Not a questionnaire.
A conversation
before the conversation.
Many firms use intake forms — name, address, square footage, budget range. They are useful for scheduling. They tell you almost nothing about a project.
The Discovery Workbook is different. It asks the questions that shape every design decision that follows: how you move through a morning, where you go when you need quiet, what you've always wished your home would support but never has, what you want to feel at 7am versus 9pm, what your three non-negotiables are — and where you're genuinely flexible.
Most architects begin with design. We begin with understanding. The Discovery Workbook is how that understanding is built — carefully, before anything else.
The workbook covers eight areas of inquiry — context and motivation, daily life and patterns, values and priorities, desired experience, functional program, site and environmental intent, process and collaboration, and the view from five years out. Some questions are practical. Others require genuine reflection. That's intentional.
What emerges from a completed workbook is something we call your Project DNA — a clear, specific picture of how you live, what you need, and what success looks like for this project. Every design decision that follows is tested against it.
It also does something that room counts and square footage requirements cannot: it tells us who you are. And in our experience, the architects who understand their clients well — before the first sketch — make far better decisions throughout the project than those who don't.
What the workbook
covers.
The workbook moves from the personal to the practical — beginning with why this project matters and what it represents, then working through how you live, what you value, and what the home needs to do. By the time we reach rooms and square footage, we already understand the life the home needs to support.
Why this project, now. The transition it represents. What success looks like beyond the building. What you most want your architect to understand.
How you actually move through your days. Where people gather and why. Where you retreat. What routines your current home fails to support.
The tradeoffs you'll face — and how to navigate them. What you'd protect first. Your three non-negotiables. Where you're genuinely flexible.
What this home should feel like — morning and evening. Light, sound, views, material preferences. What it should communicate about who you are.
The spaces you need, how important each is, and how they should relate to each other. Adjacencies, frequencies, sizes — grounded in how you actually use a home.
Your relationship to the land. Views to capture and screen. Maintenance tolerance. Environmental priorities — energy, air quality, passive solar, water.
How decisions get made and who makes them. Your decision style. What would make this process feel frustrating — and what a successful working relationship looks like.
Five years from now, what makes you glad you made this investment? What would feel like a missed opportunity? What does success look like beyond square footage?
Questions
no one else will ask you.
If these resonate, you'll understand why we start here.
These are six of the questions contained in the Discovery Workbook. There are over eighty more.
If this project were completely successful, how would your daily life feel different?
Are there activities you wish you did more often, but feel your current home doesn't encourage?
What should this home feel like at 7:00 AM? What should it feel like at 9:00 PM?
What are your three non-negotiables? Where are you most flexible?
Imagine you have lived in this home for five years. What makes you glad you made this investment?
If we could surprise and delight you with one aspect of this home — something you may not yet have imagined — what would you hope that might be?
From workbook
to Project DNA.
The workbook isn't homework. It's the beginning of a conversation that unfolds over several sessions — culminating in a clear, shared understanding of what we're building and why.
A 30-minute introductory conversation to understand your project, answer your questions, and determine whether we're the right fit. No commitment required.
Once we begin, the Discovery Workbook is sent to you before our first full pre-design session. You complete it thoughtfully — ideally with everyone involved in the decision.
We work through your responses together — exploring the answers, understanding the tensions, and surfacing the things that matter most. This is where the design begins to take shape, before any drawings are made.
The output of the discovery process is your Project DNA — a clear, shared document of your priorities, values, spatial needs, and design intent. It becomes the reference point for every decision that follows.
With Project DNA established, schematic design starts with genuine clarity. Every early sketch is tested against what we know about how you live — not against what a standard floor plan looks like.
Better decisions.
Fewer regrets.
A home that holds.
The most common source of dissatisfaction in custom homes isn't poor craftsmanship or cost overruns. It's decisions made too quickly, without a clear picture of what the home actually needed to do.
The Discovery Workbook process doesn't eliminate uncertainty — no process can. But it dramatically reduces the number of decisions made in the wrong order, without the right information, or with only a partial picture of the life the home needs to support.
Clients who complete the workbook thoroughly report a different experience of the design process — not because the process is easier, but because the decisions feel grounded. They know why they chose one thing over another. They can explain it. That clarity holds through the entire project.
It also tends to produce homes that are genuinely specific. Not homes that could belong to anyone, in any neighborhood, at any stage of life. Homes that are legible expressions of how a particular family lives — and that continue to feel right ten and twenty years later, because they were designed for the arc, not just the moment.
Most architects begin with design. We begin with understanding. The Discovery Workbook is how that understanding is built — and why our projects feel the way they do.
"Some questions are practical. Others are reflective. Some require a simple selection. Others may require pause. There are no right answers — only clarity."
Those are the opening words of the workbook itself. They set the tone for everything that follows — and for how we approach every project we take on.
Free Resource · Home Design Guide
Not ready to reach out yet?
Start with the guide.
Our Home Design Guide walks through how the design process works, what it costs, and how to make good decisions before hiring anyone. 26 pages. No commitment.
The first step is
a conversation.
A 30-minute discovery call. No commitment. We'll talk about your project, your site, and what you're hoping to build — and determine together whether we're the right fit.