Architects: Portraits of a Practice  --  Thomas Yarrow

Full Citation and Summary Yarrow, Thomas. Architects: Portraits of a Practice.
Ithaca, New York; Cornell University Press, 2019. Print.

This book is an ethnographic study of the architectural firm Millar Howard
Workshop (MHW), located in the Cotswolds, England. It utilises a strongly
descriptive approach to research, playing down argumentative and
academic-theoretical frameworks in favour of closely intertwining narrative and
insight. The author, Thomas Yarrow, is an anthropologist whose work focuses on
interactions during meetings, an interest he brings to this book. His
relationship with his subjects is very close, one of the MHW directors is a
childhood friend.

Chapter Notes

Before the Beginning (pp. 1-12)

Starting With Friendship (pp. 1-2)
- Introduces the research subject: the architectural practice codirected by one
 of TY's best friends from childhood, Tomas (pp. 1)
- Location in the Cotswolds in the UK (pp. 2)
- Change in relations with friend: deepening and uncanny distance through the
 closeness of research and "professional vision of the ethnographer" (pp. 2)

A Note On Structure and Approach (pp. 2-7)
- Goal of reaching a wide audience, so stresses that these are unnecessary
 technical sections (pp. 2)
- Implicit folding of analysis into description (pp. 3)
- Removal of academic "scaffolding" from project (compared to architecture) so
 the descriptive outcome can be multi-audience (pp. 5)
- Specifying the case study: Millar Howard Workshop (MHW) (pp. 3)
- Outlines his anthropological orientation: understanding other people's lives
 on their own terms (pp. 3)
- Les Bak's concept of "turning up the background" (pp. 3)
- Unfolding of events; architecture as linear process whose logic is emphasized
 (pp. 3)
- Schon's definition of architectural expertise (pp. 3)
- Photographs as parallel description; text as extended caption; the process of
 specifying a lexicon of description and tools of description; instances where
 architects speak for themselves (pp. 4)
- Focusing on description over theory, weight on description and theory as
 "remainder," attenuation of argumentation in favour of vivid intimacy and a
 richer account (pp. 6); minimization of explicit analysis in favour of allowing
 readers to make connections from various trajectories (pp. 7) Approaching
 Architectural Practice: between the "How," "Who," and "What" of Knowledge (pp.
 9-12)
- Main claim: architecture is a way of knowing the world in order to change it,
 so the "architectural self" is shaped and shapes these ways of knowing (pp.
 9)
- Interested in daily practices of the above; architectural theory/history as
 an extension of "architecture" as a research site (pp. 9)
- Smallness of the field of social studies of architecture; the fact that
 architects don't like to be presented by others and in ways they may not like
 (pp. 9)
- Challenging the concept of creative individual as source of design; media as
 mediators rather than intermediaries, they do more than simply represent but
 work on the material represented (pp. 10)
- In knowledge, "what" is a function of "where", "with what", and "with whom"
 (pp. 10)
- Humanization of the expert, ethical dilemmas and internal contradictions (pp.
 11)
- Between post-human impulse toward more-than-social and humanist impulse
 towards "being in the world" (pp. 11)
- Avoidance of reducing being to doing (consider how things work through how
 they are and how they are through how they work) (pp. 11)
- Illumination of later parts of the architectural process that have gone
 under-studied, less stress on conceptual design and "creativity" (pp. 11)
- Definition of "practice" = what people do, think, say in everyday
 interactions (pp. 11)


Part 1 -- THE OFFICE

Arrival (pp. 15-17)
- Details his arrival at the office, describing its location outside Stroud in
 the Cotswolds (pp. 15)
- Cotswolds as populated by wealthy retirees and commuters, MHW's work is very
 local and these are their clients
- Stressing the importance of car travel to this practice, this is a theme that
 will be repeated (pp. 15)
- Describes how the office is outside the town and access is controlled by a
 train crossing (pp. 15)
- Physical detachment from the world to make a space of possibility (pp. 16)
- Describes the interior of the office: stairs, custom-designed desks for each
 employee, that the building is a reno; presence of physical books and file
 folders, models, paper, trace, material samples, computer screens (pp. 16-17)
- General aim of the book: to provide a situated answer to the question "what
 is it like to be an architect? (pp. 17) Spaces Between (pp. 19-21)
- Outlines the concept of "the space between" identified by Tomas as the space
 between plan and building, but turned into an operative concept in the book
 (pp. 19)
- Literal and conceptual "between" spaces where daily, unresolvable
 contradictions are encountered in design and construction (pp. 19)
- Overarching contradiction between "enlightenment" ideas of rationality and
 standardisation and "romantic" ideas of unique creativity of the individual
 (pp. 19)
- At MHW, design involves multiple truths difficult to reconcile: creative
 individualism vs. collaborative ideal; political rhetoric (anti-capitalism)
 vs. practice reality (only rich clients); professionalism vs. creativity (pp.
 20)
- Professional context that institutionalizes contradictions; recognition of
 complicity and criticality at MHW and how their work sits between these two
 impetuses (pp. 20)
- Approach to architecture in this book as a way of "being in the world," work
 life is inextricable from life beyond work, architecture as encompassing
 vocation rather than profession, approach to its emotional, ideological, and
 personal elements (pp. 21)

