What You Need to Tell Us when You Decide to Take Advantage of Our Services

Disclaimer: The role of the architect is very different from the contractor. The architect is the one who has the training, experience and expertise to design and plan for your house, commercial building, hospital, restaurant, or whatever development you want. The architect may or may not be both your designer or the contractor.  The architect serves as an arbitrator of the client and other construction disciplines such as interior designer, engineers, and the contractor.

The contractor on the other hand is the person in-charge of executing all the plans the architect provides along with the engineering plans that include structural, electrical, sanitary and mechanical depending on the project scope and scale. In short, he is the one manning the site and ensuring that everything designed and planned by the architect, interior designer and engineers would be constructed in a timely manner and suits the client’s budget.

Here in G Cube Design + Build Inc., we are both the designer and the contractor or builder. You may opt to hire our services mainly for the design only or build services only as well.

If you’re ready to take advantage of our services, here are some information that we’d require so we can give you more specific details.

The Lot Area and Floor Area of the Property You Plan to have Developed

What is the difference between the two areas? The lot area it is pretty much self-explanatory. It is the area of the lot by which your development is bounded. It is indicated in your transfer certificate title (TCT) or lot plan.

The floor area however is the area that you want to build on inside your lot area. For example, you have a lot area of 300 sqm., but you only intend to use 120sqm on the ground floor and 120 sqm on the 2^nd floor, then the total floor area is 240 sqm.

Why do we need this? So that we can gauge and give you a ballpark figure of how much your development would cost.

What is Your Budget?

We almost always experience clients who come to us and ask us straight up how much budget they would need to prepare for their development. We usually give a ballpark figure depending on the location of the project and the design and materials to be used.

So if the client asks for a rough estimate for a project in Lipa City, Batangas for a mid-end level design and users of a 3-storey apartment with a total floor area of 350sqm, we would say that roughly this would cost you around 21,000 to 23,000 PHP per sqm. As of this writing, this is the going rate in Lipa City. This means you would need to prepare 7,350,000.00 to 8,050,000.00 PHP give and take, again depending on the design and materials to be used. This early estimation can be substantially lowered or increased.

It is however ideal if you tell us how much budget you are willing to spend. For example, you come to us and tell us that you have prepared 5,000,000 PHP for a 2-storey residential house in Batangas City, then from there we can do a design that would fit your budget. This is easier for both parties being the client and the architect because then the expectations are managed better because the budget is already set. The architect then works out the design and materials tailored fit for the client’s needs without breaking the bank.

Being honest with your budget will actually make it easier for the architect to design your dream space and save you from getting shocked when you let us freely design and you receive a quotation of 10 million PHP when you only intend to spend as much as 3 million PHP.

Design Requirements

Inform us how many floors you want for your office building for X number of employees. Let us know how your envisioned office would work. Do you like an open planning for your workstations or would you like a more segmented working environment? Give us an idea on how you would want your spaces to be used so we can help you design it to tailor fit your needs.

In a residential project, you must tell us how many bedrooms you would like to have. Who are going to use certain spaces? Are you planning for a rest house or a house that you would use for your lifetime? If you are using it as a vacation house then it would be best to put necessary security measures given that you will not be using it most of the time. It is not to say that security is not important for other types of houses. It just means that the level of security is different.

Be a story teller and guide us as to how you would want to use your envisioned spaces so that we can help you optimize the lot and floor area you have. We would want to know how you think so that we would know how to help you. Do not go overboard with the details though. Check out this comic strip.

The Design Style You Want

Of course, the architect will ultimately design your space, but we would want to hear from you. The space is yours anyway. Would you like to have a modern design? A post-modern perhaps? Gothic? Tropical to assimilate better to our weather here in the Philippines or greater Asia maybe? You may send us images that you would like to have in your spaces, but we here in G Cube do not condone copying of exact designs. We will alter it based on your needs.

Save both of us the hassle of having to spend a lot of time explaining a lot of design work that you would not appreciate in the first place, like the one in this comic strip.

Be Informed that Us Architects Do Need to Earn a Living Like You Too

Being an architect here in the Philippines can take you 5 years in college and 2 years of apprenticeship in an architectural firm. We spent a lot of time, money and effort to be a licensed architect so it is only just that we get the compensation that we’ve worked hard for.

What we do is not just a hobby. It is more of a passion and hard labor because we do not just sketch it out of whim. We do lots of studies from the orientation of your lot and how the sun will move around it down to the tiniest detail of what type of window to use.

Architecture is both an art and science. Just like a doctor whom you pay with less than an hour of his time, we too have our own design fees.

Here in G Cube, we have two contracts. One is for the design and one is for the construction contract agreement. It is separate for a reason. You can choose not to hire us as your contractor/builder and handle only the design part or vice versa.

Ready to have your envisioned dream space come to life? Send us a message!