THE BIG PICTURE PLAN
...without wasting your time, money or energy?!
Before >>> After
You own a home in the right location and you know it has potential to be your forever home, You have an interesting career, a happy family life, and hobbies you enjoy, and you know that life has worked out pretty good for you.
But you are looking for something more. A home that makes your heart sing!
You want your home to feel more uplifting and give you space to enjoy a better quality of life.
You're tired of trying to figure out a solution on your own, and you'd love the endless conversations about your home improvements to finally reach a conclusion so you can move forward.
You'd like to explore your options, choose your favourite ideas, and avoid making expensive mistakes that you might live to regret.
Getting a design for your home, to make it a place you truly love living, feels like the perfect next step. But you're feeling overwhelmed by all the options, and confused about the best place to start.
You want a home where you can create happy memories. A home that contributes to a positive future for your kids and theirs by helping prevent climate change. And you know what you want, you just don't know what that looks like as a design yet.
You're looking for an architect who will work with you, will listen to what you need and want, will interpret your vision for your home and life, then create a bespoke design that you love.
Here's the good news!
You've found the best first step, and the architect for you!
This three-stage package of support, guidance and collaborative design, gives you sketch plans for your home that you will be confident meet both your needs and desires.
The Big Picture Plan gives you...
- the right design for you in the best and fastest way possible,
- fast designs you love in a fraction of the standard industry time,
- cost certainty with a fixed fee package - no hidden costs or unexpected extras,
- fast and easy decision making, saving you time and emotional energy,
- total control over your designs, costs, speed and standards
- clarity and a vision you can easily communicate for your home
- remote design that fits around a working day - no need to deep clean or bake a cake!
You can work with me even if you don't live nearby, because my unique approach doesn't require a house visit.
The three stages of the Big Picture Plan are...
|
Immediately after your booking you get access to a digital pre-design prepbook and unlimited email support.
You complete the prepbook with your partner in your own time and in a way that suits you. I'm available to help you, advise you and answer any questions via email during this pre-design stage. |
|
The remote Design Day is a full day 9am - 5pm with my full focus and creativity dedicated to you and your home design.
This day includes two calls with me: 9.30am - a clarity call to make sure I understand your vision to base your design on, and 12pm - a collaborative design session, when we explore your design options together Timing of calls is flexible to within half an hour. |
|
Along with the sketch plans you get the Check-it-Out Checklist and instructional videos, along with unlimited email support for 3 months following your Design Day.
The checklist helps you make sure that your design is what you want and how you want it. The videos guide you through how to complete your double checking process in your own time. I provide email support to answer your questions and advise you. At the end of the 3 months, or sooner if you're ready to make progress, we get on a call to discuss your best next steps to progress your project. |
What's the investment?
Start your booking with an initial payment of only £400.
Then a final payment of £1000 28 days later.
To ensure a great experience and quality of our work together, only two spots are available to work with me each month. They book up in advance.
Book now, and in just a few short weeks you will have your unique plan designs.
To check she's the right architect for you and this is the right start for your project:
Book a Right Fit Call here >>
Why my clients choose me over other architects...
I'm an award winning and fully qualified chartered architect, with decades of experience as well as specialist knowledge about eco-refurbishment and historic buildings. Since setting up iarchitect in 2009, I've worked with hundreds of homeowners to help them redesign their homes. Everything I design is tailored uniquely for you and your home, based on your vision that I help you to create and communicate.
Here's how I do things differently...
My collaborative approach to design involves you fully from the outset so that you retain control over your designs, and we explore all your options quickly so you find your best solution fast.
An eco-design approach is embeded within my design work, so it is more effortlessly eco friendly without necessarily having to add on expensive eco technology. I follow fabric first and passivhaus principles with my designs.
With remote design there is no need for a home visit, which means you won't feel the need to deep clean the house or bake me a cake! Plus the time saved on travel means more time spent on your designs.
