Reading a site before drawing a line

Every project begins before the drawing board. We spend the first days on site: walking the boundaries, noting levels and prevailing winds, watching how light moves across the plot through the day. These notes decide more about the finished building than any later drawing will.

It is also where constraints reveal themselves — access, drainage, existing trees, the neighbour who will look directly into a new window. Finding them early turns them into design moves rather than late problems.

By the time we draw, the brief is no longer abstract. It is a response to a particular piece of ground, and that is what makes a building feel as though it belongs.