If you are opening a restaurant, renovating a brewery, or planning a new office in Western North Carolina, the building you put your business in will do more work for your success than almost anything else. It determines how guests feel when they walk in, how efficiently your staff operates, and whether your space passes inspection the first time — or costs you months in revision cycles.
Form & Function Architecture has been designing commercial spaces in Asheville since 2010. This page explains what commercial architecture services include, how the process works from first call to ribbon-cutting, what it costs, and why the right architect makes a measurable difference for your project.
Commercial architecture covers any building or space designed for business, public, or institutional use. That includes restaurants, bars, and breweries; retail shops and showrooms; medical and wellness facilities; offices and co-working spaces; hotels and boutique lodgings; and mixed-use buildings that combine any of the above.
It is a different discipline from residential architecture in meaningful ways. Commercial buildings fall under the International Building Code (IBC) rather than the residential code (IRC), which means stricter requirements for fire safety, structural systems, egress, accessibility, and occupancy classifications. If you are unsure which applies to your project, our guide to commercial vs. residential architecture covers the key distinctions. The Americans with Disabilities Act applies to virtually all commercial spaces. Zoning and design review processes are more complex, especially in a city like Asheville with historic districts, steep slope overlays, and a downtown design review process that requires its own approval track.
In North Carolina, a licensed architect is legally required for most commercial projects exceeding $300,000 in value or 3,000 square feet in area. That threshold covers the vast majority of real-world business projects.
Every project at Form & Function starts with a visit to your site, property, or existing space. We want to see how the space actually works — or how a raw site reads against your goals — before we put anything on paper.
We review zoning and land use regulations, assess site-specific conditions like slope, orientation, solar access, and views, and check for any overlay requirements such as Asheville’s Historic Resources Commission jurisdiction, the steep slope ordinance, or post-Hurricane Helene flood standards in low-lying areas. We also have informal conversations with planning staff and general contractors early in the process to make sure our design will hold up to both regulatory review and real-world budget constraints.
Once we understand the site and your goals, we develop early design concepts. Schematic design produces conceptual floor plans, building massing, preliminary elevations, and initial 3D views. This phase is where big ideas get tested quickly and changed cheaply — adjustments here cost a fraction of what they cost once construction documents are complete.
We also produce a preliminary cost estimate at schematic design. It is not precise (typically ±20%), but it tells you whether the scope is aligned with your budget before you invest heavily in detailed drawings.
Design development refines the schematic design into something that can be fully coordinated and built. Dimensions get locked down. Materials and finishes get selected. We bring in our structural, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineers and coordinate their work with the architectural design. A design development set is typically accurate to within 10–15% on cost, which gives you a real basis for budgeting and early contractor conversations. For a full walkthrough of each phase, see our step-by-step commercial building design process guide.
Construction documents are the full working drawing set — everything a contractor needs to build the project and a jurisdiction needs to issue a permit. We produce these using Revit, Autodesk’s BIM software, which allows all disciplines to coordinate in a shared 3D model. Conflicts between structural members, ductwork, and piping are caught before they become expensive field problems.
Construction documents typically represent 35–40% of our total fee because they are the most labor-intensive phase and carry the most downstream value. Thorough, well-coordinated documents mean fewer change orders, fewer surprises, and less money left on the table during bidding.
We prepare permit-ready documentation and manage the submission process. In Asheville, commercial permits are submitted through the City’s Development Portal at the Permit Application Center on S. Charlotte Street. Projects in local historic districts — Montford, Biltmore Village, Albemarle Park, or St. Dunstan’s — require an additional Historic Resources Commission review. We handle all of it and answer any questions from the plan review staff during the process.
Once permits are in hand, we help you go to bid. We prepare bid packages, distribute them to a qualified list of contractors, evaluate the bids we receive, and help you understand what you are actually buying from each one. The lowest number is not always the right answer, and we have enough experience with local contractors to help you make an informed decision. Our page on why to hire a commercial architect instead of a general contractor explains this relationship in more detail.
Our involvement does not stop when the permit is issued. We make regular site visits during construction to confirm the work matches the drawings. We review shop drawings and submittals from subcontractors, respond to requests for information (RFIs) from the field, process change orders, and manage the punch list and final close-out. We also coordinate certificate of occupancy inspection and system commissioning.
Construction administration is where a lot of architects step back. We do not. The built result needs to match the design intent, and that does not happen without an experienced set of eyes on site throughout the build.
