Do You Need an Architectural Feasibility Study? An Architect's Honest Guide.
We help landowners and homeowners extend their homes, build eco-homes, and create unique homestays that gain planning permission, perform well, and pay them back. RIBA Chartered Architects.
Introduction - The Unknown Unknowns
When I was a young boy, my parents hired an architectural draftsman to draw up an extension for them. It added significant volume to the house, but when the extension was finished, that extra space made the existing dining room dark and unusable. The extension had essentially defeated its own purpose. To this day, the existing dining room remains poorly inhabited and unused.
It’s not often discussed, but building work should not be driven by square footage. The main focus should be on the quality of the space. And that starts with asking the right questions before you spend money on design.
That's what a feasibility study does.
Too often, homeowners are led to believe that bigger is better; however, this is not always the case. The main focus should be on the space’s quality: what is the lighting like? How does it relate to the rest of the house? The needs of the home or its relationship to the landscape.
In this article, we will look at what a feasibility study is and why I would strongly recommend not skipping this stage when having your home designed or renovated.
A preliminary visualisation was produced as part of a feasibility study in Moseley, Birmingham, critical to give the client a sense of how their home would look once complete.
A feasibility study was conducted to, primarily, explore where the structure would sit in the landscape. This was critical as all too often this step is skipped out and, as a result, the end structure is not effective at situating within the landscape. Early concept sketch for The Ridge. If you are undertaking a Paragraph 88or a Paragraph 84 project, then a feasibility study is basically a necessity.
What does an architectural feasibility study cover?
There are two types worth knowing about: Project Feasibility and Design Feasibility. For a lot of people we work with, they often use these reports as a tool to secure finance from the bank or an estate agent’s valuation on the property:
Project Feasibility:
Project feasibility is the broader of the two. It looks at everything that could affect whether your project is actually viable: flood risk, Building Control, heritage and conservation constraints, highway access, planning policy, cost, and risk. You also get early 3D sketches and preliminary floor plans, so you get a sense of what the space could look like.
Design Feasibility:
A design feasibility is more focused on the aesthetics of the space: how will it look. For a lot of people, this may be the first time they have worked with an architect. But being able to visualise your future home is incredibly exciting.
The design feasibility report can be quite practical as well, as we have worked with clients in the past who go on to use these reports to secure bank loans, negotiate better mortgage terms, and support estate agent valuations.
Architect Pre-Purchase Consultation: If you are considering purchasing a home and you are not sure if and how you can alter it, another service we offer is a pre-purchase consultation.
One project for which we undertook a detailed feasibility study was Renewable Container Living.
A preliminary sun path analysis mapping how light moves across this Green Belt site in Rickmansworth throughout the year, informing where the building sits, how it's orientated, and how it performs.
Is the project even viable?
In most instances, yes, the project is “feasible” in terms of what you can add or alter to your home. But on certain sites and within certain locations, the Green Belt, Grade II listed properties, conservation areas, and planning constraints can make a project genuinely unviable. Sometimes that means you need to rethink what you're trying to do. In rare cases, it means stopping the project entirely.
This is why a feasibility study matters. It uncovers these constraints early, before you've spent money on detailed design or planning applications.
It's the difference between finding out what's possible and finding out what isn't after you've already committed significant funds and effort.
If you have a site in the Green Belt, AONB, a Conservation Area, or in other situations, then in some situations, the project might not be viable. In some cases this means re-thinking what you are doing, and working with the planning system to alter your brief and project so that it is more favourabl, and likely to attain planning.
Sometimes a feasibility study starts with boots on the ground, assessing the street, the context, and what's actually possible before a line gets drawn. Moseley, Birmingham
Conclusion
A feasibility study should be built around you and your site, not pulled from a template. People skip it because it looks like an unnecessary cost up front. My parents skipped it. The dining room their extension ruined is still unused today, and no spending since has undone it. The study that would have caught it would have cost a fraction of the damage.
Get this stage right and everything after is easier, cheaper and lower-risk. Get it wrong, and you pay for it for years.
