Questions We Hear Often

Florida law allows some residential drawings to be prepared without a licensed architect. Whether that serves you is a different question. On a coastal site, with flood elevation requirements, wind load engineering and a significant budget at stake, the drawings are what protect you. An architect is accountable for how the entire building performs, not only for how it looks on a plan.

Our roots, and our core practice, are on Florida's Gulf Coast: From Naples up to Clearwater and all counties along the way, including Naples, Fort Myers, Sarasota, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Tampa. We are growing into the Florida pan handle beaches such as Destin, Seaside, and Panama City Beach. While the West Coast is the best coast (Florida joke) we also design on Florida's East coast. Really all coastal regions of Florida.

The same way they work here. Site visits are scheduled from day one and built into your services agreement, not treated as an afterthought because a project is farther from our office. Being based in Florida does not change our process, our documentation standards, or how closely we stay involved. We schedule travel around the same milestone visits we would make on a Gulf Coast project, and you will know that schedule in advance.

No. We design new custom homes, major renovations and additions, interiors, and small to medium commercial and boutique projects.

We do not like defining this answer as every client and project is completely different but on average about four to six months for the design phase, which covers pre-design, schematic design, design development and the construction documents. Larger or more complex sites take longer, whereas smaller and less complex sites may take less time. We will be able to give you a more accurate answer after our first meeting.

It depends on the municipality and on the property. Coastal and flood zone reviews take longer than inland ones, and some jurisdictions add design or variance review on top of building permit review. Once the permit documents are submitted we are at the mercy of the Jurisdiction working at the speed of government.

Schematic design is meant to be iterative, and we expect to explore several concepts with you there. Once a direction is approved and we move into design development, changes become slower and more expensive, so we deliberately front-load the decisions rather than discovering them late. We will always tell you when a request is about to cross that line.

Yes but you make the final decision, and it is a formal phase of our process rather than a favor. We prepare the bid package, distribute it, review contractor qualifications, analyze what comes back, and give you a written recommendation with our reasoning. We also support you through contract negotiation and sit in on the introduction meeting with your chosen builder.

Yes. We design everything in a three-dimensional program so you will be able to see your residence in 3D at any time.

We do! When interiors are designed alongside the architecture rather than after it, cabinetry, lighting, ceilings and finishes resolve together and the home reads as one idea. It also removes an entire layer of coordination from your plate.

There is no single number, and any firm that quotes you one before understanding your needs and knows your property is guessing. Fees are shaped by the size of the home, the complexity of the design, what the site demands, the jurisdiction and its review process, and which of our services you want. We price every project individually once we understand it. Tell us about your property and we will give you a real figure rather than a range that means nothing.

Square footage is only part of it. A constrained coastal lot, a flood zone that requires elevated construction, a variance or design review process, structural complexity, an ambitious material palette and the level of detail you want in the documents all move the number. So does scope. A permit set costs less than a permit set plus interiors plus construction observation.

By phase, so you are never committing to the entire project at once. Each phase has a defined scope and a defined deliverable, and you approve the work before the next one begins. We walk you through the whole structure in the services proposal, before anything is signed.

Typically the survey, geotechnical or soils reports, civil engineering, landscape design, permit and impact fees paid to the municipality, and specialty consultants such as pool or marine design. We tell you upfront which of these your project will need, so there are no surprises three months in.

FEMA maps coastal land by flood risk, and the zone your property falls in drives how high the home has to sit, how the ground level can be used, and what the structure has to withstand. In Pinellas and coastal Hillsborough, the flood zone is often the single most consequential fact about a lot. We confirm it in pre-design, before a wall is drawn.

Base flood elevation, or BFE, is the height floodwater is predicted to reach in a base flood event. Design flood elevation, or DFE, is the height your finished floor actually has to meet, which is usually the BFE plus additional freeboard required by local code.

Height, envelope and endurance. Siting the living space above the design flood elevation, protecting every opening and sealing the building against wind-driven water, and specifying assemblies that survive decades of salt air rather than looking good for five years. Resilience is a set of decisions made in the drawings, not a product added at the end.

In wind-borne debris regions, which include much of coastal Tampa Bay, the Florida Building Code requires opening protection. That can be impact-rated glazing or approved shutters. Most of our clients choose impact glazing, because it protects the home whether or not anyone is there to close anything, which matters a great deal for a seasonal residence.

As involved as you want to be, within a structure that respects your time. There are a handful of moments where your decisions genuinely shape the home, and we make those meetings count. Between them, we carry the work. Clients who travel constantly or still work full time do this with us all the time.

Many of our clients are building in Florida before they move here. We run working sessions by video, share models you can explore on your own, and handle the local coordination, site visits and jurisdiction work that cannot be done from a thousand miles away.

Yes. Every SUNARC project is led from the first conversation to the final walkthrough by the same dedicated team. You will not be handed off to a junior designer once the contract is signed.

Reach out and tell us about your property and what you have been imagining. We will take it from there.