Gable & Course: an architecture practice website, built from one brief.
Five pages for a two-architect practice in Glasgow: six completed buildings recorded with the year, the floor area in square meters and the statutory route each one took, a fee page that puts a fixed £1,200 feasibility study ahead of any percentage, the five stages of an appointment written in plain words, and an inquiry form that asks for an address and a photograph rather than a budget. The design, the copy and the photographs were all produced from the brief below, then published to the web.
What the builder was given.
You start with a sentence and the chat asks you a few questions. Your answers become a brief like this one, and everything below was produced from it.
- Purpose
- Portfolio for a two-architect practice in Glasgow: houses, extensions, conversions and small commercial work across the west of Scotland
- Audience
- Homeowners in and around Glasgow weighing up an extension, a tenement remodel or a whole house, and small businesses fitting out a shop or workshop. Most have never worked with an architect and do not know what the stages cost or how long planning takes.
- Tone
- Sparse and precise. Numbers rather than adjectives. Captions carry the work and nothing is oversold.
- Key facts
- ARB registered and RIAS chartered: two architects and a part time architectural technologist
- Feasibility study at a fixed £1,200, deducted from the fee if the project goes ahead
- Full service is 8 to 11 per cent of construction cost, agreed in writing before work starts
- Projects typically run £80,000 to £400,000, from Glasgow out to Argyll and Ayrshire
- Studio in Finnieston; every project is visited, so the practice works within a day's drive
- Business type
- Architecture practice
- Location
- Finnieston, Glasgow, UK
- Pages
- Home, Work, How We Work, Practice, Contact
- Built
- September 3, 2026
What was asked for, and what came back.
Home
Open this pageAsked for
One quiet screen: what the practice is, what kind of work it takes, and where. Three projects shown large with their captions. State the fixed feasibility fee on this page, because it is the number that lets someone start. No manifesto, no mission statement.
Work
Open this pageAsked for
Six projects, each a set of photographs with a caption carrying the year, the floor area in square metres, the planning outcome and one sentence on what the problem was. A rear extension in Shawlands, a tenement flat remodel in Hyndland, a joiner's workshop converted to two studios in Govan, a rural house in Argyll, a bakery shopfront in Dennistoun, and a garden room in Newlands. This is the page the practice is judged on and it must never be short of photographs: it carries more images than every other page combined.
How We Work
Open this pageAsked for
The stages in plain words, with what each one costs and what the client has to do: feasibility, planning, building warrant, tender, and work on site. Say how long planning permission takes in Glasgow and that listed building consent takes longer. Explain the percentage fee with a worked example so the number is not abstract. State what the practice does not do: no free concept work, no projects it cannot visit in a day.
Practice
Open this pageAsked for
Who the two architects are and how they work, written in first person plural. Specific: that they trained and practised in Scotland before setting up, why they set up on their own, why they take small projects seriously, how many jobs they run at once. Do not name the schools they trained at or the practices they worked for. One photograph of the studio and one of a model on the bench, no posed portraits.
Contact
Open this pageAsked for
The enquiry form asks for the address of the property, a photograph, and what the client is hoping to do, with a line that a rough budget is useful but not required yet. Say plainly what happens next: a reply within two working days and a call before any fee is quoted. The studio address as text with a line on finding the unit, the phone number, and the hours.
Updated September 2026