Most architects will give you a house. I am more interested in giving you the one only you could have asked for.

That is the whole point of me.

A house is the largest thing most people ever commission, and somehow they hand it to someone less experienced than the boss, who is still having their own hand held, in an office where you charm the founder over coffee and then never see him again. Rather like commissioning a portrait and letting the apprentice hold the brush.

I do not work that way. When you work with me, you work with me. I design your home, I meet you, I sit at your table and I draw. Start to finish, one pair of hands, one mind on your project and nothing else competing for it.

And here is the part nobody admits. The architect has to like the client as much as the client likes the architect. When the two of you genuinely gel, the trust arrives early, the conversation opens up, and that is exactly when the interesting ideas start to appear. A guarded client gets a careful house. A client I click with gets my best work, because I am enjoying myself. Creativity is not summoned to order. It is coaxed, and good company does the coaxing.

So I do not begin with a style or a trend. I begin with you. The particular way you live, the particular light your plot happens to catch, the thing you have always wanted and never quite been able to name. My job is to name it, then build it.

I should confess that it still starts with tracing paper and a good pen. Hopelessly old fashioned, I know, but there is a thinking that happens through the hand that a screen has never quite managed. Then, once the idea is right, I bring in every modern digital tool going to sharpen it, test it and pull it all together. Romance at the start, precision at the finish. Planning approval included, and I am rather good at that part too.

I am a chartered architect based in Cobham with thirty years behind me, and I take on a handful of clients at a time, on purpose. Architecture done properly does not scale, and I have no interest in pretending it does. Where the work is, I go. A good plot in good company is always reason enough to travel.

So here is my invitation. If you have a home in your head that nobody has managed to draw, let us find out whether I am the one who can. The first conversation is free, unhurried, and it is with me. Think of it as us seeing whether we get on. The house rather depends on it.

Get in touch. I should very much like to hear what you have been imagining.