Let my share my thoughts on this. There are two aspects to designing a recording studio. The actual structure - foundation, walls, roof, to include basic services like electrical, natural gas, and fresh/sewer water, outside drainage, etc. The second aspect is the room-in-a-room construction, which I believe the average architect wouldn't have expertise in.
Last year I had purchased a large warehouse, with the idea to slice it in half and build my fourth pro studio, and while there was a problem with the title (as discovered AFTER money exchanged hands) resulting in a lawsuit against the title research company... but all that doesn't matter for this discussion.
I had contacted many local to somewhat local architects, eleven in all, gave them a tour of the space, with a hand drawing I created of where I wanted the control room, live room, booths, hallways etc, based on my vision. I explained the warehouse shell needs some design work, I needed a "retail" entry area, for customers to sit in if they are early, a kitchen, two gender-marked single stall bathrooms, all the usual stuff any business open to the public would require to comply with state, county and town laws. All of the architects I spoke to "got it" instantly, each presenting their own ideas in ways to improve flow, layout, shape and two of the eleven even described a very interesting curved wall/ceiling layout in the large foyer to make the entry way very modern and inviting. Anyway, it was obvious to me any of the eleven could figure out all the plumbing (as there was none, and the floor of the warehouse was easily 8-10' thick concrete on rebar based on a core I took out of a corner).
Where things got hokey, was when I started talking about the actual recording space - building rooms within the warehouse without sharing walls, structurally, so everything is decoupled. Studio construction, if done "correctly" is more involved than just sheet rocking 2x4's and slapping auralex or rigid fiberglass, there's a lot of detail associated with floating the floors, decoupling the rooms from each other, making the layouts attractive as well as acoustically useful. Of the eleven architects I spoke to, they all got the concept to varying degrees, but not enough where I'd say "go ahead, do me a design, here is my money".
However, all was not lost. I ended up talking to John Sayers, who is a studio designer, and we got to talking about what I really wanted, and based on all my research thus far, his ballpark of what it was going to cost me to build this pro studio was within 5% of what I had guessed, based on my own research.
Guys like John are designers... he understands the acoustical aspect very well, and working *with* your local architect, you can arrive at a set of implementable architectural plans that will make for a nice studio. So you'd have the best of both worlds... acoustically useful, good workable layout, within the confines of your space, AND someone to technically draw up the design in contractor-speak and take care of all the plumbing, foyer, kitchens and outside necessities.
One of the eleven architects I talked to did in fact design a local recording studio, I made an appointment to visit, which the studio owner was more than happy to provide a reference. While the layout was awesome, the flow of workers and customers were very good, acoustically that studio was no better than something you or I would build ourselves at home. Apparently "studio design" just meant non-parallel walls, and truckloads of acoustical foam. There is more to building a "real" studio than foaming the shit out of various rooms, as I said above.
Based on my experience thus far, unless your architect has designed recording studios that you can visit, hear, and really thing are good designs (as judged by your eyes AND your ears), you have to suppliment the architect's skills with a designer that's extremely verse in recording studio contruction.
If it's worth anything, my first three pro studios, while good designs in many aspects, had a lot of acoustical defects I and my partners spent years trying to overcome, due to lack of knowledge at the time on the chosen architect, as well as myself and my partners.
If you're going to spend serious money to build a serious facility, its by far better to do it right the first time, even if it costs a little more.
