Bring the architect you love.
You have found someone who understands your vision. Keep them. Marvel Homes designs and builds, so when you already have an architect you love, we step in as the building partner who makes their design perform: healthy, comfortable, and built without surprises. Your architect leads the design. We make sure it performs, and we price it honestly from the first sketch.
What stays yours
Your design relationship stays exactly as it is.
Marvel designs and builds. So when someone arrives with an architect they already love, some builders push them to start again with an in-house team. We do the opposite. We are glad to sit alongside your creative team, without taking it over, and put our own design and construction experience to work making your home buildable, healthy, and energy efficient.
You get a second set of expert eyes on your design, with no pressure to leave the architect you trust. Because we design as well as build, that second look adds real value: we improve what can be improved, and we protect how the home will perform.
Your architect keeps the vision, the drawings, and the creative direction. What we add is the other side of the table: what things actually cost, how they get built, and how the home performs once your family is living in it.
The gap we close
The risk sits in the gap between the drawing and the build.
A beautiful design and a buildable, affordable one are not always the same thing. Most people find out which one they have at tender, when the first real construction price arrives.
We have seen people spend a year and tens of thousands in fees getting a design approved, then watch the first build price come back close to double the budget they started with. By then the design is loved, the money is spent, and every choice is a hard one.
This is not the architect's fault. The national guidance, the Australian Government's Your Home, is direct about it: a designer gives an opinion of probable cost, but does not carry the final build cost, because so much of it is set by the site and the detail. Your Home's own advice is to bring a builder in during design development to check the design can be built within budget. That is exactly what we do.
How it works
Four things we bring to your architect's table.
Your architect keeps the design. We make it buildable, healthy, and honestly priced.
Real costs, early
While the design is still on paper and still easy to change, we price it honestly. If something is pushing the budget, you hear it now, while it can still be solved calmly.
Buildability
We tell your architect what is straightforward to build and what costs a lot for little gain. The design gets better, not cheaper.
Passive house detailing, tested through the build
We add the envelope detail a healthy, low-running-cost home needs: continuous insulation, an airtight layer, glazing sized to the Sydney climate, and constant fresh filtered air. Designed in early, it is close to free. Added later, it is expensive or impossible.
Airtightness is where comfort and health are won, so we do not leave it to a single check at the end. We blower-door test through the whole build, catching leaks while they can still be sealed, and confirm the result at completion with a certificate. We aim for the Passive House target of 0.6 air changes an hour. The average new Australian home leaks more than twenty times faster, around 15 air changes an hour (CSIRO), which is where the dust, the mould risk, the traffic noise, and the rooms that never hold a steady temperature come from.
A fixed price you can trust
When the design is resolved, you receive a fixed-price contract. It still contains allowances and provisional sums, because every honest custom home does. The difference is control. We do not hand you a lazy hundred-thousand-dollar line for joinery and hope for the best. We draw the joinery, detail the specification, and show you exactly what that number buys. An allowance with no specification behind it is like a pile of frequent flyer points: a big number that quietly buys very little.
Honest about the unknowns
Some costs can only be known once we are in the ground. Here is how we keep you in control.
A few costs genuinely cannot be fixed before construction starts, and a builder who pretends otherwise is a red flag. The clearest example is your foundations. On many Sydney sites we need piers, and the right pier depth is estimated from the soil report but only confirmed once we are digging.
A lazy contract does one of two things. It fixes that number, then quietly protects the builder by cutting the pier short, which is the structure your home stands on. Or it leaves the number open, and surprises you with an invoice later.
We do neither. We set an educated depth in the contract and agree the rate with you up front. If the ground needs more, you know the exact cost before we proceed. If it needs less, you get the credit. Your foundations are built right, your price moves transparently, and your construction quality is never traded to protect a number.
Why early matters
On paper is cheap. On site is expensive.
A change on a drawing costs a fraction of the same change made during construction. Once the build is underway, a change in scope ripples through everything: the documentation, the trades and materials already booked, and the program. What is a quick redraw at the design stage becomes a variation, a delay, and a real cost on site.
Bringing us in at concept or early design is the cheapest insurance you can buy on the whole project. Your architect designs with real numbers in hand. You commit with the surprises already found.
Common
questions
Working with your architect, answered.
Can Marvel build a home my architect has designed?
Yes. If you already have an architect, we act as the construction partner. We take your architect's drawings into a structured pre-construction phase, add the passive house detailing the design needs to perform, and deliver it under a fixed-price contract. Your architect keeps the design relationship. We make sure the performance survives the build.
Will you replace my architect?
No. Marvel designs and builds, but when you already have an architect you love, we are glad to support your creative team rather than replace it. They lead the design. We bring construction cost knowledge and certified passive house detailing to the table early.
Will working with you change my architect's fees?
No. Your architect's fee is between you and them. We are the construction side of the table. In practice, pricing the design as it develops usually saves money overall, because fewer things get redrawn after tender.
My architect is not a passive house specialist. Is that a problem?
No. That is the part we bring. Your architect leads the design. Our two engineers and our Certified Passive House Tradesperson add the performance detailing and get the home independently certified to the Passive House standard by a third-party certifier.
When should the builder get involved with the architect?
As early as possible, ideally at concept or early design. The earlier the builder and the passive house detailing are in the room, the cheaper it is to resolve performance, cost, and buildability. The national Your Home guidance recommends the same thing.
Who holds the contract?
You hold a design contract with your architect and a construction contract with Marvel. One team at the table, with clear lines of responsibility and no finger-pointing.
Bring us in early.
Send us your architect's concept, or introduce us before design starts. We will walk you both through how a healthy, certified home comes together, and what it costs. No pressure, no pitch.
Mo Amin + Ibrahim Amin
Engineers · Licensed Builders · Certified Passive House Tradesperson