I'd try to have at least one or 2 meetings in person. Flights are CHEAP in comparison to houses. Sitting down and getting some face time will be invaluable and serve to educate you on each others' nonverbal communication.

After that - switching to email, phone, video conference, etc - is entirely doable.

Plan ahead - have a few face to face meetings - and go for it.

The biggest problem, for me, would be selecting The One and rejecting all of the others... With so many friends in architecture, I'd be a bit worried about hurting feelings, especially since several have already expressed a specific interest in designing for you.

So, maybe start logically culling the list by only considering the residential architects who have specifically made offers, starting with the most recently made? That way, it's nothing personal for the commercial friends. :-)

The non-local part isn't too critical. It would bother *me* personally, lol, but only because I want the professional set of eyes to supervise my project and help me make on-site decisions when issues arise. That may or may not be an issue for you.

How do you feel about firing a friend?

Tell them that you didn't want to play favourites and didn't want to risk ruining the friendship with the stress of a project, so you hired a stranger you can fire if you have to.

You raise a good question, and fortunately you have years to sort out the best answer.

All other things equal, I would be looking for an architect who had a successful track record as a successful residential architect, since even single family custom residences have a learning curve as a project type. Since you may be doing your first custom home, it will be a great help to work with someone who has successfully worked with such projects over many years.

The second issue to sort out is the scope of services which would best fit you, your family, the type of house you envision, your site and your budget. Said differently, architects who do this sort of work, do so in phases of service: 1) Schematic design; 2) Design development; 3) Construction documents; 4) Bidding assistance; 5) Construction contract administration. In addition, many architects offer additional services for such things as site analysis and planning; interior design; landscape design; custom design of special built-in items, etc.

Remember: you get what you pay for. So many consumers, if they commission an architect at all, scrimp on services and fees, thinking of them simply as extra expenses, over and above the cost to construct the house. The reality is often that minimal efforts and minimal documents result in tens of thousands of dollars of extra cost items (or do over items) during construction as a result of lack of critical information, open-ended allowances for items not designed or specified and the like.

You may see yourselves as "pretty decisive people and don’t expect to need much hand-holding", but how many custom homes have you built?

The third issue is the location of the architect: close to and familiar with your site, with builders, local officials and regulations vs. a "friend" who lives and works in the Chicago area. This is an issue which could go in either direction, but needs a strong degree of trust and good communications between and among all parties for success.

Hope this helps. Good luck on your exciting journey!

Hire a local architect that has extensive residential architectural experience and designs in a style you like and alleviate your worries.

I am sitting right now in my cabin on a lake and 800 feet from Lake Michigan in northern Michigan. There is a house being built about a half mile from me that I can see diagonally across the lake. It looks like a piece of crap. The designer is from New Jersey and they totally missed the flavor of the area. It is a large rectangle in plan with a shed roof sloping the length of the rectangle. All the other cottages in the vicinity are traditional.

If the exterior colors end up being any variation of orange and black, someone's getting a nasty letter.

I digress.

Thank you all for the great input!! I know we have plenty of time to make decisions but I wanted to ask the question sooner rather than later so we knew what to do to set up expectations, for ourselves and for our friends. You have given us some things to mull over! I definitely wont be hiring an architect who has done no residential custom homes, friend or not! We hope to only build one or two homes in our lifetime so won't be experts ourselves!

Virgil Carter nailed it. Best to remember that an architect can and should have more value to your build than just a cool, functional design. We recently built custom, including teardown, in a city that accounted for 1% of all building starts in the US for the year prior and the year during our build. Our architect not only knew all local code, he knew things down to which City permit folks were pains/holding up builds- and how to get around them. Not only did he know them, but he's well-known and respected which helped move things along fast. While others were waiting months for permits we waited sometimes only days.

He and his firm also brought a GC to the project with whom they'd successfully worked many times. They knew that he could build our house as they designed, that he could handle our budget (big in places, smaller in others) and lead us to the exact places for materials to affect beauty and win in a crazy, crazy market.

Finally- when a few issues presented (they always do), he was there within a day to help get them resolved in both design and build, along with our GC. A few times, it involved being on lot with City code folks/inspectors etc. That was so key, as we were still, then, able to keep a building schedule without losing crews off our lot. As I learned from others' here, sometimes even one days hesitation/cancelation can result in weeks and weeks of delay.

So much more value to our local architect than I can say. Even my builder admits that there were a couple of twists and turns that would have killed both schedule and budget, had it not been for his local knowledge and advocacy

If you have that many friends who are architects, choosing one over the others will be dicey. Hire a local residential architect.

Like 902 Juanita mentioned, in certain towns/areas there will be a definite advantage to hiring a local architect. Town zoning issues, variances, politics, etc. can suck up a lot of time and money from a project ... choose the architect and builder that hasn't burnt too many bridges in your area.

Quickest way to end a friendship in my opinion is to hire them...............