2 Lockwood Architects

What does “done properly” actually mean to you?

It means never cutting corners, not on the design, not on the documentation, not on how we manage your contractor. It means giving your project the same attention at week thirty on site as we gave it at the very first meeting. It means being honest with you when something isn’t working, even if that’s a harder conversation.

Why did you set up on your own rather than stay at a larger practice?

Because we wanted to do it our way. The practices we worked at were excellent and we learned an enormous amount from them. But in a larger organisation, the partner you meet at the start isn’t always the person running your project six months later. We wanted to build something where that couldn’t happen.

What’s the most common mistake people make before they come to you?

Starting too late. People often come to us after they’ve already had a conversation with a builder, or made assumptions about what planning will allow, or decided on a layout they’ve seen on Pinterest. We have to unpick things that didn’t need to be complicated. The earlier we’re involved, the more we can shape the project in your favour before decisions get made that are difficult or expensive to reverse.

How do two architects working together benefit my project?

Every project we take on is looked at by two sets of eyes two people with decades of experience, different strengths and a shared commitment to getting it right. That means design decisions get tested, problems get spotted earlier and nothing slips through. You’re not relying on a single point of view. In our experience, that makes a measurable difference to the quality of the outcome.

You’ve worked on large-scale commercial projects, does that experience translate to residential work?

Directly. The rigour required to deliver a large mixed-use scheme the contractor management, the cost control, the attention to programme, the coordination of consultants doesn’t disappear when the project gets smaller. It just becomes more personal. We bring the same professional discipline to a house extension that we brought to projects worth many times the budget.