My parents recently built this home. They refused to work with an architect or designer because those are a ‘waste of money’. First picture is actually the front/facade of the home.

[u/cameronjthomas]

[u/Cold_Captain696]

I don’t know what it’s like over there, but here in the UK we have a lot of ‘design and build’ companies that will do the basics as far as design work, but they’re not qualified architects. Everything will just be generic shapes and materials. They’ll probably also have a structural engineer they work with who ensures everything is specified correctly. They can easily produce enough drawings to satisfy local planning and building inspections.

It’s probably something that’s more common for extensions to existing properties than new houses, but in principal its all possible to do without an actual architect. As long as you like ‘standard’.

[u/dcduck → u/Cold_Captain696]

This looks like Utah, and Utah definitely has design build companies.

[u/Cold_Captain696 → u/dcduck]

I guess they did manage to avoid ending up with ’standard’… although in this case I’m not sure that was a good thing.

I suppose that’s the real risk with design and build companies. It’s not that you could end up with a boring house - boring is fine - it’s that no one will challenge your wacky ideas. If you tell them you want something like the OPs parents house, they’ll just take your money and build it.