Architects: Portraits of a Practice: Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge

by Thomas Yarrow, Matthew Spaur (Narrator)

What is creativity? What is the relationship between work life and personal life? How is it possible to live truthfully in a world of contradiction and compromise? These deep and deeply personal questions spring to the fore in Thomas Yarrow's vivid exploration of the life of architects. Yarrow takes us inside the world of architects, showing us the anxiety, exhilaration, hope, idealism, friendship, conflict, and the personal commitments that feed these acts of creativity.

Architects rethinks "creativity," demonstrating how it happens in everyday practice. It highlights how the pursuit of good architecture, relates to the pursuit of a good life in intimate and individually specific ways. And it reveals the surprising and routine social negotiations through which designs and buildings are actually made.

The book is published by Cornell University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

"This is an unusually human book." (Architecture Today)

"A beautiful description of the struggle and doubts of the design process...one of the most generous books I have read." (Prue Chiles)

Audible Audio

Published September 5, 2025