At Maisons SIC, the design office is internalized, allowing customers to quickly obtain the plans for their dream home. When building a new home, the architect and designers play a key role. Caroline Cantaloube, the director of the design office of Maisons SIC, enlightens us on his profession and his team.
A journey from collective housing to individual homes
Caroline Cantaloube has been working for almost 4 years at Maisons SIC, as head of the design office. The one who studied at the school of architecture in Clermont-Ferrand then joined an architecture agency in Orléans, in collective housing, where she passed her HMONP, to be the equivalent of DPLG architect and to have the possibility of registering with the order of architects.
Then her career took her to Rodez in Aveyron where she worked in another architectural agency, more specialized in the renovation of agricultural buildings. And it was at this time that she focused on individual housing and joined Maisons SIC as head of design office, “a real change in position, to no longer be simply an architect-draftsman but to evolve as a real design office manager. I wanted to have a team in charge and I am very happy with this choice.
Individual house architect: a vocation
The young woman has always been attracted to the profession of architect, “because it's a profession that brings together a lot of things: technique, design, the history of architecture, a bit of philosophy... It's a a rich job where you don't get bored. And then in my childhood, I traveled a lot with my parents and visited various buildings so it must have played…”
The detached house is also, for her, a real choice for her side “projects on a human scale”. She likes to sell a dream to clients, which will become reality for them. “These are projects that are quickly concrete too, in the reality of things. The project only takes place over one or two years.”
“Working on the design and construction of a detached house means supporting a life project.”
And from a personal point of view, working for the construction of individual houses allows him to regularly ask himself questions about “how to live nowadays”. And what concretely can architects and designers bring to clients so that they can live well on a daily basis.
The work of the design office in the context of the construction of a new house Maisons SIC
Concretely, Caroline Cantaloube is the link between the sales team, the design office (the entire team of designers) and the technical team, so that the entire project is carried out from A to Z. She also responsible for planning the design office and the work of the draftsmen. She is there to support them, to give them directives, so that the projects are carried out according to the wishes of the clients.
The stages of designing new home construction plans
In this design office where there are 9 in total, including 7 draftsmen and a thermal engineer, the project therefore arrives through the commercial who met its customers upstream. From there, the design office makes a first point on documents, in particular on the plans and the desires of the customers. At that point, when the project is a little concrete, Caroline Cantaloube receives the plan, does an initial analysis and plans the rework on it with my team. Together, they are studying it in depth from a technical point of view, from a design point of view and in a slightly more advanced way for thermals. Then they return to the sales representative so that he re-presents the project to the customers.
The different types of plans for a new house
There are several types of plan that can be sent to the client: either the office makes a sketch with the 2D plan of the distribution plan and a ground plan (it is the house which is localized on the ground to know its orientation, its access…). The office can also carry out preliminary projects, with 2D, 3D plans, so that the customer can have the volume of the house, aesthetics. And for a pre-project, we also do the costing so that the commercial can present the project as a whole with a price, so that he can make his sale.
If the design office does not have direct contact with the customers, they use the information of the commercial, their intuition and their experience to transcribe the wishes of the customers by the drawing and to propose a concrete plan which perfectly suits the needs of the customers. .
The different models of new houses to be built at Maisons SIC
As part of her work as an architect, what Caroline Cantaloube particularly likes about Maisons SIC, it is the wide variety of plans offered in the catalog: “We have a very nice variety of plans, ranging from small rectangular houses to larger houses with more sophisticated aesthetics. This is what we call a contemporary range, for example. And within maisons SIC, thanks to the design office and our skills, we have the possibility to modify all these plans from this base and to make new creations. We have a wide range of possibilities. We try, every year, to have new models come out and to develop our old models to meet the trends and requirements of the moment.”
As a reminder, Caroline Cantaloube presents us again the different models of single-family homes in Maisons SIC :
- Economical performance : this is the most attractive range from a commercial point of view. These are our first prizes. The houses are "basic" on a plan point of view, which are technically simple. The interior distribution is on “common” plans.
- Elegance : here, the architecture is more elaborate. We have higher benefits than the performance range.
- Contemporary : we are more about the aesthetics of the house and the surface area. They are more elaborate in terms of volumetry, the surfaces are larger. We reach another audience with these houses
- Wood : here, we are addressing customers who are interested in the wood industry. You can also mix wood and bricks for slightly different houses.
- Pyrenees : continuation of the existing catalog with different roofs.
The advantages of the design office Maisons SIC
According to Caroline Cantaloube, Maisons SIC remains a family business, rich in its 50 years of experience. With a high mastery of technique. “We have teams in each area, specialists for everything. We have the design office, specialist in design, drawing, technique. We have a work team. We have a team of commercial assistants, to make progress on the files. We have plenty of services, we are structured to be able to respond to customer demand, to last and do quality work.”
And one of the real pluses is having the design office within the company itself, not outsourced as is often the case with individual home builders. “Because all the teams can come and see us if there is a problem with a plan. We can settle it very quickly because we are there and we know all the files. We can have real effective exchanges with all the teams.”
