Arlene Awarda Architect

Great information! Given on the process before we began. This firm has beautiful designs, great information and check-ins during the project when needed. We loved the before and after drawings created. All the areas were covered as far as our design areas as requests. This firm also is available on weekends, an added plus!

We have been working with Arlene and she has created a beautiful design beyond our expectations! We love her process! All our ideas and features we asked for were incorporated. Designs have great sense of craftsmanship and style. Friendly phone conversations and being always reachable by phone and by email Any answers to any permit questions were promptly, in the same day. Her excellent communication was a reassuring highlight!

We have have a new home recently bought and are called Arlene after 15 years as she did our first home. The plans were excellent and we kept them over the years. No doubt we'd be calling her again. We like craftsmanship and elegance with which we got. There is a professional quality to her work. We like visuals. Ours plans made it though with no changes from the City. We got input and questions answered from her the same day when needed. We love our home and the follow through of the concept!..

We have been working with Arlene for two years.We contacted her a year ahead for early stage planning advice. We then started the plans a year later. We wanted a custom crafted, elegant design. We loved her projects and her visuals! Our house is small so we wanted some custom details. We had many visions. It was truly a fun process. All Arlene's ideas were great and hard to choose just one! We do like everything laid out in advance so we appreciate Arlene's process of information. She was always open and available to answer our calls and get back to us in one day. Friendly and personable just makes a great team to work with. We have a beautiful design and very happy with our house!

I’ve been working for Arlene Warda as our architect for the last year. Arlene's work is creative, artistic and meets our all building needs we requested at the same time. She has answered all our questions and responds on a regular basis to any questions we had usually the same day or the next day. Great guidance and great response to the permit process with the City of Chicago as well! We plan to give her other projects after this!

I would not recommend working with her again. She been holding up our project for months. She is hard to communicate with will not set up meetings. She been sending us copies incomplete. Honestly it's just too much to list. But no trust me

We have been working with Arlene since last spring on our house a new addition project and are very happy with her work and her responsive. Before that we were looking at several architects we felt her process with clear, well layout and happy with her plans. Plus she has done recent work for us and for friends. We now have bid drawings after a very successful design process. All designs were presented were very good. We finally chose one idea and one plan we wanted and one that encompasses all our ideas. We had ideas in mind which we brought to this as inspiration to this process. We were also able and got ample time to preview M,E,P, mechanical electrical and plumbing drawings. We got to review and choose layout designs. Electrical lights and outlets. She was helpful and was able to answer any questions with regarding to code. We like the idea proposed in the proposal plan that we get choose our and have freedom to choose our own products. Light fixtures, and kitchen and bath products. This was very helpful to us. As we are designers. The previous contractors recommended had over 20+ years of experience with Arlene and her projects. They came with highly rated reviews on their pages and solid work references. These were established contractors. We liked and valued Arlene's communication style. We get answers and phone call promptly in one day and usually in only with an hour to under half a day. We are very, very happy with plans and plan to use her on our next house and our other projects! Her work is beautiful and we love our house!...

After viewing and interviewing several architect's we liked the visual project portfolio and presentation style of Arlene's projects. We chose Arlene because she is visually based and like her many years of experience in residential architect. She has a simple contract one user friendly and her phone contact and emails are promptly returned each day. For our house she created a complete and beautiful interpretation of our list for our house design! She presented out numerous plan ideas and all were beautiful and inspiring to us! We are now in the final stages of our house building project and all is going well. We plan to work with Arlene on the next projects on our house after this!...

We have been working with Arlene for the last year. We have a historic two flat and we are now duplexing expanding into the basement. We are putting two new bedrooms and a family room with new master suite and bath in our lower level. Things with the new plans are going very well. We love the new layout and plans. All the suggestions as ideas worked great respect to layout, along with ideas for tile and fixtures. We choose some on our own and went with some products Arlene suggested and sent on line. We happily reviewed our budget and Arlene welcomed any changes we needed with revisions made for cost and keeping with budget. She met all the deadlines. If we had had questions about code they were answered promptly. Any questions We needed to ask to the city where answered usually within one day or the next day. Most importantly the project looks great as it greatly improved our house! We own several properties and plan to use Arlene again after this!

