Most bad plans were bad briefs first. The drawing merely made it visible. A good brief is not a wish list — it is the set of facts and constraints that let a designer make the hundred small decisions a plan is made of. Here is what to capture, in the order an experienced architect asks.
Start with the site, not the rooms
Rooms move; the site does not. Before any talk of bedrooms, record:
- Orientation. Which way is north? Morning sun in the kitchen and no western glare in the master bedroom both come from this one fact.
- Slope. Even 1 m of fall across the plot changes the foundation, the drainage, and where the house wants to sit.
- Access and gate position. The driveway is designed backwards from the gate. So is the garage, and often the kitchen door.
- Services. Where do water, power and sewer (or the septic position) enter? Wet rooms cluster around the answer.
- Neighbours and noise. What do you face on each boundary — a road, a wall, an open view worth keeping?
Occupants, not just bedroom counts
“Three bedrooms” tells a designer almost nothing. Who sleeps in them does: a family with young children wants bedrooms clustered; grown children and guests want separation; a live-in relative may need a ground-floor room with its own bathroom. Record who lives in the house on a normal Tuesday, and who visits at Christmas.
Lifestyle is a set of verbs
Capture what the household does: cooks daily or entertains monthly, works from home, keeps a kitchen garden, washes cars, prays, hosts a chama. Each verb claims space. A brief that says “large kitchen” is weaker than one that says “two people cook together every evening and guests sit in the kitchen while they do”.
Budget honesty beats budget optimism
A brief without a number produces a plan that gets redrawn after the first quantity survey. State the build budget, what it includes (boundary wall? borehole? finishes?), and whether the build is phased. A designer can plan a house to grow; a builder cannot stretch money.
Regulatory context up front
County, zoning class, plot ratio, setbacks, and any estate design guidelines belong in the brief, not in the approval stage. Finding a setback violation at submission costs weeks; finding it in the brief costs nothing.
Write it down — the one-page test
A brief that fits one page and answers these is ready to design against:
- Site: location, size, orientation, slope, gate, services, boundary conditions
- Occupants: who lives there daily, who visits, what changes in five years
- Rooms: the must-haves, with one sentence of intent each
- Lifestyle: the five verbs the house must serve
- Budget: the number, its scope, and the phasing
- Regulatory: county, zoning, known constraints
This is the interview Chimbuko runs in chat before it draws anything — the same questions, in the same order, with the answers stored against the project and checked as the plan evolves. See how the brief becomes a plan.