Understanding Architecture (pp. 22-24)
- Outline of how he went about fieldwork: embedding with the architects;
 sometimes more interventionist than others (pp. 22)
- Guided by what architects find interesting and sometimes by his own interests
- Planned encounters, chance encounters, snooping, being invited in
- "mostly silent exchanges" of the office and the awkwardness of hanging around
 watching (pp. 22)
- Participant observation role: observer of activities, asking questions, doing
 some work for the office through writing documents, research, and blogging
 (pp. 21-22)
- Limited tools of field documentation: phone camera, notebook, digital voice
 recorder (pp. 23)
- What architects do w/ what they say since these never line up exactly;
 spatial distance from work in interviews, interviews as "wrap up" of informal
 conversations (pp. 23)
- Office focus, but extension to other sites since office activities can happen
 elsewhere, stresses site visits and being in the car (pp. 23-24)
- Interviews with architects, clients, builders, planners, "other building
 professionals"
- Extended time period showed changes to the practice and changes to his
 understanding (pp. 24)
- Insistence on particularities and locality as a means of engaging themes of
 universal interest (pp. 24)

A Particular Kind of Practice (pp. 27-29)
- Outlines the characteristics of MHW: not famous, young, high budgets, close
 relationships w/ participants/clients, aim for flat office org. (pp. 27);
 considered successful, locally respected, engaged in local/national official
 politics through RIBA and local committees (pp. 28)
- Section detailing out office organization further in relation to their
 aspiration to flat hierarchy (pp. 28)
- Desks orient employees towards their screens, but make conversation easy w/o
 raising their voices (pp. 28)
- Distributed responsibility to do mundane office tasks such as making the tea,
 commitment to listening and non-judgement (pp. 28)
- BUT at the same time, the directors are the head as far as clients are
 concerned, they act as primary communicators w/ clients (pp. 28); experience
 is an un-said but institutionalized (through RIBA) hierarchy of whose voice
 matters (pp. 28-29); division of labour through experience and state of
 architectural education (pp. 29)
- "ownership" feeling over projects each architect sees through even with
 delegation (pp. 29)
- Directors in charge of strategic direction, the way they make decisions about
 office as business through whispered conversations (pp. 29)
- The office administrator is mentioned here in passing as an intermediary,
 invisible: she is only ever mentioned one other time (pp. 29)
- Not a typical practice, but one that allows for an approach to broader trends
 in practice (pp. 29)

Openings (pp. 30-31)
- Writing about architecture in relation to architects (pp. 30)
- Assertion from architects that things are missing, but also the revelation of
 truth that they are not aware of (pp. 30)
- Radical conservatism and integration with capitalist economy despite the
 critical thrust of architectural writing/rhetoric (pp. 31)
- Aesthetics and making-critical-position as means of retaining/producing elite
 status (pp. 31)
- Binary thinking in architecture (between truth and fiction specifically)
 through architectural forms of critique (pp. 31)
- TY seeks to open up practice and reveal its internal contradictions (pp. 31)

Listen: First Impressions of the Office (pp. 32-35
- Interview excerpt on experiences of joining the office for the first time
 (pp. 32)
- Themes of learning what normal is, team-based work after individual thrust of
 architecture school, competition and collaboration, validation of design and
 how much you can change design (pp. 33-35)


Part 2 -- LIVES

Between Person and Profession (pp. 39-42)
- Architectural profession as vocation or calling (pp. 39)
- Outline of how long it takes to become an architect in the UK and its
 arduousness (pp. 40)
- Bootcamp model of architectural education, breaking to build back up;
 commitment demonstration (pp. 40)
- Architecture requiring a question of the self through architecture and
 architecture through the self (pp. 40)
- Movement from uni to Part I job and the satisfaction of collaborative
 work/tangible project execution (pp. 41)
- Architecture as lifeway, as vocation, as "compelling force"; blurring of
 personal and professional (pp. 41)
- Ideas about the personal cost of good architecture being articulated by
 architects (pp. 42)
- Making distance from work as a means of staying sane but also gaining
 critical distance from your work (pp. 42)

