I've mentioned "a feasibility study" in nearly everything I've written this year, and I realised recently that I've never actually explained what it is. If you've read a few of these pieces and are still picturing something vague, a form to fill in, a brochure meeting, this one's for you.
Why I start here, before any design work
A lot of architects will happily sketch you a beautiful concept in a first meeting. I don't, and it's not because I can't. It's because a concept drawn before I understand your household, your block, and your budget isn't really designed for you yet. It's a guess dressed up as a plan, and guesses are expensive to fall in love with.
A feasibility study exists to replace the guessing with actual information, before you've committed to anything beyond the study itself. It's a fixed cost, a fixed number of meetings, and a genuinely useful outcome regardless of what you decide afterwards.
The three meetings, in plain terms
Meeting one: I listen. This is the workshop session, and it's less like an interview and more like a genuinely open conversation about how your household actually lives. Not a wish list of finishes, a real picture of your normal Tuesday, your normal Sunday, who's home when, what's frustrating about the current layout, and what the next chapter of life in this home needs to look like. I ask a lot of questions here and do very little talking. This is also where I address the things people are usually anxious to ask but haven't yet: roughly what does something like this cost, roughly how long does it take, and what would the next steps actually be.
Meeting two: I bring back what I've found. Between the first and second meeting, I look properly at your block, orientation, constraints, council overlay requirements if relevant, structural questions if you're weighing renovate versus rebuild, and I start testing what's actually possible against what you told me you need. The second meeting is where I share that thinking, not as a finished design, but as a realistic sense of what your specific site can support and roughly what it would take to get there.
Meeting three: we refine and land on direction. By the third meeting, we're narrowing rather than exploring. This is where the realistic scope, and the realistic cost range that goes with it, comes into focus. You leave this meeting with a genuinely informed picture: what's possible on your block, what it would likely cost, and whether the project as you're imagining it actually makes sense, or whether the brief itself needs to shift.
What you walk away with
At the end of the three meetings, you have a clear, grounded understanding of your block's potential, a realistic cost range tied to your actual project rather than a generic estimate, and enough information to make a genuinely informed decision about whether to proceed. Some households proceed straight into design. Some take the findings away and sit with them for a while. Some decide, having seen the real picture, that this isn't the right project or the right time, and that's a legitimate outcome too. I'd rather you make that call with real information than commit further on a guess.
What it's not
It's not a sales pitch dressed up as a consultation. It's not a commitment to hire me for the full project, though most households who complete it do continue, simply because by that point we've already started working well together and you have a real basis for the decision. And it's not a generic questionnaire. Every feasibility study is shaped around your specific household and your specific block, because that's the whole point of doing it before the design work starts, not after.
Why this matters more than it might seem
Committing to an architect for a renovation or build is a genuine relationship decision, not just a purchasing one. You're agreeing to work closely with one person for what's often four months to well over a year. The feasibility study is designed to let you make that call properly: you get a real sense of how I work, how I listen, and how I think through a problem, before you're committed to the bigger engagement. If it's not the right fit, three meetings is a much smaller thing to have tried than a full design commitment.
Getting started
If you've read this far, you've probably already got a project in mind, the layout that no longer fits, the tired house with good bones, the question of whether to extend or rebuild. The feasibility study is where all of that starts to become concrete. Get in touch to book a feasibility consultation and I'll talk you through exactly what the first meeting looks like for your specific situation.
Mark MacInnis is a Melbourne architect based in the city's south-east, working with homeowners across Brighton, Malvern East, North Melbourne and the surrounding suburbs on renovations, extensions and dual-occupancy projects. His work has been featured in The Age and Best Houses Australia.