Since I won't be in your home during the Design Day, you can get on with your working day and fit in our calls during a morning coffee break and a lunchtime session. You don't need to lose days of annual leave to work with me.
The pre-design preparation to create your vision, and the double checking of the designs we create is self-paced and supported. You get the guidance you need to create a vision and check the designs are right for you, in a way that suits you and gives you unlimited email access to me for support when you need it.
The Big Picture Plan is an investment of £1400. Start with an initial payment of only £400.
To ensure a great experience and quality of our work together, only two spots are available to work with me each month. They book up in advance.
To check she's the right architect for you and this is the right start for your project:
Book a Right Fit Call here >>
I'm often asked: "Why is the Design Your Home Vision Preparation necessary?"
This is the secret source of my intuition.
In truth, I'm not a mind reader. I help you get really clear on what you need and want, to create your vision using my signature EAGLE Method. I then base designs on your vision.
This is how I understand what you need and desire in order to create designs that make your heart sing!
Here are some more things you need to know before working with me:
I'm here for you.
Your home can define and restrict your life. I help you take back control, so your home supports you in living your version of your best life.
I don't assume what is right for you based on my own preference and ego. I won't tell you what you should do or how to live your life.
You know best what's right for you. Everything I design for you is based on your vision.
I'm creative, talented and experienced.
Well over a hundred homeowners have trusted me to redesign their homes. I've designed projects that have won awards, as well as several multi-million pound high schools.
But my approach is to support you rather than to impose my expertise on you. I lend you my full creativity and experience, in a way that you feel the design is yours.
For you to feel ownership over your home design is my greatest gift to you. You wouldn't reach the same result without me, but you'll feel like it came from you. Because when the design is based on your vision it is uniquely yours.
I don't expect you to deep clean or bake a cake!
For a decade I enjoyed the hospitality of my amazing homeowner clients. Many of them took the trouble to deep clean their homes before my arrival, and treated me to home baked cakes.
Then in the midst of the 2020 pandemic my dad had a heart attack. While he lay alone in hospital for several weeks, I feared I would never see him alive again. Thankfully he pulled through. To protect him I stopped making home visits and started designing remotely via video calls.
I knew remote design was possible, but didn't realise it is also better for my clients.
As a young employed architect I rarely got to visit a site before designing. Architects are trained to design from our imagination. From plans and photos we can understand and visualise an existing or proposed building quickly and easily.
In 2006 I designed a jewellery shop fit-out for a client in Milan, Italy, while I was based in Barcelona, Spain. In 2012 I delivered my first home design remotely for a homeowner in New York State, USA, from my home office in Manchester, UK.
When I stopped making home visits I realised how much better I could serve my clients remotely. Instead of taking up your holiday time in a half day session, our clarity call and collaborative design session can fit into a coffee break and lunchtime during your working day.
The time previously spent travelling to homes across the UK is now spent on delivering better designs. Driving less is better for the planet, and working in my own space means I can be my most creative and produce my best work for you.
Designing remotely is not only possible, it gives far better results for homeowners.
The Big Picture Plan is an investment of only £1400.
To ensure a great experience and quality of our work together, only two spots are available to work with me each month. They book up in advance.
To check she's the right architect for you and this is the right start for your project:
Book a Right Fit Call here >>
From Time Consuming Redesign After Redesign to Rapid Design Solutions My Clients Love
Then I created the EAGLE Method. This framework guides homeowners through this essential process of first creating a vision.
Combined with a collaborative approach, the EAGLE Method helped me go from redesigning for months (and occasionally years!) to reach a design my clients were happy with, to reaching those just right for them designs in a day. So much time saved!