Questions of Vocation (pp. 45-50)
- Overview of David (Tomas' dad) and his architectural career arc (pp. 45)
- Going to the AA in London and being frustrated with the approach; interest in
 architecture as a holistic way of intervening in social, political,
 ecological problems a la bucky (pp. 47)
    - Disillusionment with architecture, working in an office, building his
      own house extension, movement to computer programming in the late 70s
      since it promised to fulfill what he was looking for (pp. 48-49), got back into
      architecture when Tomas did and his interest in computing waned due to big tech
      (pp. 49-50)
    - Biographical narrative as a stabilization; parcel of unending
      self-questioning; individuality as a "logic of change" (pp. 50)

Listen: The Greedy Profession (pp. 51-52)
- Covers the way architecture invades your life, is addictive and "greedy"
 since it takes from everything and makes everything architecture (pp. 51-52)

Personal Vision (pp. 53-55)
- Focus on architects' self narratives and how architectural lives are formed
 through telling (pp. 53)
- Self-narratives as not just memories, but also memories of when they were
 narrated (pp. 53)
- CVs, job interviews, office websites (pp. 54)
- Biographies as evidence of continuity of architectural self (pp. 54) which is
 the true self (pp. 55)
- Architectural education as training in expression of personal design
 capacities; development of "personal vision" or approach; biographies telling
 story of this anticipating its assessment by peers (pp. 55)

Listen: Myths of Origin (pp. 56)
- Reflection by Tomas on founding myths of architectural practices; it is
 self-recorded (pp. 56)
- Designing and Making (pp. 57-60)
- Focuses on the two directors of the practice, Tom and Tomas, and their
 biographies as office "myths of origin" (pp. 57)
- The myth of office (business) as an "organism" that resists explanation by
 the directors (pp. 57)
- Tom's origin story: Cotswolds kid, rejection of theory/making split, work in
 sri lanka, emphasis on experience and instinctive ways of designing from
 that, downplays explanation and theorization in the practice (pp. 58-59)
- Tomas' origin story: Cotswolds kid but grew up in commune in BC which left a
 penchant for making and space, mid-90s movement towards building over rep.
 (pp. 59-60)
- Both share this idea of disillusionment with mainstream architecture Building
 Friendship (pp. 61-64)
- Tom and Tomas brought together through "making" approach; setting up
 design/build business together to avoid working in an office, freedom of
 having a practice (pp. 61)
- Work and life away from constraints of employment, tension between creative
 impetus and money (pp. 61)
- First projects through family and friends, learning through mistakes,
 learning through friends, manuals, internet (pp. 62)
- Wariness towards over-intellectualizing the office's emergence and work in
 design/build; pragmatic idealism (pp. 63)
- Gesture toward their class background: Tom = establishment middle-class,
 privately educated; Tomas = left-leaning middle class, publicly educated (pp.
 63)

Starting to Doubt (pp. 64-67)
- Covers the turn from design/build practice to architectural practice (pp. 64)
- Practical utility of retaining the "workshop" narrative (pp. 64)
- Niche found in wealthy area which clients and planners approved of (pp. 65)
- Movement to design only due to: need for steady income (kids), professional
 structures, increase in amount and complexity of work (need for employees),
 problems of original approach (pp. 65)
- Problems of their experimental approach when taking on more complex projects,
 need to determinacy, a series of construction failures that caused problems
 (pp. 65)
- Continual mulling over of move to more conventional practice; becoming
 implicated in structures they wanted to challenge; personal movement away
 from the trenches of design process to administration, making the conditions
 for other people to do design (pp. 65)
- Continual stress on making even though its not really what they do anymore;
 media specific representation thought of as a kind of making, making drawings
 (pp. 66)
- Complexity of narrative vs. reality does not resolve smoothly, contradiction
 as exploitable as a design approach by the practice (pp. 66)

Reflection: Architectural Lives (pp. 69-71
- Sums up the following points through examination of architects: architects
 are concerned with how their life justifies their work, concerned with how
 their work benefits others; personal lives are explicitly presented in
 professional narratives (pp. 69), biography is of professional interest, good
 design is personal, a good architect is never only an architect, epistemic
 truth connects to self-conduct, vocational ideals orient life trajectories even
 if they're not realized, disillusionment produces positive outcomes, crises
 lead to revelation (pp. 70)


Part 3 -- DESIGNS

A Feel for Place (pp. 75-78)
- Examining the origin of design ideas through the preliminary site visit (pp.
 75)
- Necessity due to locality of project, and choice due to office rhetoric of
 localism (pp. 75)
- Placeness' long history in arch. thinking which is given substance in
 practice; space between architect and site form design ideas (pp. 75-76)
- Narration of visiting a site on the outskirts of Stroud (pp. 76-78)
- Measuring and getting a fell for going together; maps, historical research
 (pp. 76), simplicity of tools as part of "directness"/un-mediation (pp. 77)
- "feel" as emotional and personal, architects trained to channel those into
 design; feel as tactile, multisensory (pp. 77)
- Tools structure architectural vision of site rather than simply record:
 camera, sketch, measuring tape; feel + spatial relationships of site; Schon &
 feel (pp. 78)

