16 on the sheet
The things people ask before they appoint an architect — including the ones about money and time that most practices leave off their website.
Milestone Architects is an architecture practice based in Kumasi, Ghana. The studio designs residential, commercial and mixed-use buildings, working across the full RIBA Plan of Work from Stage 0 (strategic definition) through to Stage 7 (in use). Alongside the architectural work it holds building contracts through an in-house construction arm. Architecture is the practice; the construction arm exists to serve the drawing rather than to replace it.
Milestone Architects is based in Kumasi, in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. The practice works throughout Ghana and currently has projects on its register in Kumasi, in Accra and across Greater Accra, in Tema, and further afield in Tamale, Aburi and Koforidua.
The practice was founded by Dickson Nyame, who is its Principal Architect. He takes the first meeting on every commission and holds the parti — the single organising idea a scheme answers to — through concept design. The office is deliberately small, so every job is carried by a named architect from the first site visit through to the post-occupancy visit a year after handover.
Yes. Milestone Architects works throughout Ghana. The studio is in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region, and a good part of the register is there, but a large share of it is in Accra and across Greater Accra, with further work in Tema, Tamale, Aburi and Koforidua. The answers change with the place: Kumasi is inland with higher rainfall and no coastal breeze, so comfort is bought with shade and thermal mass rather than cross-ventilation, while on the coast the sea breeze is a design instrument and a marine environment dictates the specification of every exposed fixing and finish.
Residential, commercial and mixed use. The register includes apartment buildings and residential towers, offices, retail and leisure schemes, a civic exhibition pavilion, and industrial and clean-manufacturing space. Typical commissions run from a single house through to mixed-use blocks of thirty thousand square metres.
For anything beyond the simplest structure, yes — and in practice you need one to get a building permit at all. A permit application to a Metropolitan, Municipal or District Assembly in Ghana has to be supported by a proper drawing set prepared and signed off by the relevant licensed professionals. Beyond the legal requirement, the value of an architect is decided long before the permit: orientation, the section, and the depth of a shading device determine whether the finished building is comfortable without machinery, and those decisions cannot be corrected later without losing floor area.
Architectural fees in Ghana are usually structured one of three ways: as a percentage of the final construction cost, as a lump sum agreed against a defined scope, or as a fee per RIBA work stage so that a client can stop, review and re-commit at each one. Which is appropriate depends on how well-defined the brief is at the outset — a project with a settled brief suits a lump sum, while one still being tested suits stage-by-stage. Milestone Architects quotes against a written scope after the first meeting, so the figure is tied to a specific set of deliverables rather than to a percentage of a number nobody knows yet.
Less than most people expect. A location or an address is enough to begin. If you have them, a boundary or site plan, an indenture or title document, photographs of the plot, and a rough sense of the accommodation you want and the budget you are working to will let the conversation go further on the day. If you have none of those, that is still a conversation worth having — Stage 0 exists precisely to test whether the idea works before anybody pays for a drawing.
It depends on the scale and on how settled the brief is, and any architect who quotes a duration before seeing the site is guessing. As a shape rather than a promise: the early stages — appraisal, brief and concept — are usually the fastest and the most decisive, spatial coordination takes as long as the consultants take to agree, and technical design is the longest stretch because it is where every junction is resolved at 1:20 and 1:5. Milestone Architects sets a programme against the specific brief at the point of appointment, and works to RIBA stages so there is a defined deliverable and a review at the end of each one.
Yes, where a client wants it. Milestone Architects holds building contracts through its own construction arm, covering main contract and site management at RIBA Stages 5 and 6, either on its own drawing set or on somebody else's. It is not the main business and it is not compulsory — the practice is an architecture office first. The reason it exists is that the person who drew a junction at 1:5 being the one standing there when it goes in is the most reliable way to stop a detail being quietly straightened on site.
The RIBA Plan of Work is the framework the profession uses to divide a building project into eight stages, numbered 0 to 7: strategic definition, preparation and briefing, concept design, spatial coordination, technical design, manufacturing and construction, handover, and use. Each stage has defined work and a defined set of information issued at the end of it, which gives a client a natural point to review, pay and decide whether to continue. Milestone Architects runs to it, and states on every project on its register which stage that project has reached.
A numbered, revisioned set — not a picture of a building. A full construction set from Milestone Architects runs A-000 cover and drawing register, A-101 site and roof plan, A-201 floor plans, A-301 sections, A-401 elevations, A-501 construction details at 1:20 and 1:5, A-601 door, window and finishes schedules, and A-701 reflected ceiling and setting-out plans. The test of a set is whether a contractor can price it without a list of questions attached and build from it without telephoning every morning.
Yes. Permit drawings are produced as part of Stage 3, spatial coordination, once the structural and services design have been coordinated against the architecture. Submitting before that coordination is genuinely finished is the most common reason a permit application comes back, so the practice would rather spend the extra time on the set than lose the months a resubmission costs.
A parti is the single organising idea that a building answers to — the one move that everything else in the scheme is measured against. It might be a single roof carried on very few points, or a plan that steps back at each level so the setback produces terraces, or a section that steps outward as it rises so the soffits shade the floor below. Milestone Architects states the parti explicitly on every project, because if the organising idea is right then every later decision has something to be judged by, and if it is wrong no amount of detailing will rescue the building.
Yes. The Milestone Architects studio is in Kumasi and is open on weekdays, with Saturday by appointment, and you do not have to be a client to come in and talk about a plot. Bring whatever you have — an address, a photograph, a site plan, a plot number, a survey if one exists. Most first meetings are spent reading the site rather than looking at drawings, because what the plot will allow decides most of what follows.
Through the enquiry form on the practice's website at www.milestonearchitects.com, or by email. Tell the studio where the site is and roughly what you want to do with it; a plot number, a photograph or an address is enough to begin. There is no obligation attached to asking, and the first conversation costs nothing.
An address and a rough idea of what you want to do with the site is enough to begin. There is no obligation attached to asking.
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