design will need to comply with both local government regulations and the extensive design control guidelines of the master development on which your property is located.
As specialist’s in prestigious home designs, we have extensive experience and up to date first-hand knowledge on working with a large number of residential property developers and how to help guide your unique project with minimum time consuming obstacles through what can be a complicated double approval process.
Dream homes are dream homes, because of the love and energy that people put into them. People make a project and homes that are designed and built together with mutual respect for ideas are always the better for it.
Having synergy and a shared vision for your future home with your projects principal designers is non-negotiable. There is little point beginning the design of your home with an architect or interior designer whom you may like and admire but who is specialised in contemporary glass and steel designs if you are looking for a more traditional design and vice versa. Just as there is little point selecting a design partner with whom you feel little or no immediate connection.
Unlike many high-end residential design studios’, you will see from our portfolio pages that rather than having a pre decided “house style”, we prefer to base our designs on the principals of understated elegance, proportion, detailing, visible quality craftsmanship, beautiful materials and opulent levels of comfort. These are factors that must guide the design of any luxury home irrespective of aesthetic orientation.
In our preliminary discussions and predesign research we will begin to shape ideas as far as aesthetic is concerned, you will also begin to feel if the synergy that is essential to any project exists.
If you are in the preparatory stages of your project and need some help planning, it may be worthwhile having a look at some of our pre-design guides and request a predesign review to help answer a number of early questions about your new project:
1 - If you are ready to proceed with your project, it is very simple - give us a call or send us an email with some introductory information about your project.
2 - We will send you a preliminary questionnaire, asking initial questions about your site, your lifestyle requirements, family structure, room / space requirements, style preferences, services required etc.
3 - We will then schedule a video call or arrange to meet in person in order to introduce ourselves and gain a fuller understanding of your ambitions, aspirations and objectives for the project before structuring a service package proposal which will explain how we can help, our scope of services, what we will provide etc inclusive of fees for the same.
4 - After exchange of our design services contract we will start the detailed pre design research and following which your dedicated team will begin the design process.