Sites of Design (pp. 81)
- Another site visit narrated to demonstrate how "feel" is traced out into
 prelim. Designs (pp. 81)
- House project on the grounds of a Victorian mansion; two architects together,
 one senior and one junior (pp. 81)
- Seeing with survey maps, seeing literally through the phone screen taking
 pictures; photos as memory joggers and communicators (pp. 81)
- Conversation driven by walking, walking drives new conversations;
 story-telling with sketches in motion as a means of forming design ideas;
 understanding through bringing both of their specific perspectives to bear and
 overlaying them (pp. 82); Sketching in plan as generative constraint (pp. 84)
- "Directness: of site engagement in relative; mediation as making the space in
 between architect and site where the concept emerges (pp. 84)
- Feel as a way of animating and being animated by the site (pp. 85)

Dripping With History (pp. 86-92)
- Another site visit is narrated, this time with Tom (director) and Ronan
 (project architect), it's to visit a church they will be renovating (pp. 86)
- Importance of the car is stressed, it's where site-visit prep happens (pp.
 86)
- This site visit takes place after a brief is already decided-upon, they visit
 with the brief (pp. 87)
- "Telling a story" of the project and the importance of narration to get
 people on board with a design is stressed (pp. 87, 89, )
- Speculative stories narrated (in words) are noted down; narration by the
 director and proj. architect makes his memory addressable (pp. 88)
- Brief-making and designing often happen together: brief changes based on
 designs proposed and designs respond to new briefs; briefs change due to
 client decisions (pp. 88)
- Problem setting, architectural authority through designing how problems are
 set (pp. 88)
- Pastness of a site as emotively engaged through stories of its past; not
 history, but a narrated story past (pp. 89)
- Pastness disengaged through sited sketching to tell a speculative future
 story (pp. 89)
- Relating past and present through efforts to retain "atmosphere" or
 "character" (pp. 90)
- Occupation of the space between actual and possible (pp. 90)

Site Stories (pp. 95-100)
- Another site visit narrated with a focus on sited meetings with planners (pp.
 95)
- Occupying the space of overlapping legislation, development v. conservation;
 legislation as generative constraint; room for "making a case" (pp. 97)
- Precedent in planning as worrisome loophole (pp. 98)
- Narratives make consensuses, moving from hypotheticals to agreements;
 consensus enables projects to happen (pp. 98)
- Design as recomposing and understanding the story of a site; design emerges
 between person and site, two way movement; interactions on site qualitatively
 different from in the office (pp. 100)

Between Reality and Possibility (pp. 101-103)
- Back to David with a focus on incompleteness, relation to faith and patience
 in process, uses this as a movement from site to office (pp. 101)
- he likes to be disconnected from site for the most part, detachment from real
 as integral to design (pp. 102)
- Maps the shift from real  possible to site office to concrete  abstraction to
 image  plans (pp. 102)
- Oscillation between engagement and detachment; conscious and less conscious
 as tied to this oscillation (pp. 103)
- Architectural unconscious tied to previously accrued, tacit
 knowledge-through-experience; trying to disengage from that unconscious to
 review received approaches to project (pp. 103)

Between Intuition and Exploration (pp. 104-
- Instability of design methods, questioning of own methods as integral (pp.
 104); design shifts through exploration, but also terms of judging design
 shifts by process (pp. 105)
- "faith" through a messianic definition of delayed resolution which may arrive
 unanticipated (pp. 105)
- Notes two major approaches in the office: instinctive, where the simple truth
 of the initial response is carried through and stuck-to (pp. 106-107) &
 exploratory, where multiple possibilities are probed and all that is evident is
 suspect (pp. 105)
- Complementary and contradictory, related to different trainings (pp. 107);
 relative rather than absolutely different; emphasis not kind difference (pp.
 109)

Acts of Design (pp. 110-112)
- Silence of work during extensive parts of design process; slight movements
 characterising computer use (pp. 110)
- Media specificity of expression and exploration (pp. 111)
- Sometimes individual understood in profession as locus of conception, other
 times design understood to act on designer, binary formulation of creation
 (pp. 111)
- "Force" of design, design as organism, feeling of autonomy of design from
 designer, an entity to be directed (pp. 111); architect as receptor of
 information/action (pp. 112)
- McLuhan inflected questions about "media" of design (pp. 112)

Design Tools (pp. 114-119)
- Computers as composite tools from the pov of architects: tool with tools
 "inside" it; speed increase = precision decrease (pp. 114)
- Centrality of computing in architecture, but architects still stress
 importance of "analog" tools; qualitatively different ways of working with
 different tools, different outcomes (pp 114)
- Importance of moving between media and tools; tools have different capacities
 based on who uses them and their fluency, tool fluency can control speed of
 design production (pp. 115)
- Usefulness and value of imprecise tools for their speed of testing and low
 commitment (pp. 115)
- Iterative mode, speed changes non-linear, space between media as productive
 (pp. 117)
- All-consuming aspect of digital work, shift in boundary btwn world and
 architect (pp. 117); detachment from world and close assimilation into the
 world (pp. 118)

