This is one of my favourite questions to ask new clients.

Because honestly? It’s amazing how often the best answer to their design needs isn’t “bigger”, “newer”, or “rip it all out and start again”.

Sometimes it’s just… already there. And nobody is asking the right questions!

- ASK A BETTER QUESTION, GET A BETTER RESULT.

Back when I was still a baby architect — I’m not even sure I was fully qualified yet — my dad asked me to come and look at something in our village.

He was chairman of our local parish council, and we were lucky enough to have a public open-air swimming pool. The kind of place with proper character: old wooden changing cubicles, a bandstand, a viewing area… and a very solid, very “been here forever” concrete-block shower and toilet block. All with the Peak District hills sitting in the background like a postcard.

The problem was straightforward and important: they needed an accessible WC.

A local architect had already drawn up a proposal to renovate the existing shower and toilet block. The building sat a couple of steps up, the ground fell away, the wrong way, and making the entrance accessible meant a big ramp. Inside, the plan involved ripping out the whole interior, re-plumbing, redoing the layout… the works. It was the sensible solution IF you had to put the AWC in the existing shower block.

It was going to cost this community pool something in the region of £40,000. And this was a LONG time ago!

So my dad asked me to come and have a look.

I went down, walked the site with them, looked at the block, looked at the levels… and then, while we were standing there, I noticed something else nearby.

A row of doors by the entrance.

THE REAL LESSON

That pool experience has stuck with me for years, because it highlights something I see again and again when people are thinking of renovating or adding extensions:

We can be so busy solving the problem we think we’ve been given that we don’t pause to check whether it’s the right problem… or whether there’s a simpler route to the same outcome.

We’re solving for the wrong thing, without exploring all possibilities. This limits outcomes.

When people come to an architect, they often arrive with a solution already in mind:

• “We need an extension.”
• “We need to knock this wall down.”
• “We need to redo the whole layout.”

Sometimes that’s true. But sometimes the best starting point is to rewind and ask better questions to uncover the real needs. For example, do they say they want an extension when the real need is more natural light and better storage giving the impression of more space?

THE QUESTIONS I ALWAYS COME BACK TO

These are the questions I ask whether I’m looking at a home, a small community building, or a bigger site, or even a weird little puzzle of a space:

• What problem are we actually trying to solve? (Space? Light? Storage? Privacy? Accessibility? Flow? Stress? …All of the above?)
• Who needs this to work well — and what does “well” mean for them? (Kids. Grandparents. Guests. Future-you. Someone with limited mobility.)
• What do we already have that’s quietly useful? (An underused room. A cupboard. A level change. An existing drain run. A better entrance point.)
• What’s the cheapest “big win”? The move that changes daily life, without changing everything.
• What can we keep? Structure. Services. Materials. Character. Embodied carbon. Budget. Sanity.
• What’s the simplest path to compliance? Planning constraints, access, fire safety, building regs — there’s often more than one way.
• What would make you think, six months after it’s finished, “That was absolutely worth it”? This one is surprisingly clarifying.

But, what a lot of people don’t realise - it’s not just practical questions.

Homes aren’t only about working — they’re about feeling.

So these are other questions I love to ask:

• What do you want to see when you walk through the front door?
• Where do you want to read?
• Where’s the dog’s favourite sun patch?
• Will you be able to see the grandkids in the garden without standing outside in the cold?
• Where do you want the house to feel calm? Where do you want it to feel lively?
• What makes you sigh (in a good way) when you enter a room?

WHY THIS MATTERS

Because what you want matters, and there is nearly always a great solution (or two or three). I love to help you step back, define the real goal, and find the smartest way to get there.

Sometimes that means a beautiful, ambitious design.

Sometimes it means a tiny change that saves you tens of thousands of pounds and months of disruption.

But either way, it usually starts the same way:

With a walkaround. A conversation. A tape measure. And a question you haven’t asked yet.

One of my favourite reactions to my designs is when a client says:

“We didn’t think of that!”

Honestly? That’s the point.

If you’re planning a project and you’re not sure whether you need “the big solution” or just “the right question”, I’m always happy to have a chat with no pressure. Reach out to me, let’s talk.