Mastering Architecture: Becoming a Creative Innovator in Practice

It is easy for even the most accomplished of designers to lose sight of their higher creative goals, once they are in ensconced in practice and burdened by the everyday concerns of running an office and overseeing complex projects. However, it is essential for any architect aspiring to achieve a mastery of their profession to retain an ongoing awareness and understanding of their creative development. This book is a touchstone for architects who want to get back to a creative form of practice, in order to continue progressing and evolving their work.

Mastering Architecture draws on the research of approximately fifty architects who have taken a close look at the nature of their own mastery. This research into mastery reveals things that every practitioner should know about their creative practice – things which most architects are only aware of at an intuitive level. The book flags up personal attributes, such as stamina, creative energy and intellectual capital, which are intrinsic to dynamic practice. It also suggests ways in which practitioners can self-curate their positions within the triangle of their creativity, evolving not only the cultural structure of their profession but the wider world in which they operate.

Leon van Schaik is Innovation Profession of Architecture at RMIT, Melbourne, Australia. At RMIT, he has developed a practice-based research programme for architects and designers whose works already demonstrates mastery in their field. He has over the same seventeen-year period instituted a process of consultant appointment that is widely credited with shifting the climate of patronage within the city. Recent works by van Schaik include monographs on: Edmond and Corrigan, Ushida Findlay, Guilford Bell, Tom Kovac and Ken Yeang’s Guthrie Pavilion as well as the Poetics in Architecture issue of Architectural Design.