I'm not sure why your builder is choosing your architect but that is beside the point.
After interviewing several architects, we had a preliminary meeting with our architect where he came to our former home and we went through each room in the house discussing likes and dislikes. All the way from coat closet to master bathroom and linen storage. He looked at our furniture and we discussed how we planned to live in the new house. He left with about 15 pages of notes.
At our next meeting we discussed the floor plan sketches he had come up with and it went from there. Lots of give and take and ideas bouncing around. All done just in quick sketches and low key during the first meetings. We had told him the general style exterior that we were interested in but he was clear that any discussion or drawings of the exterior would come well AFTER the floor plan was pretty hammered down.
We were all in agreement that there were many forms of exterior look that we would be satisfied with but that the interior floor plan was more important. Working an interior around an exterior seems to be putting the wheels before the bus.
Good luck! BTW 10K is a bargain! Are you sure this is an architect or is he a draftman? Do you have a limited range of meetings, drawings etc for this price?

Our process was similar to gbsim's. We interviewed 6 different firms before we selected the "one". I used a standard list of questions from a book I really recommend (link below). Before any work started on plans, our architect did site visits and reviewed multiple concepts and inspiration photos we had of both the interior and exterior. He visited the lot, took pictures, requested a site survey (need topo). He also explained that the floor plan must be near final before he starts on elevations (small changes here and there that don't impact the elevation are OK).

Our process is also very low key and has been very smooth. We communicate a lot (phone and email) and meet in person weekly. I'd be concerned if I couldn't communicate with the person designing my dream home.

We just finalized our elevations and are waiting for community design approval to proceed with construction drawings. We started the process mid January. It is critical to take your time on this phase - the floor plan is the most critical step in the process.

We also paid considerably more than $10K (we are paying $5 per finished square foot - that fees includes 1500 future finished sq. ft in our walkout basement). You may also have structural engineering costs that are outside of the architect's fees - for us about $5K.

Good luck with your design!

Here is a link that might be useful: Designing Your Dream Home by Susan Lang

We have friends who were using the architect their builder recommends. After paying some money and going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and still not getting close to what they want, they're moving on to someone else now and cutting their losses.

I firmly believe in having the freedom to select your own architect for YOUR house. It's your house, not the builder's house. I understand they might be comfortable with each other but in the end, it's you who needs to be happy. Our builder and architect were not very familiar with each other (aside from hearing of each other). But things have gone super smoothly.

We had an idea of what we liked. Our architect took that and came back with some sketches that kind of morphed into what we eventually ended up with. It took some tweaking and changes along the way. He asked us many questions about what we wanted and liked, etc. We had several sketch drafts.

We also had structural engineering fees on top of his fee. I can't tell you how many meetings we had with him. But we have known our architect on a personal level for a long time. However, he deals with all of his clients this way. You have to meet, meet, meet in order to get everything right. Because designing a house is like a puzzle, when you change one things, it changes a lot of other things. When those change, you may not be happy. So you end up back at square one. It took us a while to get the design right.

We also had a process similar to gbsim's. When we were interviewing, the architects all looked at our inspiration pics and showed us their portfolios. That gave us a feel for whose style was more in alignment with what we wanted. After we chose, our architects came to our house, walked through every room, measured every piece of furniture that was going to be used in the new house, and then we sat for hours going through every room of the new house. For every room, we discussed things like "How many people do you want to be able to have in this room? Will there be a TV in this room? Will there be a computer in this room?" Then we got back a 5 page "program" describing everything we wanted in the house, room by room. Only then did they begin drawing. The first draft was amazing and it had the furniture placement. Alas it was also too big, so we had them trim it. The second version was just what we wanted. We did trim a few things after we got the preliminary pricing back, but by and large they got it right the first time.