Architecture Unlimited - Oxted

Nick M.

We highly recommend Sandi and DJ. They listened carefully to what we wanted to do to renovate our house and designed us a fantastic family home guiding us through the planning process without any problems. Through the building process, DJ helped us with decisions, kept the project in check and offered advice and ideas for many aspects of the build. This was really important to us as we were living overseas at the time.

We really enjoy living in our ‘new’ house and are very grateful for all that Sandi and DJ have helped us to achieve.

Tim A.

Overall a disappointing experience. We chose Architecture Unlimited over other options because of the enthusiasm show by "DJ" when we first met him. He seemed excited by our project and one of the selling points was that they would work with us to get to the right plans even if it took "7 or 8" drafts of the plans.

Unfortunately the overall experience failed to live up to this early promise. While we did use them through to getting planning we ended up chosing to change architect for the next steps of our project. The majority of our interaction was with Sandi through the process. Main issues for us were:

- Slow. Drawing up the plans took far longer for each draft than seemed reasonable. While we were not always as quick with our comments and responses as perhaps we could have been they were incredibly slow. As a result it took almost a year to get planning (and around 6 months for the initial plans to be submitted) even though there were no major issues. It wasn't helped by the fact that initial plans did not cover all the requirements we had given them.
- Lack of advice. We have 6 trees subject to TPOs and this impacted the process including the need for a tree report and more accurate marking on the block plan. They knew about the TPOs this up front but we were instead led by requirements from the planning officer rather than being led through this process by the architect. This could have saved a couple of months. In fact the whole process could have been improved if we had contacted the planner before submission to get her view on certain elements and understood her requirements but at no point was this suggested by Sandi.
- Any comments on the plans were taken as personal criticism by Sandi rather than just comments about the plans. This made the interaction with her very difficult. Her preference for discussing comments over the phone rather than face to face also did not help.
- Failed to turn up to the meeting with the planner.
- Once we said we were going to move to another architect for the next stage they were unwilling to provide us with the dwg files so we will have to get the plans redrawn.

While ultimately we are happy with the final plans produced (which is why this avoids being one star) the process to get there was tortuous and has put our project timeline back significantly. I would certainly not recommend them on the basis of my experience.

Update - have seen but not read the response to this review. The fact it is longer than the review itself tells you all you need to know. Having now worked with our new architect I've reduced this review to 1 star from 2 as it has highlighted exactly what a good service it is possible to get elsewhere.

gee Z.

Ekta P.