Weston Williamson Architects

There are many ways of making architecture, and most of them are to do with moving in gradually from the general to the specific. First comes the soft pencil freehand sketch, then the more precise drawing: finally the project is detailed and built. But there is another way, which is more the way of Weston Williamson. This is to click back and forth from the general to the specific throughout the process. The design of the knuckle-joint between post and beam has ramifications throughout the whole project, they argue.

Their initial sketches are sometimes accompanied by exact technical drawings suggesting how a particular component might work. Similarly, there are ways and ways of interpreting a brief. Architects can take a brief, go away and come up with ideas. Or they can stay and talk-to the boss, to the staff, to the public-and then perhaps start to think about something rather different. A desire for a particular kind of image might start to emerge from such discussions. The proposed building can start to acquire a value beyond its bald function. Possibilities start to open up. This too is the way Weston Williamson like to operate.

A building project is more flexible than you might imagine if there are options to allow for, perhaps in the future. But you know what the options are. The three directors of the practice - Chris Williamson, Andrew Weston and Steve Humphreys - share a common view of architecture that comes from having studied together. Subsequently, all three worked in different practices on different large-scaled projects.

Andrew Weston worked with Richard Rogers on the Lloyds building; Chris Williamson with Michael Hopkins on the remarkable fabric-roofed Schlumberger laboratories in Cambridge; Steve Humpherys on rural housing for Nicholls Associates. Such complex and diverse schemes led them to continue their association by looking for similar building solutions and fine detail.

Hugh Pearman

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• Weston Williamson Architects