Luxury Design & Build

What a full design and build commission covers, what it costs you in time, and where it goes wrong.

Completed detached home with pool terrace

28 min · 4 articles

In this guide

9 min · 5 August 2026
Working With AI on a Landed Project
AI does not design your house. On a landed project it does five narrow, checkable things: tests massing against a plot's constraints in days rather than weeks, turns concept sketches into images you can judge, flags budget drift against completed project data, reads site reporting for the patterns that precede a delay, and makes the project record searchable. Every decision is still made by a person.
7 min · 3 April 2026
Designing for Multi-Generational Living
Three moves cover most of what multi-generational living actually requires: a ground-floor bedroom with its own bathroom, a lift, and a second living room that is genuinely separate rather than an alcove. Everything else is refinement. All three are structural, so they are decided at concept stage or not at all.
7 min · 21 June 2026
Passive Cooling in a Tropical House
Orientation, shading and cross-ventilation are free, permanent and decided in the first month. Everything bolted on afterwards is none of those things. Getting the envelope right will do more for comfort and running cost than any system you can buy.
5 min · 7 May 2026
The Defect Liability Period, and Why It Is Included
The defect liability period runs after handover and covers the faults that only appear once a house is lived in. At KAPA it is included in the contract and cannot be bought separately, because a house that fails in year two is our problem as much as yours.

Seven other guides, and the rest of the writing.

Costs, approvals, timelines and the decisions that are expensive to change later.