Design Stages & Deliverables

Design proper begins where the brief ends. The brief - covered fully in Module 4 - tells you what the client needs, how much they can spend, what the site allows and what the authorities require. The concept, or schematic, stage answers the first design question: what is the overall idea that satisfies all of that? Here you work at the scale of the whole: how the building sits on the site, how it is oriented for sun and wind, how the major spaces are arranged and related, how tall and how deep it is, and what its essential character will be. In Indian practice this is the concept or preliminary design stage; in RIBA it is Stage 2; in AIA it is Schematic Design.

The deliverables at this stage are deliberately economical: a site plan, general-arrangement plans of each level, one or two sections, an elevation or a massing view, perhaps a simple physical or digital model, and a short design narrative that explains the thinking. The drawings are usually at a coarse scale - 1:200 or 1:100 for a building of moderate size - because their job is to communicate the idea and win agreement, not to build from. A common beginner's error is to over-render the concept, polishing materials and details that will change, when the client only needs to understand and approve the direction.

The concept stage also carries the first honest cost check. A concept that cannot be built within the budget is not a concept; it is a fantasy. Even a rough area-and-rate estimate at this stage, checked against the client's figure, saves everyone from developing a scheme that will have to be gutted later. Better to confront the budget while the design is still cheap to change.

The concept stage closes with the single most important approval on the project: the client agreeing the design direction. Everything downstream assumes this is settled, so the sign-off must be real, not a polite nod. That means presenting the concept in a way a non-designer can genuinely understand - plain plans, a clear section, a simple view, and a narrative in ordinary language - and drawing out the client's true reaction rather than their courtesy. A client who murmurs approval in the meeting and then, three weeks later, reveals they always hated the double-height space has cost you a stage.

Good practice makes the concept sign-off explicit and recorded. You present, you discuss, you incorporate reasonable comments, and then you obtain a clear approval - ideally in writing, even a confirming email - that the client is happy for you to develop this scheme. This record is what protects you later: when a change arrives at detailed design, the signed concept is the baseline against which it is visibly a change.

This is also where you manage the client's expectations about change itself. Explain, warmly but plainly, that the concept stage is the cheap place to change their mind - move the staircase now, not after the services are coordinated around it. Encourage them to interrogate the scheme hard while it is still fluid. Paradoxically, inviting challenge at the concept gate reduces disruptive change later, because the client feels heard and the big questions are genuinely resolved before the design hardens. The gate is not a formality; it is the hinge on which the whole programme swings.

Once the concept is signed off, the scheme enters developed design - RIBA Stage 3, AIA Design Development, the Indian design-development or scheme-design stage. The question shifts from what is the idea to does the idea actually hold together. Now you fix dimensions, choose the structural strategy, select the principal materials and systems, resolve the sections properly, and confirm that spaces work at a human scale. The drawings advance in resolution - typically to 1:100 and 1:50 for key areas - and gain the information a coordinated scheme needs: grids, levels, principal dimensions, an outline specification of materials and systems.

The defining activity of this stage is coordination. A building is not just architecture; it is architecture wrapped around structure, mechanical and electrical services, plumbing, and increasingly data and controls. During developed design the architect works with the structural and services engineers so that beams, ducts, shafts, tanks and plant all have a place that does not wreck the architecture - the ceiling is high enough after the ducts, the column does not land in the middle of the room, the plant room is big enough and in the right place. Catching these clashes on paper, or in a coordinated model, is vastly cheaper than catching them on site.

The deliverable at the end of developed design is a coordinated, dimensioned scheme with materials and systems selected, an outline specification, and an updated cost check against the budget. Crucially, this is where the design is meant to freeze. After this stage, changes become genuinely expensive because they ripple through structure, services and documentation. A disciplined practice pushes hard for a design freeze at the end of developed design and treats anything later as a formal variation.

Detailed, or technical, design - RIBA Stage 4, part of the run toward AIA Construction Documents - answers the finest design question: exactly how is each part of the building made and put together? Here you resolve the junctions and details that a coordinated scheme still leaves open: how the roof meets the wall, how the window sits in its opening and keeps water out, how the waterproofing turns up at the parapet, how the balcony is drained, how the finishes meet at a threshold. This is where much of a building's quality and durability is actually decided - a beautiful concept ruined by a leaking parapet is a common and avoidable tragedy.

Detailed design also draws in the specialist and contractor-designed elements. Many components - facade systems, lifts, structural steel connections, complex MEP plant - are designed in detail by specialist subcontractors or suppliers, within a performance specification the architect and engineers set. Part of the architect's job at this stage is to specify those performance requirements clearly, to review and coordinate the specialists' proposals when they come, and to make sure everything still adds up to the intended building. In India this coordination stretches across a mix of formal consultants and less formal trade contributions, and the architect's coordinating discipline matters all the more.

Because the boundary between detailed design and documentation is porous, many practices run them together: the detailed design decisions are captured directly in the construction drawings and specifications that Lesson 5.3 covers. What matters conceptually is that by the end of this stage there should be no significant design questions left open - only the production task of drawing and specifying everything completely enough to price and build.

While the design stages proceed, a second track runs in parallel and often lags or leads them awkwardly: statutory approvals. In Indian practice a set of sanction or building-permit drawings must go to the local municipal authority for approval, usually prepared around the end of concept or during developed design, and drawn to the authority's specific format showing compliance with the development-control and building rules, coverage, floor-area ratio, setbacks, heights and parking. Alongside the building sanction sit other clearances - fire from the fire service, environmental clearance for larger projects, airport-height where relevant, and various utility and infrastructure no-objection certificates.

The hard truth is that these approvals run on their own clock and can dominate the programme. A scheme can be fully coordinated and frozen and still wait months for sanction, or be forced to change late because the authority requires a lower height or a wider setback. That is why the design stages and the approvals track must be planned together from the start: you begin the sanction process as early as the design is stable enough to submit, you design with the development-control rules in front of you rather than discovering them late, and you build float into the programme for the authority's response and for likely revisions.

The architect's role here is to explain the principles to the client and to steer the process, while deferring specifics to the local authority and the current regulations - the exact rules, formats and timelines vary by city and change over time, so verify at source rather than assume. A design that ignores the approvals track until documentation is a design that will be redrawn under pressure at the worst possible moment.

Across all the design stages, two disciplines separate a controlled project from a chaotic one. The first is coordination management: someone - usually the architect as lead consultant - must actively drive the exchange of information between the design team, chase the engineers for their inputs, run coordination reviews, and resolve clashes deliberately rather than hoping they resolve themselves. On anything beyond a small house this is a genuine management task, and it is why Modules 6 and 7 treat coordination and the project team at length.

The second is record discipline. Every stage should end with a clearly issued, dated, version-controlled set of deliverables and a recorded client sign-off, so the project always has an unambiguous current baseline. Sloppy version control - three people working on three different plans - is one of the most common and most expensive failures in practice, producing buildings where the electrical layout was coordinated against a superseded architectural plan. A simple, rigorously kept drawing register and issue sheet prevents an astonishing amount of grief.

Above all, protect the design freeze. The design stages exist to move the project from open questions to settled decisions, and the value of that settling evaporates if the client, or the architect's own restlessness, keeps reopening decisions after they are made. Change is legitimate and sometimes necessary - but after the developed-design freeze it must be handled as a conscious, costed, approved variation, not an informal tweak. The practice that holds the freeze delivers on time and on budget; the one that lets the design drift redraws forever and blames everyone but itself.