8 Reasons to Hire an Architect to Design Your Next Brick-and-Mortar
The Whitfield at Ace Hotel, Pittsburgh
Opening a new storefront is an exciting undertaking for any small business. However, it's important to start off with a solid foundation to avoid the pitfalls and headaches down the road that small businesses often experience, such as construction delays, cost overruns, permitting issues, and design flaws.
Fortunately, one simple move can help reduce many of those risks! We recently sat down to discuss best practices with Andrew Moss and Katie LaForest of mossArchitects, a leading Pittsburgh-based architectural firm that has worked with many local businesses to design their brick-and-mortars, including Burgatory, Mindful Brewing Company, and the Schoolhouse Detective Building.
Here are 8 reasons why hiring an architect will help you build the dream space that your business deserves, while saving you time, money, and energy!
1. An architect can help you translate your vision into reality
As a business owner, building the brick-and-mortar of your dreams can seem like a big challenge.
Katie shares, “A lot of business owners come to the table knowing what they want in terms of image, but they don’t know how to get there, how to take that into a built environment.”
An architect serves as the middleman who’ll manage both your big picture vision and all the nitty-gritty bits and pieces of the project. They will help you identify your wants vs. your needs for the location and identify the tangible steps to get to your dream space.
At mossArchitects, the design process kicks off with a candid conversation between you and the architect. The architect will ask questions to better understand your story, business plan, product, and vision for the brick-and-mortar. Through this deep-dive, they will help you define your goals for the space and what success looks like. Starting off with these priorities clearly determined will make your brick-and-mortar design and construction process less daunting and far more manageable.