Digital Romantics (pp. 119-124)
- Computers central to the various tasks architects do; architectural thinking
 and action as inseparable from computing as "digital humans" (pp. 119)
- Despite this, digital tech. seen as intrusion into working life, anti-digital
 nostalgia despite many architects never being in that situation; criticality
 towards aesthetic conformity of computer graphics; nostalgia for hand drawing
 as echoing professional anxieties around professional demarcation since 60s
 (pp. 119-120)
- Surprise of hand drawing; being in control while also seeking surprise vs.
 highly regimented computer drawing that's always predictable (pp. 121)
- Romance of hand drawing associated with image of individual as locus of
 creativity (pp. 121); sketch requires interpretation, its incompleteness of
 meaning is a feature (pp. 122)
- Digital =/= virtual (see Schon), virtuality of sketching and other media (pp.
 122)
- Digital as having possibilities and pitfalls, digital utopianism (pp. 122);
 views of what architects are seen to do: architects as drawing makers (analog
 romanticism), architects as making buildings (digitality as one way of doing
 it) (pp. 124)
- Imaginative space made mediating between digital and analog as the virtual
 space of design (pp. 124)

Between Architect and Client (pp. 125-130)
- Main attribute of good design in practice as identification of client as
 "ultimate designer" and architect as just agent for them, this against usual
 "artist hero" view of architects, clients as opportunity by introducing new
 ideas etc (pp. 125)
- These in reference to client (important that that is the case): selflessness,
 sensitivity, modesty, ability to admit wrongness (pp. 126)
- Client as starting point of design, client driving design, interpretation not
 "just following instructions"; interpretation of unclear/contradictory
 desires, questioning of clients as important (pp. 126); multi-sensory
 communication, verbal, image, through meetings at client's houses (pp. 127)
- Client in office "imaginatively" through the directors, they stand-in for
 client and communicate their instructions (pp. 127); architects put
 themselves into the clients' shoes (pp. 128)
- Class disparities and empathy in architecture: clients are very wealthy,
 architects may self-identify as middle class (through cultural markers) but
 are workers and less well paid (pp. 127-128)
- Differences between internal communication (architect-architect) and external
 communication (architect-client); David thinking this through computation
(pp. 128)
- Translation from client desires into building as interpolation, filling in
 the blanks of always-incomplete communication, a fundamental bit missing in
 all communication (pp. 129-130)
- Differences stressed between "client choice" and "selfless design";
 architects believing in their solution, not presenting various options;
 selfless design does not mean total erasure of the self, but self that is open
 and receptive, that can channel, translate, and respond to clients (pp. 130)

Listen: Channeling or Imposing Ideas? (pp. 132-133)
- Section with discussion of client-architect relations Between One and One
 Another (pp. 135-140)
- Section focus on interactions within the office with the example of the
 "Friday review" (pp. 135)
- The use of gestures, use of papers and plans (pp. 135); drawing as discussion
 mediation between director and employees to represent ideas that are not yet
 real; collateral production of trace paper waste; gradual refinement of ideas
 through repetitive drawing (pp. 136)
- Trace drawings as waste and documentation of process/sequence (pp. 137)
- "collaborative" design as layering of perspectives; articulated alongside
 ideas of individual "personal vision" (pp. 137)
- Office design for collaboration through single room, through lack of privacy
 in interactions, through everyone being potentially accessible to everyone
 else for assistance (pp. 138)
- Strategies for disengaging: music, white noise, headphones, habitual learned
 "tuning out" (pp. 138)
- Two-way movement of personal perspective: projection of ideas/perspective &
 reception of criticism; separation of design criticism from personal
 criticism (pp. 138); noting subjectivity of design judgements and criticism
 (pp. 140)
- Balance between not enough perspectives and too many, shifting relationship
 of architects to themselves (pp. 140)

Fiends, Colleagues, Competitors (pp. 141-144)
- Section on relationships between architects: between friendship and
 competition (pp. 141)
- Office social activities organized by the boss (pp. 141); but friendships
 forged through the practices of making (pp. 142)
- Friendships integral to design/construction (good relations), integral to
 critical discussion of designs (pp. 142)
- Difference in relationship between workers and directors: the bosses are
 higher up, but everyone else is on the same level (pp. 143)
- Friends are also competitors, contradictory situation (pp. 143); withholding
 themselves in relationships for the sake of competitions (pp. 144)