As a result my clients have been able to:
- save £20,000 and more on their projects by not building more than they needed
- choose to move instead of improve, avoiding making an expensive mistake, with a better investment and get them more of what they really wanted
- create a family bathroom out of a previously scary corridor space, so they could keep the same number of bedrooms and have a luxury ensuite to the masterbedroom
- make their home more loveable and sociable, by banishing condensation and mould and creating comfortable spaces they could invite friends into
- banish feelings of isolation, frustration and loneliness by turning their once small and awkward kitchen into the heart of their entertaining space, so they could enjoy hosting guests instead of feeling like they were missing out on all the fun
The Big Picture Plan is an investment of only £1400.
To ensure a great experience and quality of our work together, only two spots are available to work with me each month. They book up in advance.
To check she's the right architect for you and this is the right start for your project:
Book a Right Fit Call here >>
Before >>> After
Explore and Test your Design Options without...
|
|
How amazing would it be to have a home that is a calm sanctuary, where you can retreat to restore your energy, emerge from refreshed ready to face the day and save the world?
When you have the space you need that suits your lifestyle, that's what you get.
Imagine your life a few months from now...
Imagine how your mornings will feel, knowing you have a clear plan of action and you and your partner have decided together how you're going to improve your home.
Imagine your evening mealtimes, free from endless discussions about what to do, and no more bargaining for uncomfortable compromises with your other half.
Imagine having...
- a clear vision of what you need and want without getting confused by all the options
- sketch plans designed that deliver your vision and work practically with your home, without having to go through an endless series of redesigns
- confidence to move your project forward without making expensive mistakes
Picture yourself in a couple of years, once the builders dust has settled , when you can live that eco-friendly lifestyle that you always wanted in ease and comfort, with...
- All of the breathing room you and your family need
- A bright and beautiful space that flows from room to room
- A warm, welcoming, and restful place to call home
- An eco-friendly retreat that requires minimal maintenance
- Fun, child friendly design that your family will love for decades to come
Your daily frustrations designed out and those moments of pleasure in each day enhanced, so your home enables you to fully enjoy your life.
You know this is possible and that you can have this - so let me help you get it.
The Big Picture Plan is an investment of only £1400.
To ensure a great experience and quality of our work together, only two spots are available to work with me each month. They book up in advance.
To check she's the right architect for you and this is the right start for your project:
Book a Right Fit Call here >>
The Big Picture Plan is all you need to get your project started the right way.
overwhelm, chaos, frazzled relationships, feeling like failed parents, being too embarrassed to entertain so having a limited social life...
and living a life of ease and pleasure, with space to enjoy with loved ones, and the daily frustrations and inconveniences resolved, like getting in and out of the front door quickly and smoothly each morning.
The question is, how much longer do you want to wait to start your home redesign?
How long are you willing to wait for the space you need to make your heart sing, and create a massive difference to your life?
I recommend wasting no more time.
Start your project the best way possible here and now!
Get on and live your best life in your happy eco home sooner, not later...
The Big Picture Plan is an investment of only £1400.
To ensure a great experience and quality of our work together, only two spots are available to work with me each month. They book up in advance.
To check she's the right architect for you and this is the right start for your project:
Book a Right Fit Call here >>
Before >>> After
Don't just take my word for it, here are some kind words from my clients, with the big picture plans I delivered for them:
The Big Picture Plan is an investment of only £1400.
To ensure a great experience and quality of our work together, only two spots are available to work with me each month. They book up in advance.
To check she's the right architect for you and this is the right start for your project:
Book a Right Fit Call here >>
This package is perfect for you if...
You are confident with video calls and at least minimally tech savvy - as in you can use email.
You can get your head around a floor plan, especially with a 3D sketch view to help you out, and are happy to discuss your design options frankly.
You are open minded and able to imagine multiple possible future outcomes for your life.
You prioritise an environmentally friendly lifestyle and prefer an eco design approach.
You are able and willing to set aside the time to complete the pre-design preparation.
You are the type of person who prefers to buy locally grown organic food and ethical clothing, and at the weekend you love visiting National Trust properties or modern art galleries.
