Architects : portraits of a practice /

Yarrow, Thomas, 1977-

Architects : portraits of a practice / Thomas Yarrow. - Ithaca : Cornell University Press, (c)2019. - 1 online resource (ix, 283 pages). - Expertise: cultures and technologies of knowledge .

Includes bibliographies and index.

Architects; Contents; Before the Beginning; Part 1 The Office; Arrival; Spaces Between; Understanding Architecture; A Particular Kind of Practice; Openings; Listen: First Impressions of the Office; Part 2 Lives; Between Person and Profession; Questions of Vocation; Listen: The Greedy Profession; Personal Vision; Listen: Myths of Origin; Designing and Making; Building Friendship; Starting to Doubt; Reflection: Architectural Lives; Part 3 Designs; A Feel for Place; Sites of Design; Dripping with History; Site Stories; Between Reality and Possibility; Between Intuition and Exploration Acts of DesignDesign Tools; Digital Romantics; Between Architect and Client; Listen: Channeling or Imposing Ideas?; Between One and One Another; Friends, Colleagues, Competitors; Deadlines; Magic Moments; Listen: Creative Time; Reflection: Creativity and Its Limits; Interlude: Two Kinds of Uncertainty; Listen: Angst in Architecture; Part 4 Pragmatics; Petrified Drawing; Between Concept and Plan; Coming into Focus; Listen: Cost and Design; Where Knowledge Meets; Problem Solving; Formality and Informality; At the Limits of the Contract; Disentanglement; Safe Hands; Professionalism Listen: Control and CreativityTime Frame; Rhythms of Work; Listen: Blocked; Reflection: Making Things as They Are; Part 5 Practical Completion; Knowledge at Its Limits; Architectural Expertise; Everyday Possibilities; Coda: An Argument for Description; Acknowledgments; Notes; References; Index

"This book portrays the lives and work of 10 architects who comprise the Millar Howard Workshop architectural firm based in the Cotswolds in the United Kingdom. Focusing on their activities and their work environment, Yarrow's book is narrative driven, full of stories of anxiety, exhilaration, hope, idealism, friendship, conflict and its resolution, and the many personal commitments that propel the acts of creativity essential to good architecture and design. Taking up recent calls to "personalise the expert," the book contains insights into architectural and design practice, situating these in relation to broader themes including creativity, ethical self-formation and organisational practice. Through ethnographic descriptions of everyday working life, the book reveals the complex and contradictory imperatives that shape architectural design, and highlights the negotiations involved in efforts to resolve these. These accounts demonstrate how ideas are imaginatively produced through shifting configurations of people, materials, tools and places. Rather than deconstructing understandings of creative individuality, the account traces how this is understood and enacted through practices that are shaped by, even as they question the ideal"--



9781501738500 9781501738517

2019008900


Millar Howard Workshop.


Architectural firms--England--Stroud.
Architectural practice--England--Stroud.
Architects--Professional relationships--England--Stroud.


Electronic Books.

NA997 / .A734 2019