Deadlines (pp. 145-148)
- Focus on the way time works as an agent of change, forcing decisions, keeping
 you focused (pp. 145)
- Deadlines as making things happen, as impetus, of making you do more (pp.
 146), deadlines as debilitating, stressful, physical and emotionally
 affective (pp. 146-148)
- Magic Moments (pp. 149-150)
- On "turning points" and the "magic moments" when a whole design is unlocked
 (pp. 149)
- Administration getting in the way of designing, admin taking too much time
 (pp. 149)
- Making time for design through avoidance of admin tasks, through avoidance of
 communication (emails) (pp. 149-150)

Listen: Creative Time (pp. 151-152)
- Interview excerpt on making time for doing things they want to do (pp. 151)
- Setting aside time to noodle around, pressure of making time seem
 "profitable" (pp. 151); issues of efficiency (pp. 152)

Reflection: Creativity and Its Limits (pp. 153-155)
- Reflection on where ideas come from in architecture (pp. 153)
- Recapitulation of classic Randian view of heroic architect with personal
 vision, architectural histories, fiction about architects (pp. 153) vs.
 Recent scholarly view against this: creativity is in action, with the world,
 complex choreography of people, materials, forces (pp. 154)
- The way the former still has a hold over architects and how the idea of
 creative individual still shapes practice despite its inaccuracy (pp. 154)
- Making-separate practices, demarcation of individual perspectives; ideas of
 inspiration and influence (pp. 154)
- Design emerging in "the space in between" architects and range of contexts
 (pp. 154)
- Creativity as receptivity, imagination moved by processes that are
 incomprehensible and uncontrollable (pp. 155)
- Fundamental finding in his model (and context): creative acts have a
 fundamental origin in the individual self and its ability to assimilate
 otherness (pp. 155)

Interlude: Two Kinds of Uncertainty (pp. 156-158)
- Section on uncertainty; uncertainty as a fundamental aspect of design through
 decisions based on partial knowledge (pp. 156)
- Tomas: uncertainty as something to be embraced through management and
 "dwelling" in it (pp. 157)
- Management of uncertainty and profit motive, at MHW profit non-determinate
 but not insignificant factor, financial and professional obligations (pp.
 157)
- Early in process: uncertainty more important; later in process: uncertainty
 is a problem that must be managed (pp. 157)
- Stabilization through drawings, contracts: legislation; all uncertainty is
 constrained by the end: the building; the end is agnostic toward its means
 (pp. 158)

Listen: Angst in Architecture (pp. 160-162)
- On angst (pp. 160); being inside and outside and mediator at the same time;
 difference between angst and pressure (pp. 162)


Part 4 -- PRAGMATICS

Petrified Drawing (pp. 165-166)
- Introduces the section, focus on the period between design and construction
 (pp. 165); the non-1:1 mapping between design drawing and constructed
 building (pp. 166)
- Between Concept and Plan (pp. 168-170)
- Architectural detailing as a means of making the concept real before it
 materializes through specificity (pp. 168); specificity is zero-sum, one
 possibility excludes all others (pp. 169)
- Tension between general and particular, flipping back and forth between them
 (Schon); concept anticipates detailing, detailing through concept; compromise
 (pp. 169); Relativity of "detail" and "abstraction" (pp. 170)
- Restricted pragmatic meaning of "detailing" as specific stage of design after
 approvals, back and forth between detail scale and building scale (pp. 170)
- Authority of the architect since the Enlightenment through keeping the
 building's "reality" in drawing before its "actuality" as building (pp. 170)

Coming into Focus (pp. 172-176)
- Documentation of a meeting between clients, architects, and a cost estimator;
 relation between cost and design (pp. 172)
- Discussion around and through plans produced with incomplete knowledge as a
 means of gaining, incrementally, more knowledge and certainty; discussion
 turns assumptions/moves into decisions (pp. 173)
- The agenda, digital-visual modes of client communication (digital collage);
 importance of talking as a medium, more-than-verbal aspect of talking (pp.
 174); jokes as important to delineating knowledge; suspension of decisions,
 postponement (pp. 175)
- The project binder and the importance of meeting minutes, the extensivity of
 these minutes; meetings and their minutes are central to the practice but go
 unacknowledged as a primary practice of acquiring detail and certainty (pp.
 176)

Listen: Cost and Design (pp. 177-178)
- Interview transcript on the link between cost and design (pp. 177)
- Thinking about cost from the beginning, the Quantity Surveyor as present from
 the beginning but as an abstract figure; issues surrounding bespoke
 design/construction (pp. 177); "entities" within the design process (pp. 178)

Where Knowledge Meets (pp. 179-186)
- Description of a meeting where cost is less of an issue; meeting with
 architects, engineer, cost analyst, planner, and client on site (pp. 179)
- Discussions with planning dpt before official doc. submission, anticipation
 and working through objections beforehand (pp. 180)
- The character of conversation and its subtle shifts, noting and
 documentation; the way notes only preserve a small portion of what is said in
 a meeting (pp. 181, 183)
- The spatial organization of the meeting, standing in a circle (pp. 182)
- Sectorial knowledge being brought together by the specifics of the problem,
 building constructed as a different kind of object through each person's
 knowledge (pp. 182)
- Fragility of architectural authority in practice, architectural authority is
 a matter of convincing not a position set in stone (pp. 184); expansion and
 diminishment at different times in process, negotiation as effecting the
 movement from design to construction (pp. 186)

