Elena Varga
Principal · ConstructionLeads every project from the first site walk. Spends most of her week on site and the rest at the drawing table, usually with a sample in hand.
A small design-build practice. We draw carefully, sample everything, and build one house at a time per site lead.
Every detail is drawn before it is priced and priced before it is built. Surprises on site are almost always drawings that weren’t finished.
No finish is chosen from a screen. Samples come to the site at full size, in the light they will live in.
III. Stay smallWe take on only as many houses as we have site leads to run them. The person who walks you round on the first day hands you the keys on the last.
Leads every project from the first site walk. Spends most of her week on site and the rest at the drawing table, usually with a sample in hand.
Runs phases two to four: coordination, mock-ups and the open-book cost plan. The person architects call when a detail needs to be solved, not simplified.
Keeps the sample room and the relationships with quarries, mills and plasterers. Responsible for every surface you will touch.
Each phase ends with something you can hold or sign. Nothing moves forward on a verbal agreement.
We meet on the site, not in an office. We walk the boundary, look at the trees, the drainage and the neighbours’ windows, and write the brief back to you in plain language.
Deliverable: a written brief and a site report.
Your architect’s design becomes a construction set. We coordinate structure, services and finishes until every penetration and every joint is drawn. Questions are answered on paper, where they’re cheap.
Deliverable: coordinated drawings, signed off by you and your architect.
Full-size mock-ups of the materials that carry the house: a wall of plaster, a run of stone, a corner of the roof. You approve the real thing, not a photograph of it.
Deliverable: a signed sample board, kept on site through the build.
An open-book cost plan. Every line is visible, every allowance is named, and every change after this point is priced in writing before it is built.
Deliverable: the cost plan and a build programme.
One site lead runs the job from slab to keys. You receive a written report every Friday, and we walk the site together every other week.
Deliverable: the house.
A handover manual covering every finish, fixture and maintenance interval. We return at three, twelve and twenty-four months to adjust, reseal and check.
Deliverable: a house that keeps working.
We are most useful when we’re brought in early, while the design can still absorb what the build will ask of it.
We read schematic drawings for cost, sequence and risk, and send back notes, not redesigns.
One coordinated set, revised in one place. Our shop drawings return to you for approval before fabrication.
You choose which details are sampled at full size. We build them on site and leave them standing until you sign.
If a specified product can’t be had, we tell you first, with options. Nothing is swapped without your written approval.
The site is open to you at any time. We keep a desk and a set of current drawings in the site office for your visits.
We keep our work within an hour of the studio, so the site lead can be on every site every day.
Tell us about the site, the timeline and who else is at the table. We reply within three working days, and the first meeting is on site.
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