Designing our Scandinavian Home.

Lars arranged for us to meet with Peter Lohr, the Scandinavian Homes architect. Prior to doing so we decided to abandon the house we had planning permission for and start from scratch (for the 3^rd time!!).  We also reviewed our requirements and put together a simple spreadsheet listing what rooms we needed in the house and the minimum size we would need for each room. After doing so we realised that we needed a house of no more than 190sqm of internal floor area. The house we had planning permission for was 249sqm. This also made it clear that we would be opting for a Hibernia or Nordica. We also decided to opt for the Super Passive Specification but in a single storey form. Lars confirmed that the Hibernia 201 was the most cost effective house type to build and well suited to the Super Passive Spec.

It was really helpful to have access to the huge database of designs that Scandinavian Homes have built up over the years. Peter Lohr listen carefully to our requirements and it was quite incredible how quickly he was able to come back to us with completed drawings.  After many iterations we arrived at a design that we felt provided what we wanted. Its worth pointing out that the fee charged by Peter was per hour. We had a lot of homework done ourselves so the architect fees were very reasonable and ran to no more that several hundred euros.


At this point we engaged Niall Kearns of Niall J. Kearns & Co. Architects to submitting a new planning application for a change of house type. For a very reasonable flat fee Niall took care of  planning application and the required inspections & sign-offs for the bank.We received planning permission on the first attempt which was an excellent result as we were keen to start building as soon as possible.