01Fees
What this costs, written down before you ask.
Architecture is famously priced behind a phone call. We would rather you arrive already knowing whether we are in your range — including the parts of the number that are not our fee at all.
Fixed fee
Site Study
Find out what the land will let you build.
$12,500
Fixed. Credited in full against design fees.
Six weeks, one bound document, and a straight recommendation. This is where most of our clients start, and it is the only engagement we will sell you before we have seen the property.
This is you if
- You are under contract, or choosing between two parcels
- There is an existing structure and nobody has priced the structure
- Your programme might not fit, and you would rather know now
Covers
- Half-day on site with a principal
- Zoning, wetland, septic, and historic research
- A conversation with the building department
- Two or three massing options
- Construction cost range from current local numbers
Percentage of construction
Most projectsArchitecture
Design and delivery, first sketch to final punch item.
12%
Of construction cost · $95,000 minimum · billed monthly
The standard arrangement for a building. A percentage rather than a fixed fee because neither of us knows in month one exactly how big this is — and because when you decide in month five to add the porch, the fee should move with the work instead of becoming a negotiation.
This is you if
- A new house, a substantial addition, or an adaptive reuse
- Construction between roughly $600,000 and $4 million
- You want one studio responsible from drawings through construction
Covers
- All six phases, including construction administration
- Engineers coordinated by us, contracted by you
- Bid levelling across three contractors
- Weekly site visits and shop-drawing review
- Full-size mockups of anything we have not built before
Fixed fee + procurement
Interiors
Everything you touch, specified and delivered.
From $60,000
Fixed design fee · procurement at 12% of goods
Interior architecture and FF&E, taken through to install. Fixed rather than percentage because the scope really is knowable — we can count the rooms. Procurement is separate and transparent: you see the trade price and our 12%, not a marked-up invoice.
This is you if
- A hospitality fit-out heading for an opening date
- A whole house needing millwork, lighting, and furnishing
- You have an architect already and need the inside resolved
Covers
- Interior architecture, millwork, and lighting design
- Material palette proven with mockups
- FF&E specification with a live budget you can see
- Procurement, expediting, receiving, and install
- Care-and-maintenance sheet at handover
02Phase by phase
Where the twelve percent actually goes.
Billed monthly against progress, not in a lump at each gate. The last row is the one worth looking at: a quarter of the fee is earned after the drawings are finished.
Schematic design
Options, massing, and the plan you approve
Design development
Materials, structure, systems, mockups
Construction documents
The permit and build set, drawn for local trades
Bidding
Three contractors, levelled and explained
Construction administration
Weekly site visits through substantial completion
03Variables
What moves the number, in both directions.
What moves the number up
- An existing structure nobody has surveyed
- Steep sites, ledge, or anything the septic engineer frowns at
- Historic district or wetland review
- A programme that changes after design development
What moves it down
- Repeated units — six of one cabin, not six cabins
- A site study already done, by us or anyone competent
- Decisions made once and kept
- A contractor engaged early enough to price rather than guess
04Questions
The five we get asked every time.
If yours is not here, the answer is probably specific to your property and worth a phone call rather than a paragraph.
Start with the small, fixed one.
Twelve thousand five hundred dollars, six weeks, and a document that tells you whether the property works. Credited in full against design fees if you carry on — and roughly one client in six reads it and walks away, which we consider the study doing its job.