Most people arrive at this question with the answer already chosen. The house has character, so it should be saved; or it's a tear-down, so it should go. Both instincts are sometimes right and often premature, because the real answer depends on things that aren't visible from the street — what the existing structure can carry, what your plans actually ask of it, what the zoning permits in each case, and what each path costs once the surprises are accounted for.

A listing shows you a property. It doesn't show you what you can actually build on it — the buildable area left after the setbacks, the conservation authority, and the tree protection have each taken their share, or what the ground beneath it will cost to build on. By the time most people bring in an architect, they already own the land, and the constraints that came with it.

Ask what makes a house inexpensive to heat and cool and comfortable to live in, and the answer usually comes back as a list of products: a heat pump, triple glazing, a thicker wall, solar panels on the roof. These all matter, and in a project run properly every one of them is selected early and priced alongside everything else. But these are not the full answer. The architecture also decides it: which way the house faces, how compact it is, where the glass is and how much, whether the overhang is sized for the summer sun or more for aesthetics.

"How much will it cost?" is the first question most clients ask, and the one the industry answers least candidly. A price per square foot gets quoted, a number lodges in someone's mind, and it rarely survives contact with the actual project. The difficulty is that a custom home is not a commodity. Its cost is not a rate applied to an area — it is the sum of a series of decisions about the site, the level of finish, the structure, and the way the house performs, each of which can move the figure substantially. The useful thing is not a number. It is understanding what drives the number, so that the decisions setting it are made deliberately rather than discovered at the end.

For much of the last century, a cottage was a summer building — opened in May, closed in October, pipes drained on the way out the door. That assumption is quietly disappearing. More of our clients now want a place they can drive to in January, work from through the shoulder seasons, and use as a year-round home rather than a seasonal escape. Remote work made it practical; a shift in how people value these places made it desirable.

The word "custom" is used loosely in residential construction. Builders apply it to homes where the buyer chooses the countertops and picks a façade from a handful of options. A blank slate is something else entirely — no template, no pre-set floor plans, no catalogue of finishes. For our architectural practice, every project starts from there, and the result is a home that could only have been designed for one client, on one site.

Choosing an architect for a custom home is one of the most consequential decisions a homeowner will make. It shapes the entire experience of design and construction, and ultimately the quality of the home they will live in for decades.

 At Michael Taylor Architecture + Design, we've guided clients through this process for over 25 years. Here's what we believe matters most when evaluating your options.

Some of our most rewarding projects have been on the most legislated sites — ravine lots in Toronto and waterfront properties in cottage country. The constraints that make these sites complex are also what make them remarkable - the topography, the views, the relationship to water and landscape. But they also require a level of regulatory fluency that not every architecture firm has developed.

At Michael Taylor Architecture + Design, we’ve designed cottages and rural properties across Ontario — from Muskoka to the Bruce Peninsula and the shores of Lake Simcoe. No two of those sites are alike, but they ask something a city lot never does: that the land lead, that the materials endure months of weather and absence, and that the home suit the life people come to the cottage to live rather than the one they leave behind in the city.