Beyond the core phases above, we regularly provide:
Asheville’s food and beverage scene is one of the most recognized in the Southeast, driven in part by a $2.97 billion annual visitor economy and close to 14 million visitors per year. We have designed more than a dozen restaurant and food service projects in the region, including Nine Mile, Smoky Park Supper Club, Mellow Mushroom, La Bodega, The Hound, DOUGH Market, The Golden Pineapple, and Curate At Home Kitchen, among others.
Restaurant design has specific technical demands: commercial kitchen layouts and ventilation, grease interceptors, health department review, acoustic control for lively spaces, and branding integrated into the physical environment. Our restaurant and hospitality architecture guide covers what makes this building type technically distinctive and what to expect from the design and permitting process.
Asheville has more breweries per capita than almost any city in the country. We have designed five brewery projects here, including Hillman Brewery, The Whale, UpCountry Brewing, Outsider Brewing, and Haywood Common. Brewery design requires tight coordination between production systems, taproom experience, and code compliance — particularly around floor drains, glycol lines, CO2 systems, and high-humidity environments. See our full brewery and taproom architecture guide for what that coordination actually involves.
We have designed physical therapy clinics, urgent care facilities, fitness studios, dance studios, and community health centers. Healthcare and wellness spaces have their own set of code requirements around patient privacy, clinical adjacencies, infection control, and in some cases, HIPAA-compliant design. We designed both Asheville locations for Range Urgent Care and the Appalachian Mountain Community Health Center at Dale Fell on McDowell Street.
Our office and workplace projects range from headquarters fit-outs to manufacturing spaces. We designed the Red Tree Builders Home Office and Showroom, Soomo Learning’s Ridgefield Boulevard office, Hi-Tech Integrated Systems, and STF Precision’s 15,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Arden. Workplace design is as much about workflow and culture as it is about square footage, and we approach it that way.
We have worked across a broad range of retail categories, from specialty food and beverage retail to wellness product shops. Projects include Carolina Hemp Company, Apotheca in Greensboro, The Hop Ice Cream, Heurista, and Blank Space AVL.
Our hospitality and event project work includes the Deerewoode Event Center in Brevard, The Martingale at Max Patch in Hot Springs, and Kasa Downtown Asheville. Hospitality spaces require particular attention to guest experience, operational flow, and brand expression through architecture.
Asheville’s commercial development environment is unlike most mid-sized cities. It has layers — historic districts with their own design standards, steep slope requirements that govern what can be built and how, post-Helene flood standards in low-lying areas, and a downtown design review process that runs parallel to standard building permit review. Our in-depth look at the Asheville commercial architecture market and 2026 regulatory changes covers these conditions in detail, including what the new UDO provisions mean for projects starting now.
Understanding those layers before you sign a lease or purchase a property can save you months. We do pre-design feasibility reviews specifically to catch those issues early — before commitments are made.
The city’s 2026 regulatory changes have made some things easier. Many mid-sized commercial projects that previously required City Council action now qualify for staff-level review, which can save three to six months. Adaptive reuse of non-conforming structures has been streamlined. Parking minimums along transit corridors have been removed. These are meaningful changes for anyone planning a commercial project in Asheville right now.
If you are working in a local historic district — Biltmore Village, Montford, Albemarle Park, or St. Dunstan’s — your project will go through Historic Resources Commission design review in addition to standard permitting. We have deep experience navigating HRC review and can help you design a project that respects the historic context without constraining your program.
For projects in the River Arts District, post-Helene design requirements now mandate that mechanical and electrical systems be elevated two to three feet above the 100-year floodplain. We are familiar with these requirements and have incorporated them into new and renovation project designs in that corridor.
Commercial architecture fees are typically structured in one of three ways: as a percentage of construction cost, as a fixed fee, or as an hourly rate for early-stage consultation. Most projects at Form & Function use a hybrid approach — hourly consultation during pre-design, moving to a fixed or percentage-based fee once scope is defined. For a full breakdown of what drives fees up or down, see our guide to commercial architect costs in Asheville.
Industry-wide, commercial architecture fees run 3–12% of total construction cost, with the percentage varying by project type and size:
| Project Type | Typical Fee Range |
|---|---|
| Industrial or warehouse | 3%–8% |
| Office or retail (new) | 6%–12% |
| Restaurant or hospitality | 8%–12% |
| Healthcare or institutional | 8%–15% |
| Renovation or adaptive reuse | Add 2%–5% to above |
Renovation projects cost more for architectural services because of the existing conditions documentation required — what is behind those walls is unknown until demo begins, and that uncertainty has to be managed through careful documentation and design flexibility.
