Free preview · The intake conversation
Every good house begins with a conversation that is mostly listening. Clients rarely arrive with a brief; they arrive with a feeling. They say the kitchen is dark, the family never eats together, the parents visit for three months every winter. Your job in the intake conversation is to translate that feeling into something you can draw, without flattening it into a room list too early. Run the first meeting in three passes. First, the life pass: who lives here, who visits, how the day unfolds from waking to sleeping, what happens during festivals, what happens when someone is ill. Second, the object pass: the piano, the sewing machine, the grandmother's almirah, the two-wheeler that must be parked inside the gate. Third, the money and time pass: the budget they say out loud, the budget they actually have, and when they need to move in. Write the brief back to them in plain language and make them correct it. A brief that has been argued over once is worth ten that were nodded at. Include the things they refused as clearly as the things they asked for — "no open kitchen", "no glass railing" — because in month six someone will suggest exactly that and you will need the record. Finally, separate needs from fixes. A client who asks for a bigger living room may actually need a second place for guests to sit so the living room stops being the only room. The brief you keep is the one written in terms of needs; the fixes are yours to invent.