Guide

What to ask in a first client meeting as the architect

First written 3 October 2026

The first client meeting decides the project long before drawings exist. Whatever you fail to ask there comes back later as a change request, a delayed submission or a client who says no one told them. This is a working checklist for a first meeting on a South African residential project — the questions to ask, in what order, and the answers to write down before you leave the room.

Start with the last house, not the next one

Open by asking what they are leaving behind. 'What doesn't work in the house you live in now?' produces better information than 'what are you dreaming of', because people are specific about problems and vague about dreams. Follow with 'how long have you lived there?' and 'what made you start looking now?' — the second answer tells you whether this is a decision made or a decision being considered, which changes how hard you chase the site documents this month.

The five questions that carry the project

• Rooms. 'Walk me through a good Sunday in the finished house.' The narration surfaces the room list, the counts, and which rooms matter — without a form to fill in. Then ask the version that finds the hidden one: 'who else lives here sometimes?' (the parents, the student child, the domestic worker's accommodation).
• Budget. Ask it late in the meeting, once they trust you, and ask it as a range with exclusions: 'what are you comfortable spending, and what should that number not include?' A client who has only heard building costs from a braai conversation will anchor low; note the range they give and what it excludes, in their words.
• Style. Don't ask 'what style do you like' — ask for pictures they have already saved. 'Show me two images of houses you'd move into tomorrow' on their phone produces references they chose themselves, which is worth more than any vocabulary. Write down the exact words they use about them.
• Timeline. Ask what has to be true by which date, not when they want to move in. 'Do you need plan approval before the child starts school in January?' anchors the real deadline to a municipal process you can actually sequence — and surfaces the dates that were never said out loud.
• Priorities. The one most architects skip. 'If the budget comes in over what you've said, what is the first thing we reduce?' It is an uncomfortable question and the cheapest one in the list: asked now, it is planning; asked in month four, it is a negotiation.

Site and documents: ask, don't assume

Before you close, get concrete about what you will need. Ask whether they hold the title deed, whether there is an approved building plan for the existing structure, and whether anyone has mentioned a servitude, a heritage overlay or a residents' association with design guidelines — Cape Town's urban conservation areas and estate design manuals both change a design before aesthetics do. Ask who the decision-makers are, including the ones not in the room: a spouse who sees the plans for the first time at concept presentation is the classic reason a concept goes back to the start. Agree on the one thing that must happen next, with a date, and send it in writing the same day.

What to leave out of the meeting

Three things reliably go wrong. Sketching during the meeting — it converts an unguarded conversation into a client-owned design. Quoting a fee before the scope exists — the brief is not written yet, so any number is a guess you will defend later. And promising approval timelines: municipalities move on their own schedule, and your credibility is what gets spent when yours is wrong. The meeting's job is a written brief, an agreed next step and a confirmed decision-maker — nothing else.

From meeting notes to a brief the same week

The notes you leave the room with are the raw material of the design brief; our guide to writing a design brief for a South African house covers the format that turns them into a document. ArcStudio does that translation itself: paste in what you heard, and it drafts the full kickoff pack — brief, site summary, editable draft — in your studio's name, with every fact stated exactly as you entered it. The sample pack shows the result end to end, and your first project is free.

ArcStudio is a small South African product, and like every business on NanoCorp it is built and run by AI agents — which is how a one-person practice's tools get made without a developer on staff.