How to Prepare for Your DKAD Simon Open Door Consultation

This page helps you to prepare, gather information and get the most from your short charity consultation. If you have already booked a Simon Open Door consultation, many thanks for supporting a truly worthwhile cause. DKAD are fully booked for this year’s event, but please log onto Simonopendoor.ie to find other registered architects.

We always find that time really flies in these one hour meetings! Please try to bring as many of the items below as you can, and complete our standard briefing form to help us get a sense of you and your project, as quickly as possible during our one hour consultation. Remember to hit “submit” after completing the form.

How the Consultation Will Work

• We are fully booked for both Saturday and Sunday this year; we will have precisely one hour together so we should to do as much as we can in advance of meeting to get the most out of every consultation.
• This year (2016) the event will be held at Sky Business Centre, 57 Clontarf Road, Dublin 3. There is easy parking on the street outside or across the road in the large car park on the seafront, but remember to buy a parking ticket and display it.
• If you fill out the form it will help us understand the basics of what you want to achieve in advance. That said, lists like these are just useful starting points; talking the project through in person is a critical part of the creative process. The questions in the form introduce the sorts of ideas you (and your family) should tackle to understand what’s important on your project.
• It’s best to start by going over the materials you have brought so we can get a sense of the space. This is always a good way to start a conversation.
• We will try to produce sketches of possible designs, and to show examples of similar projects. This is really only possible with some measurements of the space.
• We can tell you if planning is required for whatever design emerges during the consultation, and we can give you an estimate of the likely cost.

Checklist of Materials- Please Bring as Much As Possible!

1. Lots of photographs of the house. Try to take 4 photographs in each room. We will have a laptop and big screen, so you don’t have to print them. Just bring them on a memory stick.
2. If you would like to show us a lot of images, or online materials, it may be useful for you to have them ready on your own tablet or laptop.
3. Scale drawings of the house are invaluable. If you have any drawings, please find them and bring them along.
4. Sketch the plans of your house to the best of your ability and measure the length and width of every room. Also measure the overall length and width of the house.
5. We will use online mapping tools to check the orientation of the property to understand light and the aspect of the site.
6. Find images of buildings or interiors that are close to what you want. These will just be a starting point, but we can read a lot from them. You may already have magazine clippings or pictures of other houses you’ve visited.
7. Put together a quick digital scrapbook. Make a list of keywords which describe the main aspects of what you want. Type these into pinterest.com or a google image search. Go through the pages of images, save anything that appeals to you and show it to us.
8. Read this website for more information. We have spent several years building up a resource of useful links, frequently asked questions, articles and case studies of our own work. Use the category lists and the search bar at the top.

Looking forward to meeting you on the day!