Question 1

What services does SMA+Design offer?

Accepted Answer

Four things. Architectural design — full-service architecture for residential, commercial, and industrial clients, developed in Revit with client-facing visualizations at every stage. Commercial and hospitality spaces — bakeries, retail, offices — where spatial quality matters at a human scale. Industrial architecture — factory and production facility design, including facilities for medical device manufacturing. And bespoke furniture — one-off pieces designed and built for specific spaces, to the same standard as the architecture.

Question 2

Where does the studio work?

Accepted Answer

The studio is based in Phase 4, DHA Lahore. Built work includes residences in DHA Lahore, Bahria Town Lahore, and DHA Islamabad, and commercial projects in Lahore. The studio takes on projects in Lahore, Islamabad, and beyond.

Question 3

What is the design process like?

Accepted Answer

Five stages. Listen: understand the brief beyond the brief — what the client needs that they have not said yet, and what the site demands. Model: develop the concept in Revit from the first move, not loose sketches that tighten later. Show: present visualizations at every stage, so the client can see the space rather than decode a drawing. Resolve: build physical models and 3D prints to test critical junctions and find problems before concrete does. Build: the build team executes against the same level of detail the design team produced.

Question 4

Do I need to know how to read architectural drawings?

Accepted Answer

No. Most people commissioning a building cannot read a technical drawing, and expecting them to is a failure of communication, not of the client. At SMA+Design, every design stage is accompanied by visualizations that let you inhabit the space before it is built — to understand what you are agreeing to, and to push back when something is not right.

Question 5

What size of project does the studio take on?

Accepted Answer

There is no fixed minimum. Built work ranges from a 4,500 square foot house on a 10-marla plot to an 18,000 square foot residence, alongside commercial interiors and industrial facilities. The quality of the brief matters more than the size of the budget.

Question 6

Does SMA+Design handle construction as well as design?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The studio operates two parallel teams: a design team and a build team. The structure exists for one reason — so the detail imagined in the studio is the detail that gets built. The gap between what is drawn and what is built is treated as a failure of process, not an inevitability of construction.

Question 7

How long does it take to design and build a house in Lahore?

Accepted Answer

It depends on the scale and the standard of detail. As a real reference point: P7 House, a 7,800 square foot residence in DHA Lahore with a custom material palette — raw concrete, project-specific terrazzo, rosewood joinery — took three years to build. A house built with serious attention to detail is measured in years, not months. The design phase is front-loaded deliberately: problems are found in the Revit model and physical prototypes, where they are cheap to fix, not on site.

Question 8

Why do so many of the studio’s houses have courtyards?

Accepted Answer

Because of the context, not a style preference. In a neighborhood that offers little to look at, the house turns inward. The courtyard — open to sky, planted, private — becomes the thing the house is organized around. The street receives a facade; the house receives the garden. This has been the studio’s position since its first project in 2013.

Question 9

How do I start a project with SMA+Design?

Accepted Answer

Email contact@salmanmirza.com with a description of your plot, program, and ambitions. The studio responds within 48 hours. The first conversation is about the brief — what you need, what the site demands, and whether the studio is the right fit for the work.