Problem Solving (pp. 189-195)
- Section focusing on construction and the contractor (pp. 189)
- Detailed plans and making the space for the unknown/improvisation through
 "TBC" (pp. 189)
- Shifts focus to the contractor; joking relationships and tension w/
 architect; noisiness of communication w/ the researcher (difference of
 knowledge base and actual loudness); burnout and the offloading of problems to
 the contractor/trades (pp. 190); balancing administration and in-person site
 management (pp. 191)
- Problems of management: worker autonomy among trades, decentralized
 production, skills decline, increasing construction complexity, detail of
 regulations, complex materials and details, tolerances (pp. 191); supply of
 materials (pp. 192)
- Importance of trust and personal relationship (pp. 191)
- The force of the contract: specification of what and when but not how,
 David's comment that the building is not produced by the architect, the
 architect just develops and administers a highly detailed contract (pp. 192)
- Issues of contract administration, being in the middle of various problems
 and relationships, the role of intermediary (pp. 195)

Formality and Informality (pp. 196-198)
- Architects and builders both confront the space between building and plan as
 a series of problems to be dealt with in more or less formal ways (pp. 196)
- MHW moving towards increasing formalization due to increased financial stakes
 and need to manage risk, certainty, and clarity of roles (pp. 196)
- Architects' ambivalence: formalization as loss of informal open-ended design
 process, unanticipated becomes only thought of as problem; control =
 fragmentation; repeated by builders too (pp. 197)
- Loss of trust, flexibility, creativity through time spent on bureaucracy and
 formal administration; component of greater ambivalence toward
 standardisation, commodification, conformity associated with contemporary life
 (pp. 198)

At the Limits of the Contract (pp. 199-202)
- Give and take between architect and builder, management of interactions
 between "friendly" and "contractual," accommodation and appearing to not have
 instrumental motives (pp. 199)
- Problems of informal communication (pp. 199)
- Tight connection between design integrity and liability/risk; architects and
 contractors attuned to where building and plan differ, inconsistencies and
 shortcomings; money made in the exploitation of the gap between spec. and
 what's needed (pp. 200)
- Not again how complex negotiations are not documented, just the successful
 outcome (pp. 201)
- Relationships necessarily exceed the contract, maintenance of distinction
 between interactions that do and do not bear on the contract (pp. 202)

Disentanglement (pp. 204-208)
- Architects as effecting the transformation of building into "property"
 through regulation of payment as an independent adjudicator (specific kind of
 procurement model in this example) (pp. 204)
- Architect as confirming the transmutation of commodity produced into money
 (pp. 204)
- Contractual requirement for independent confirmation, but process of
 construction enmeshes participants, architects occupying space between
 dependence and independence (pp. 205)
- Causation becomes fuzzy and must be disentangled after the fact (pp. 205);
 questions of mediation as trust-maintenance and reconstruction (pp. 206)
- Reconstruction of contractual boundaries when they have been broken;
 coordination of knowledge and understanding (pp. 206)
- The satisfaction of clarity through contracts, contracts as design tools, as
 regulator, as pseudo-mathematical operators, as safety net (pp. 207); as a
 means of setting boundaries and regulating the safety of experimentation (pp.
 208)

Safe Hands (pp. 210-211)
- Describes an interaction during construction, specifically
 client-builder/trade relations (pp. 210)
- Trust and being in on the process, knowing what's going on (pp. 210)
- Design/construction involves relationships beyond the limits of the formal
 contract, beyond transactionality of moving money (pp. 211)

Professionalism (pp. 212-213)
- Section examines the attributes of architects in contract oversight and
 concepts of "professionalism"; "process-driven, logical, practical, and
 interpersonal" (pp. 212)
- Dangers of blurriness and taking responsibility for what is beyond your
 official responsibility (pp. 212); this is presented as a legal territory of
 architectural practice (pp. 213)
- Professionalism and detachment, regulation of how much to be attached, when
 to attach and detach, and how; relationship boundaries, playing roles (pp.
 213)

Listen: Control and Creativity (pp. 214-215)
- Discussion of control over a project: frustration and specific kinds of
 control lost, regaining control (pp. 214); how much control you really want
 to have (pp. 215)

