Having once spent the larger part of a decade prevaricating over the refurbishment of my own one-bedroom flat, I know to my cost quite how complex and emotionally draining the design of domestic architecture can be. Recently a civil partnership required me to go through the whole process again and at rather larger scale. This time I recruited a friend, Dan Jones of Civic Architects, to design and supervise the project - a decision that has to rank as one of the better that I have made in my life. I am happy to report that Dan and I are still friends, despite the fact that he persuaded us - in the most gentle and unassuming manner - to perform some major surgery on an apartment that we had initially thought required little more than a lick of paint. Each day that we have lived here, it has remained eminently clear to me that he was not wrong. Gleaning our domestic requirements and translating them into a floor plan ultimately demanded a perspective and ruthlessness that only a skilled outsider was able to provide.
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