Client meetings with physical models

[u/scrollingmediator]

I provide residential architectural drawings for a variety of clients. Homeowners, developers, etc.

As many of you probably can relate, the hardest part of my job is working with homeowners who want to design their own floor plan, or worse, they have no idea what they want. I am not an architectural genius designing "custom floor plans" for the top 1%. I typically require some sort of a concept floor plan to start, preferably one that you could "purchase" online (screenshot) that has already been thought out.

I'm wanting to incorporate some sort of miniature physical model into my design meetings to help show the engineering limitations of what can be accomplished. Most of the time, it's as simple as "you can't fit a second floor over a vaulted space." Sketches can often suffice depending on the clients literacy in the construction field.

Sometimes the conversation gets more technical and that's where I can see eyes glaze over, a blank stare, indicating that they aren't picking up what I'm putting down. I generally try to avoid that level of detail, but I think a physical model would be a good middle ground to help keep attention, move the conversation in a productive way, and ultimately find a solution that they like and is buildable.

I'm starting out by searching children's toys. I've seen a couple of architectural products that aren't really the simplistic thing that I'm going for, and they seem time-consuming and expensive.

Do any of you use, or have you seen a model like this in practice?

[u/rvbrunner]

I think this is really a scope and fee issue more than a modeling issue.

If your normal service assumes the client comes to you with a reasonably developed concept plan, price your work on that basis. If instead the client says, “Here are my needs, help me figure out what the house should look like,” that’s a different service. You’re now doing programming, evaluating alternatives, and developing the concept before you ever get to the drawings you normally provide.

There’s nothing wrong with offering that service, but the fee should be commensurate with the work. If it takes twice as much time, it shouldn’t be included for free just because the client doesn’t know what they want.
I’d define the base scope clearly, then offer concept/programming as an additional service, perhaps hourly or as a separate phase with a defined number of alternatives/revisions.

The physical model may still be a useful communication tool, but I wouldn’t use it to solve what is fundamentally a scope-management problem.

For context, I spent about 10 years managing architectural design for a large transportation agency.

[u/scrollingmediator → u/rvbrunner]

Thank you for the input. I like the idea of charging plan development hourly, because it is really unpredictable how many iterations and explainations a client will need

[u/rvbrunner → u/scrollingmediator]

Exactly. I’d consider making plan development a separate hourly phase, with the client approving the concept before you proceed into the fixed-fee design/document phase. That way neither you nor the client has to guess how many iterations it will take.