“To do all of your cooking and eating and leisure in one area and move between spaces easily, that’s what people want”


project, and was key to its success, says Paul Cashin. The owners are “trusting people,” he says, “and that’s really to their benefit.” He asserts: “If you had a client that was in any way controlling, I don’t think it’d be anywhere near as good.


“There’s a reason why projects are successful, it’s because they have good clients.” The collaboration fostered on this project meant that a candid, open dialogue was achieved, including with the builder, who provided an ‘open-book’ approach on costs.


Due to the healthy relationship, an informal ‘labour plus materials’ approach to the contract was possible with the builders. Cashin says that in this situation, “It’s more about people liking each other and working with each other than it is about getting contractors in place.” An example is when the owners had to go away for “four or five months, and just told the builders to stop. They said fine, we’ll go and work on something else, they boarded up the site – you wouldn’t get that with a formal contractor.”


As an architect, he says that sometimes the key to a self-build project is “about getting the right kind of contractor to meet the right kind of


54 www.sbhonline.co.uk


client. We’re almost trying to matchmake them.” He says the best approach for such schemes from his firm’s perspective is to “find characteristics and personalities that work together, and design the building around that.” Cashin is critical of TV shows like Grand Designs for in his view wrongly over-dramatising the process of self-building. “Why as an industry would we portray it in such a way? If you get people who know what they are doing it shouldn’t be anywhere near as bad as that.” The architect believes that self-builders have been “misled” into thinking that they need to feel empowered to take on the running of all aspects of projects themselves, while a more fruitful approach is to work collaboratively with designers and builders. He says “we’ve had projects where they were going to do it all themselves, and didn’t believe anything we said.”


Woodcote House was clearly the opposite of that approach. Says Cashin, “this client listened to everything from every consultant, took opinions, made decisions, stuck with it and let us get on with it.” He asserts: They’ve ended up with a successful project because they trusted us.” 


issue 01 2021


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