Time Frame (pp. 216-220)
- Focus on time frames of work and the pervasiveness of lack of time (pp. 216)
- Phasing and its definition by contracts, contracts as future prediction,
 contracts define linear time in architecture (pp. 216)
- Lack of time as pervasive, the way small delays become amplified (pp. 216)
- Balance of profits between formal stages: less in later stages
 (construction/contract admin) more ion early stages of design (pp. 217)
- Contract admin as a heavily formalized stage of architectural process (pp.
 217)
- Diversity of kinds of time based on specific projects, they format their own
 relationships, timings, etc. They develop along their own lines that cannot
 really be anticipated (pp. 217); progress-made =/= time spent; problems of time
 overruns = cost overruns (pp. 218)
- Gap between what should happen and what does happen, gap between schedule and
 reality (pp. 218)
- Assertion that project time is not a given but is created, produced, and
 managed through interacts of architects; importance of documents in doing
 this, time sheets, meeting minutes, contracts (pp. 218); time management as
 trying to fit the complexity of design/construction into a finite period (pp.
 220)

Rhythms of Work (pp. 221-223)
- Section about the pace of work and its regulation in the office (pp. 221)
- Difficulty of discerning pace through the illegibility of progress on the
 computer, the hiddenness of files on the computer (pp. 221)
- Tactics of coordination: the "9:35" meeting where no minutes and few notes
 are taken (pp. 221-222); online calendar that is accessible by everyone (pp.
 222)
- Previously, coordination done "intuitively" just through the meetings (pp.
 222)
- Change to online calendar changed time qualitatively (pp. 222)
- Pervasiveness of stress is stressed; abstract organizational problems are
 experienced qualitatively and personally by the employees (pp. 223)
- Emotions of stress listed
- Directors as the primary time regulation through choosing how many projects
 are taken at any given time (pp. 223)

Listen: Blocked (pp. 224-225)
- Tomas' comments on being "blocked" based on an audio diary he kept for Yarrow
 after the official fieldwork ended (pp. 224); the self-direction of employees
 in architecture to manage their own time (pp. 225)
- Reflection: Making Things as They Are (pp. 226-229)
- Architecture as fundamentally moving from non-existence to existence, a
 series of practices try to specify this process and make it knowable (pp.
 226)
- The contract, words & drawings together, plan and reality as multiple gaps
 that change during different phases of architectural process (pp. 226)
- Complex web of relations architects are involved in (pp. 226)
- Frustration around excessiveness of administration that seems to take time
 away from "real design", ambivalence towards coordination aspects of
 architectural work, the "boring practicalities" (pp. 227)
- Difference between creativity (general, opening up possibilities, future
 possibilities) and implementation/pragmatics (specific, closing down
 possibilities and choosing one eventually, future prediction) (pp. 229)
- Everyday coordination practices as invisible if done well (pp. 229)


-Part 5 -- PRACTICAL COMPLETION

Knowledge and Its Limits (pp. 233-234)
- Using the architectural concept of "practical completion" (handing off the
 building to the clients) to examine a few concepts that don't really fit
 anywhere else (pp. 233)
- Megan's view of architectural knowledge: knowing how to navigate information
 and constraints, positioned against a constantly expanding unknown (pp. 233)
- Acquiring knowledge between known and unknown, provisional and practical (pp.
 234)
- Creativity developed at the limits of architectural knowledge that architects
 understand (pp. 234)

Architectural Expertise (pp. 235-237)
- Reiterates the focus of the investigation: how architects inhabit "the space
 in between" (pp. 235)
- Elaboration and recapitulation of what kinds of spaces these are: conceptual,
 concrete (pp. 235)
- Presents how his investigation is not inconsistent with those who are
 skeptical of professionals (arguments recapitulated from Schon) (pp. 235-236)
- Points beyond this towards the specificity of expert knowledge as situational
 but substantial and emerging through particular interactions, not
 summarizable, fallible but useful (pp. 236)
- Architecture as method or domain of knowledge rather than specialism, no real
 ability to claim authority within it (pp. 236)
- Architects as experts in uncertainty (pp. 237)

Everyday Possibilities (pp. 238-
- Architects themselves highlight problems inherent in their professional
 contexts, but also stress that there are possibilities in these problems (pp.
 238)
- Mainstream arch. and const. as powerful constraints upon building form but
 not perfect or totalizing determinants (pp. 238)
- Self criticality of architects, through it is wrong to overstate the
 emancipatory possibilities of this (pp. 238): the overarching architectural
 obsession with novel forms for example as a limitation (pp. 239)
- Profound alternatives exist within the everyday practices of architects (pp.
 239)

Coda: An Argument for Description
- Call for valuing slow, descriptive practices over speedy argumentative ones
 (see Albena's politics book) (pp. 241)
- Ethnography of recovery of the everyday that get overlooked in the toing and
 froing of argumentation (pp. 241); counterpoint to celebration of novelty,
 approach to insights lurking in life, many worlds just under our nose (pp. 242)
- Identification of a "descriptive turn" that is in the process of happening
 (pp. 242)

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