What we do
From first sketch to final handover.
Six services that work on their own and work better together. Most clients come to us for the architecture and stay for everything that surrounds it.
What we do
Most clients come to us for the architecture and stay for everything around it. Each service works on its own — together they mean one team is accountable from first sketch to handover.
In detail
No abstractions. Below is the scope of work for each service, as it appears in our appointment documents.
Architectural Design
The core of the practice. We take a project from a brief and a site through to a set of drawings a contractor can build from, and we stay involved while they do.
Our process is deliberately front-loaded: we spend longer than most practices on the site analysis and the brief, because decisions made in the first three weeks determine most of what the building will cost and how it will perform for the next forty years.
What a typical engagement includes
- Site appraisal, survey coordination and planning constraints review
- Brief development and space schedule
- Concept design with options, tested against budget
- Developed design and coordination with structural, MEP and civil engineers
- KCCA / district submissions and approval management
- Tender and construction drawings, specifications and schedules
- Site inspections and contract administration through construction
- Concept through to construction drawings
- KCCA and district approval management
- Full engineering coordination
- Contract administration on site
Interior Design
We design interiors as part of the architecture wherever we can, because the two are the same problem. Where a client comes to us for the interior of a building someone else designed, we work from the same starting point: how the space is used, how light moves through it, and what it should feel like to be in.
Scope
- Spatial planning and circulation
- Bespoke joinery design and shop-drawing review
- Lighting design — daylight first, then layered artificial light
- Material, finish and colour specification
- Furniture, fixtures and equipment selection and procurement
- Site supervision of fit-out trades
We favour materials made or worked in Uganda — Kajjansi brick, mvule and eucalyptus, local granite and terrazzo — both because the supply chain is short and because they age better here than most imports.
- Spatial planning and joinery detailing
- Daylight-led lighting design
- Locally sourced material palettes
- FF&E procurement and fit-out supervision
Project Management
Design is only half of getting a building built. We provide project management as a standalone service and as part of full-service commissions, acting as the client's representative through procurement and construction.
What we manage
- Procurement strategy and tender management
- Contractor pre-qualification and bid evaluation
- Programme development and progress monitoring
- Cost reporting, valuations and variation control
- Quality inspections against specification
- Snagging, handover, O&M manuals and defects liability
Clients get one weekly report with three numbers on the front page: where the programme is, where the cost is, and what needs a decision this week. Everything else is an appendix.
- Tender and procurement management
- Weekly programme and cost reporting
- Quality inspections against spec
- Handover, O&M and defects management
Structural & MEP Coordination
Most cost overruns on Ugandan projects are not design failures — they are coordination failures found late. We run the technical interface between the architectural model and the consulting engineers, and we resolve it before tender.
How we do it
- A single federated model, updated on a fixed cycle
- Scheduled clash detection with a tracked resolution register
- Coordinated services zones agreed before ceiling voids are fixed
- Builder's work drawings issued with the tender package, not after
- Design-stage review of contractor and specialist shop drawings
We work with the client's appointed engineers or can recommend consultants we have delivered with before.
- Federated model coordination
- Scheduled clash detection and resolution
- Builder’s work issued at tender
- Shop-drawing review
Feasibility & Development Advisory
The cheapest month of any project is the one before it starts. We prepare feasibility studies and development appraisals for landowners, developers and institutions deciding whether and how to proceed.
A feasibility study from us covers
- Site capacity — what can physically and legally be built
- Planning and title constraints, easements and access
- Massing options with area schedules for each
- Order-of-magnitude construction cost per option
- Indicative programme, including approvals
- Risk register: geotechnical, servicing, access, statutory
Our job at this stage is to be useful, not encouraging. If the numbers do not work, that is the finding.
- Site capacity and massing options
- Order-of-magnitude cost per option
- Planning and title constraint review
- Honest risk register
3D Visualisation & BIM
We model every project in BIM from concept onward. Visualisation is a by-product of that model rather than a separate exercise, which means the images match the building and stay correct as it develops.
Outputs
- Still visuals — exterior, interior, aerial and street-level
- Animated walkthroughs and fly-throughs
- Real-time VR walkthroughs for client design reviews
- Shadow, daylight and solar-gain studies
- Quantity take-offs straight from the model
- Marketing packs for off-plan sales and leasing
For developers selling off-plan, this matters commercially: the model that sold the apartment is the model that gets built.
- Photoreal stills and animation
- Real-time VR design reviews
- Daylight and solar studies
- Model-derived quantity take-offs
Common questions
The things clients ask first.
If your question is not here, ask it directly — we would rather answer it than have you guess.
Ask us something- How are your fees structured?
- Usually a percentage of construction cost for full architectural services, or a fixed fee where the scope is well defined — feasibility studies and interiors are almost always fixed fee. We set this out in writing before any work starts, with the stages and deliverables each payment corresponds to.
- Do you take on small projects?
- Yes. A single house is a real project and we treat it as one. What we cannot do well is a project where the budget leaves nothing for design — if that is the situation we will say so at the first meeting rather than take the commission.
- Do you work outside Kampala?
- Regularly. We have completed or ongoing work in Entebbe, Jinja, Mbarara, Gulu and Wakiso. For sites outside Central region we build the additional travel and supervision into the programme and the fee openly.
- Can you take over a project someone else started?
- Often, yes, though it depends on the stage and on the state of the documentation. We would want to review what exists before committing, and we will be direct about what has to be redone versus what can be carried forward.
- How long do approvals take?
- For a straightforward Kampala residential submission we programme nine weeks. For a commercial building, three to five months from first submission to permit is a realistic assumption. Requirements change, so we confirm current procedure with the authority at the start of every project.
- Do you handle the construction as well?
- We do not build — we are architects, not contractors, and we think that separation protects the client. What we do is run the tender, help select the contractor, and administer the contract on your behalf through to handover.
Start here
Send us the plot, the brief, or just a rough idea of what you want to build. The first conversation costs nothing, and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right practice for it.