How to Read an Architect Before You Commission One
The practice that photographs best is not reliably the practice that finishes. Here is what to ask, which answers matter, and the contract terms that decide who is still returning calls in year three.
Commissioning a house here is a three-year relationship with someone you met at a lunch. The selection process most people run — look at the portfolio, meet the principal, like them — tests for exactly one quality, which is the ability to present. That quality is real and it is not the one that matters most in month twenty-six.
The question that does most of the work
Ask for the last three completed projects. Not the best three. The last three, in order, whatever they are.
A portfolio is a selection; the last three are a sample. If the two lists are the same, the practice completes what it starts. If the last three are not in the portfolio, ask why, and listen to whether the answer is about the client, the budget, the contractor or the planning authority — because the answer will tell you which of those a difficult project gets blamed on.
Every practice can show you the house that went well. The useful information is in the one they would rather discuss privately.
What is specific to this coastline
Two constraints operate here that do not operate in most of Attica, and a practice that has not met them will meet them for the first time on your project.
The first is archaeological. In May 2013 the Central Archaeological Council declared the whole Laimos peninsula and the Megalo Kavouri beach an archaeological site, including the marine zone. That is a heritage instrument rather than a planning one, it behaves differently, and it is considerably harder to work around.
The second is planning, and it is recent. The Municipality of Vari-Voula-Vouliagmeni suspended the issue of building-bonus permits in March 2024, nine months before the Council of State ruled on them nationally — it and Alimos were the only two municipalities in Greece to move early. If your brief assumes a bonus that was available in 2023, the practice needs to have noticed.
Ask directly: what have you built in this municipality, and what did the archaeological service require? A practice with good answers has a file. A practice with general answers has a website.
The separation nobody explains
Design and site supervision are separable services and they are frequently separated. An architect can design a house and have nothing to do with its construction, and the client often does not discover this until the first thing goes wrong on site.
Establish in writing who supervises, how often they attend, who instructs the contractor, and who is liable when the built thing differs from the drawing. That last question is where three-year relationships end, and it costs nothing to settle in month one.
The visit that reveals most
Not the office. A site, mid-build, with the contractor present.
Watch who the contractor addresses when there is a question. Watch whether the architect knows what happened last week without being told. Watch whether the site is tidy, because a tidy site is a supervised site. Twenty minutes of that is worth more than a portfolio and both parties know it, which is why the request itself is informative — a practice that cannot arrange one is telling you something about its relationships.
This piece assumes you already have two or three names in front of you. If you do not, assembling the shortlist is the earlier problem, and it has its own method.
Who is actually building here
The offices you can actually appoint: ISV, who have finished houses in all three of Vouliagmeni, Glyfada and Voula and build their own designs; Tsolka, whose studio is on the Kavouri headland; Michail in Glyfada, with three villas on site now; 314, whose language you see from the road; Parthenios, with current work in both Vouliagmeni and Glyfada; K-Studio and AETER, who made the hotels rather than the houses; Divercity, who run Athens and London; A&M for a turnkey contract; and Block722 if what you need is the interior.
Landscape is a separate appointment and the one most buyers under-budget: doxiadis+ did the Astir Palace and the Riviera Tower, H. Pangalou a Kavouri residence and the Niarchos park, Greenways both Aesthesis and a Vouliagmeni villa on site now.
And then the names you cannot hire. Foster + Partners masterplanned The Ellinikon and designed the 200-metre Riviera Tower, Kengo Kuma has the waterfront galleria, Bjarke Ingels has 88 residences at Park Rise. None of the three takes a private house in Attica. You do not appoint them; you buy a flat, and that is a different transaction with a different set of questions.
Three terms worth arguing about
- Fee basis. A percentage of construction cost aligns the architect with a larger budget; a fixed fee aligns them with finishing. Neither is wrong, but know which one you have signed.
- What happens on delay. Not a penalty — an agreed process for who decides, and how fast, when the answer holds up the trades.
- Who owns the drawings, and what happens to the project if the relationship ends in year two. This is the term nobody wants to discuss at the start and everybody wants to have agreed later.
None of this is a substitute for liking the work. It is a way of finding out whether the person who made the work you like will still be there when the work is being made — which, on a coastline where the best stock is off-market and the good practices are found the same way, is a question your adviser can answer faster than a search can.
