What impresses most in our interactions with Anton is how he wants to connect with you to understand your build. In our case, in our first consult Anton spent a great deal of energy teasing apart the connections my husband and I had with our house, so that we could use these to visualise our next steps towards building a family home. We gave Anton a budget to begin with, and we were ready to talk the nitty gritty about what we could and couldn’t do — we expected to name our budget and be given the size and dimensions of the box we would have to think within.
However Anton wasn’t having any of that. Instead, he wanted to first connect with us and tap into our 5 years ‘lived-in’ experiences within our home. He wanted to know: what do you like about your space, why do you like it, where is your energies and memories most concentrated in the house. Finding these emotional centres was where Anton advised creating the ‘hubs’ in the design, and then explained how these can take in important elements of aspect, light and space (or advising how clever design he had derived over his extensive career could be used to bring those elements back into the space). Note, Anton never told us ideas were impossible through this, which I found remarkable and often a bit daunting, and encouraged us to build and explore what we hoped to achieve.
That is not to say that there wasn’t a lot of important details or process covered. The first half of our 3 hour consult was spent going over in detail each stage of the process, from this original meeting to building. Anton has an extensive list of vetted contacts to give confidence throughout, including draftsman, surveyors, builders, which he highlighted he can liaise with and intercede on our behalf. Based on his experience he was confident we could achieve our aspirations without compromising on the overall vision. We are hopeful that from this original consult that we can move forward towards the ‘next stage’ for the build, allowing us to grow and start a family.