The Big Picture Plan is an investment of only £1400.
To ensure a great experience and quality of our work together, only two spots are available to work with me each month. They book up in advance.
To check she's the right architect for you and this is the right start for your project:
Book a Right Fit Call here >>
Who's not a fit?
If you know exactly what you want and just want someone to draw up your plans without adding creative input...
If you want to be told what you should do...
If you don't believe in climate change, or think that you don't need to take any personal responsibility for protecting the planet, because it's too late or you think governments and big business should make all the changes...
If you don't care about making eco choices like minimising plastics and concrete in your build...
If you'd rather grab a coffee in a disposable takeaway cup from a large chain, rather than a lovingly made coffee from an independent cafe served in a warm mug...
...then chances are my approach will not chime with you.
The Big Picture Plan steps from start to finish...
2. Check your emails to get a link for your pre-design prepbook.
3. Complete your prepbook and upload your plans and photos to your client folder prior to your Design Day. Get my personal support via email if you need help to complete your prepbook.
4. Join me at 9.30am on your Design Day for a 20 minute Clarity Call via video.
5. Join me at 12pm on your Design Day for a 60 minute collaborative design session via video.
6. Receive your hand drawn big picture plans by the end of the Design Day week by email.
7. Double check the design is right for you with my support via email for up to 3 months and the Check-it-Out Checklist with guidance videos.
8. Join me for a video chat to review your double checking and discuss your next steps.
The Big Picture Plan is an investment of only £1400.
To ensure a great experience and quality of our work together, only two spots are available to work with me each month. They book up in advance.
To check she's the right architect for you and this is the right start for your project:
Book a Right Fit Call here >>
Still have questions? Here's more answers for you:
-
What happens after I book my Big Picture Plan?
You will immediately get a link to the prepbook so you can start to prepare for your design straight away. Your Design Day date will be reserved for you on my calendar so nobody else can book it.
-
Will you come to my home for the Design Day?
No, it is not necessary for me to visit your home to be able to redesign it. We work together via video call and all the designs will be based on plans, photographs and information that you provide by uploading to your online client folder. Remote design works better for my clients than home visits at this early sketch design stage. It makes it much easier for you to fit into your working day. You don't have to take a day off work or coordinate that with your partner, so you don't have to use up your holiday allowance. You can join the calls from a quiet spot at home or work, wherever suits you. It is also much more eco than if I drive or fly to visit you.
-
What can I do if I don't have plans of my home to send you?
Don't worry. There are several ways to get a plan of your home that is suitable to use for this stage. Once you have booked your Design Day send me an email, and I will help you figure out the best way to get plans for you.
-
What if I don't like the design?
No architect can guarantee that you will like their designs, but by being a partner with me in the designing you are much more likely to end up with a design you are happy with. As we create your design, I involve you in a collaborative design process. You tell me honestly what you do or don't like, don't worry you won't hurt my feelings! We discard any ideas that you don't like and keep only the ones you love and are excited to see built. The end of the Design Day isn't the end of the design journey. You continue to get my support and guidance to double check the designs following this session, so there is still scope for you to change your mind. In follow on packages we explore your design in 3D, when we enrich the design with additional detail and accuracy.
-
How do the fee payments work?
You pay in two instalments. The first is £400 to reserve your Design Day and then one further payment of £1000 4 weeks later.
-
Do both my partner and I have to join the calls?
Yes. If you share your home and your home has to suit both of your needs and desires then you both need to complete a pre-design prepbook, as well as join the clarity call and collaborative design call. Any partner who hasn't been involved in the pre-design preparation or is absent from the calls tends to be less satisfied with the design, because their views are unable to be taken into account. This can stall your project indefinitely. To get the most out of this process it is best for you to both be equally involved. For later stages you can nominate one of you to manage the process, but at this beginning stage it is essential for you both to take part fully.
-
Should we involve the children in the design process?
