What happens when
you reach out.

Discovery & Brief

A personal conversation, by phone, video or on site, to understand your project, your site, and what you want the building to do for your life. No forms sent in advance. No junior staff. Mike leads every first meeting.

This conversation is not a sales meeting. It is the beginning of the design process. The questions Mike asks, about how you live, what you find beautiful, what frustrates you about the space you're in now, are the same questions that will drive every design decision that follows.

At the end of the discovery conversation, you will have a clear sense of whether Atelier Terra is the right practice for your project, and Mike will have enough to prepare a fee proposal and initial scope.

Site & Feasibility

Reading the land before drawing begins. Mike visits the site at different times of day, reading the sun angle, the prevailing breeze, the views, the setbacks, the council overlay. Understanding what the site will allow and what it will resist.

A feasibility assessment confirms whether the project is viable within your budget and within the planning framework. It surfaces any issues, slope, access, heritage overlay, bushfire or flood considerations, early enough that they inform the design rather than complicate it.

This is where the real brief is written. Not from a form, but from an understanding of the specific site and the specific life it is being designed for.

Concept Design

Hand sketches first. The discipline of committing line to paper before a computer is opened forces decisions that software allows you to defer. Plan orientation, section strategy, the relationship between rooms, resolved by hand before they are refined by machine.

The concept design establishes the spatial logic of the building: how rooms relate to each other, how the building meets the site, how light enters and moves through the spaces across the day. At this stage, the most important decisions are made.

You will receive a concept design presentation that communicates the design clearly, sketches, plans, sections, and a material direction. You will understand exactly what you are approving before we proceed to documentation.

Approvals & Documentation

Development application preparation, council engagement, and construction documentation. For Queensland projects, Atelier Terra manages the DA process directly.

Construction documentation is where the detail is resolved. Every junction, every threshold, every material transition specified. This is the stage that separates buildings that are merely built from buildings that are built well. The difference is almost always in decisions that clients never see, and that the builder would otherwise make themselves.

Construction & Delivery

Contract administration through construction. Regular site visits. Builder liaison. The architectural detail resolved in the drawings is the architectural detail built in the building, maintained through on-site presence and a clear scope of contract administration.

At practical completion, Atelier Terra conducts a final inspection against the documentation and prepares a defects list for the builder to address. Handover is not complete until the building is delivered as designed.

After handover, Mike remains available. Buildings need to be understood by the people who live in them, how the cross-ventilation works across different seasons, how the blinds and louvres should be operated, how the building will change as the planting matures.