Can we keep it near $100 a sq. ft.???

We're really looking for the help here! We've only spoke with one design/build firm so far. They basically told us if we GC the project ourselves we could keep the cost down. We're definitely interested in doing as much work as possible, but I'm not sure with working full time, if we can handle all the inspections, dealing with contractors, ordering materials, etc. To be honest after visiting the Houston Code Enforcement site, I don't see how a General Contractor does it. This website is a spiderweb of documents and different costs that look like they could all add up to around $10k only. This was pretty amazing to me that the city charges so much for all this. I'm hoping that I am reading this all wrong and that someone reading can ease my worries here.

Anyway, back to the plans. Like I said before, we've looked into one firm so far. MDGI, recently renamed as StudioMET. Still trying to understand why the name change. Anyway, we really like the designs of their houses and have gotten a lot of what we want in a house from looking at there various homes. I haven't see a lot of reviews on them besides these two (positive1, positive 2) and this one (negative). We've played around with the idea of locating some of their homes and sending letters to them to see what they really think about the houses. There are a few of their townhomes down the street from us on Jackson Hill. They look pretty good, but one of them seems to have had some pretty bad structural settling that has cause some pretty bad stucco cracks.

Some other architect's we're interested in are Intexure, and MC2, but still looking. Suggestions?

So what the hell are we looking for in a house? Well we want a more modern home with a very open floor plan, but we don't want cold modern. Most of that we will handle with interior decor, but we don't want the place to feel like no one lives there. We're estimating that 2300-2500 sq. ft. of which we want a master suite, two bedrooms and one office/bedroom, with 3 bath. We should be able to fit all of this in two floors, however, I would like to add a unfinished third floor to improve the resale of the house later. This space could be finished to add another bedroom, a studio, theater, playroom, whatever. I just feel adding this space would be a prudent idea to keep the taxable square footage low but have the option of growing over time.

One design element that we're really interested in, is having the Living Room, Dining Room, and Kitchen all open to each other in a straight line, with one wall open to the outside, preferably with a pool. We have some rough drawings that I will try to post here soon. I'm struggling a lot with the front elevation as well as the large amount of glass that I want that I know we shouldn't have.

All and all we're wondering if we can get all this at that $100-110 range and how much we will need to do to get to that price point?