Architectural fees represent 5–8% of total project investment and coordinate everything else. Design-phase changes cost roughly 90% less than the same changes made during construction. Thorough construction documents reduce costly change orders, which typically run 3–5% of project cost when documentation is thin.
To discuss fees for your specific project, contact our studio for a conversation. We do not publish fixed-rate menus because every project is different.
Before design begins, you will need to decide how to structure the relationship between design and construction. The two primary models — traditional architecture and design-build — each have real advantages depending on your timeline, design priorities, and risk tolerance. Our comparison of design-build vs. traditional architecture walks through the trade-offs in plain language so you can make an informed decision before signing any contracts.
We have been designing commercial spaces in Asheville and Western North Carolina since 2010. Our team holds AIA licensure and we are registered in North Carolina and South Carolina. We use Revit for all construction documentation, which means better-coordinated drawings, fewer field conflicts, and cleaner permit submissions.
Our backgrounds span architecture, construction, interior design, art, and mechanical systems. That range matters in commercial work, where the best solutions come from understanding how buildings are built, not just how they are drawn. Meet the team behind the projects.
We work across the full commercial spectrum — restaurants and breweries, medical and wellness facilities, office fit-outs, retail, event spaces, and public buildings. We have done it all in Asheville, which means we understand the local regulatory environment, the local contractor community, and the specific design conditions that Western North Carolina presents. Browse the full range in our commercial portfolio.
We also stay involved through construction. Site visits, shop drawing review, RFI responses, change order management, punch list — we do the full scope because that is how projects get built the way they were designed. Our architecture process page describes each phase and what to expect at every step.
In most cases, yes. North Carolina General Statute §83A-13 requires a licensed architect for commercial buildings that exceed $300,000 in total value or 3,000 square feet in gross floor area. Most real-world commercial projects exceed one or both of those thresholds. Even for projects that technically fall below the exemption, work that affects structural systems, egress, or occupancy classification typically requires an architect.
It depends on project scope. A small restaurant build-out might move from first meeting to permit in three to five months. A larger new construction project typically runs six to twelve months for design and permitting alone, before a single shovel goes in the ground. Asheville’s permitting adds time if your project is in a local historic district or requires design review. We provide a realistic timeline estimate during pre-design based on your specific project and site.
Before you sign a lease. The most common expensive mistake we see is a business owner who commits to a space without running it through any kind of feasibility review first — and then discovers the space cannot accommodate their program, or that the zoning does not allow their use, or that the building’s systems are not adequate. A pre-design consultation is low-cost and can save you a very costly commitment.
A floor plan is a single drawing showing room layout. Construction documents are a complete package — floor plans, reflected ceiling plans, elevations, sections, details, structural drawings, MEP drawings, and full specifications — everything a contractor needs to build your project and a jurisdiction needs to issue a permit. The difference in quality between a full CD set and minimal documents shows up directly in bid accuracy, contractor coordination, and change orders during construction.
We design restaurants and food service spaces, breweries and taprooms, fitness and wellness studios, healthcare and medical offices, office and workplace fit-outs, retail spaces, event venues, and mixed-use projects. We also work on public and institutional projects. Our full commercial portfolio is on our Commercial Work page.
If your project is within one of Asheville’s four local historic districts — Biltmore Village, Montford, Albemarle Park, or St. Dunstan’s — it requires design review and approval from the Historic Resources Commission before a building permit can be issued. HRC review evaluates exterior changes against design standards for that district. Projects in national register districts without a local historic designation do not require HRC review. We manage this process for our clients and design projects to meet the standards from the beginning, rather than getting to approval and having to redesign.
Yes. We prepare bid packages, manage distribution to qualified local contractors, review and evaluate the bids, and help you understand what you are actually comparing. We have worked with Asheville’s contractor community for fifteen years and can help you identify who is right for your project type, not just who quoted the lowest number.
Yes. We are registered in both North Carolina and South Carolina and regularly work on commercial projects in both states, including Upstate SC.
Commercial architecture in Asheville requires local expertise — not just design capability. The regulatory layers here, the historic districts, the mountain terrain, the post-Helene resilience requirements, and the tourism-driven pace of the food and beverage industry all require someone who has worked in this specific environment.
Form & Function Architecture has designed more than 50 commercial projects in Asheville and Western North Carolina across every major commercial category. We work the full scope of services from pre-design through construction close-out, and we stay on your project through ribbon-cutting.
If you are planning a commercial project in Asheville or Western NC, reach out to our studio to start the conversation. The earlier we get involved, the more value we can add.
Contact Form & Function Architecture 828.575.2423 info@ffarchitecture.com 9 Walnut Street, Suite 3B, Asheville, NC 28801