It is up to you how much you involve your children in your home design process. It can be rewarding for both them and you to include them in your conversations. Many architects had experience of work being carried out to their home as a child and were inspired to become architects as a result. Let me know if you wish to include them, as I have a fun and creative home design playbook that you can use to get them involved.
-
When do you hold the Design Days?
You can book your Design Day on the next available Tuesday that suits you. If you are unable to make a Tuesday there can be some flexibility to adjust this to a Wednesday. Please email me to arrange this prior to your booking: jane.leach@i-architect.co.uk
-
What can I do if there are no dates available for a Design Day?
If you can't find a suitable date available for your Design Day please send me an email to let me know, so I can help you, here: jane.leach@i-architect.co.uk
-
When will I have my sketch designs?
You get your sketch designs, and a package of information about your next steps, by the Friday following your Tuesday Design Day.
-
Why do you start with the Big Picture Plan?
Starting with the Big Picture Plan saves you substantially in time, effort and costs. The Big Picture Plan means initial design work takes place on one day and gives you a virtually instant set of sketch plans. I have been helping homeowners since 2009 to create their ideal homes and have found that this is the quickest and most effective way to understand homeowners unique needs and design to meet them. Starting without a strong vision and big picture concept design can make the initial design process take many months and even years of going back and forward with emails and meetings.
-
What comes after the Big Picture Plan?
Following the Big Picture Plan you can proceed with the 3D Design Package. This involves a measured survey, your home computer drawn in 3D, design meetings via video call that include looking around your 3D home model, and a planning submission if required. The fee for this varies according to scale and complexity and you will receive a fee proposal based on your preferred sketch design as part of the Big Picture Plan. The fee for the 3D Design Package starts from £3,400, excluding measured survey. There are additional follow on design packages following planning submission, which you can choose from according to availability at the time. The fees for these vary according to project scale and complexity, as well as the scope of service provided.
-
Can I just buy the Big Picture Plan?
Yes. I aim to keep you in control of your project at all times. This is why my design packages are structured to give you choice at each stage of your project. I offer architectural design packages that follow on from the Big Picture Plan all the way through to completed build. However, there is no obligation to continue with subsequent project design stages. At the end of each phase you will have a package of information that you can use to take your project to the next stage. You then have freedom to choose if you would like to continue working with me or implement the plan on your own or with another provider.
-
What is the clarity call and why is it necessary?
Your Design Day starts with a 20 minute clarity call. This is a video call to review your prepbook and the information you have provided. Prior to the call I will have read everything you have submitted and reviewed all your photographs and plans. On the clarity call we will go through a series of questions that I have prepared. This call ensures that your needs and desires are clearly understood. This helps to avoid designs being based on misunderstandings or assumptions.
-
What is the Collaborative Design Session and why is it necessary?
The Collaborative Design Session is a 60 minute video call, when we explore your design options together. Prior to this session I create multiple design ideas based on your vision and the plans of your home. We then review these ideas on this call with a screenshare. We discuss what you like or don't like about them. We discard anything that you don't like, and tweak, adjust or amalgamate the ideas you are excited about. By quickly exploring many possible options together during this session, you can get a design you are happy with, that you know works practically with your home.
-
Can I chat with you first before booking the Big Picture Plan?
Yes, if you have thoroughly read this page and need to have a chat before going ahead we can arrange that. Please send me an email and let me know what questions you have and what you need to know before you will feel ready to go ahead and I'll send you a link for a Fitting Call: jane.leach@i-architect.co.uk The Fitting Call is to help you make sure that this package is right for you. I will advise you of an alternative approach if the Big Picture Plan is not the right fit for you.
The Big Picture Plan is an investment of only £1400.
To ensure a great experience and quality of our work together, only two spots are available to work with me each month. They book up in advance.
To check she's the right architect for you and this is the right start for your project:
Book a Right Fit Call here >>
iarchitect limited company number: 10621333