We have a 1960's ranch and our house project was and addition for the kitchen and a new master bath. We had this done years ago with plans drawn and designed by Arlene. We liked the design as it was built and it works perfectly with what's there as far as our house. This was a very good solution as layout. Our house and plans were much better with these plans designed by Arlene. We are continuing our relationship now online as she even had reference plans in her computer one from 15 years ago which she came in person and recently updated. The permit process was easy and will be easy again it is all online now. We had no changes or updates after permit review to our design. Arlene was friendly and returned all our calls. We definitely plan to move forward with her on our next project! We highly recommend Arlene!

We have lived in a single house one which has a remodeling and addition by Arlene. We are very happy with the design a new family room and kitchen addition design to our historic style house. We loved the presentation and our new remodeling and addition. We called her again after 25 years! We sent all the latest information, including pictures, a video and Google docs. She had the floor plans on file. Updating on the computer was done as we had changes in the field. Friendly phone conversation and prompt return of calls within half a day, usually within the hour. We found Arlene very personable and open to any questions we may have. Any options on questions code were answered by email. We were glad to see in these modern day these permit drawings could be emailed! No more printed sets of large plans or prints were required. We liked the new modern system of submitting uploading and emailing plans. All questions were answered ones requested by the building department. We also liked the idea of fixed price contract. Very usable and easy simple to read. Most of all we are happy with this second project on the second floor as plans for our remodeling and addition and are going to continue as a second phase to our house in the spring. It fits elegantly with the rest of house as a traditional design. Looks like it as a space was always meant to be. We highly recommend Arlene for her wonderful plans and her prompt service and look forward to our new phase in the spring!

I do not recommend Arlene Warda. I had an interior renovation project to create a master ensuite. Arlene provided promising thoughts in the beginning like her scope of work would take 6-8 weeks and she could help me with fixtures and choosing contractors. I found it extremely difficult to work with Arlene. She visited our house only once the first week of the project and spent relatively little time in the space itself, causing her to miss material points I communicated multiple times. She did present multiple options but not initially the exact one I had specifically requested. Her 3 phases of drawings took over 14 weeks. She didn’t thoroughly read emails resulting in my correcting the same points multiple times. She didn’t use Excel or Google docs. Documents she sent had inconsistencies between the different versions. Arlene offered me 3 levels of service and I went for the middle to provide assistance with fixtures, finishes and choosing contractors. The only design help she provided was to send me to Houzz.com so I ended up doing my own research and selection. Her contractor help was 2 names (neither with reviews). I did my own RFP because her template was not detailed and hadn’t addressed points I asked her to include. Her emails often said “this is not in my scope of work” or “that’s extra” or “I don’t provide that service.” She wanted me to hire a mechanical engineer. I contacted the Village who confirmed a mechanical engineer was not needed. I did hire a structural engineer she recommended and that person didn’t even come to the house to do his 1-page report for $800. Arlene’s “responsiveness” was spending a lot of time emailing me why she wouldn’t do something or why she wanted to do things her way. Many things were not communicated in advance and she never once picked up the phone to call me during the project when I emailed her that I was upset and unhappy with working with her. She refused my offers to come back to my house to see the spaces or to meet in person. She rejected my proposal to use a neutrally written contract. Despite the signed contract saying she would provide me with a hard copy and email with everything to submit for the permits, she wanted to charge me to print and messenger the drawings. She planned to submit them electronically to the Village despite me having explicitly told her I didn’t want her to do that without me seeing the documents first. Her final Phase 3 documents contained errors on her part which is exactly why I wanted to see things in advance. She only accepts payment in advance by check or Zelle. In the end, I was able to get the permits and do the construction without any further involvement from her after I received copies of the documents. The GC I found noted that Arlene’s drawings didn’t contain complete measurements. I worked directly with my GC to make improvements to Arlene’s work. I wished early on that I could get out of my contract with Arlene.