I should declare an interest at the outset of this review; I have lived in the subject area of Ana Francisco Sutherland’s new book for almost a decade and for almost four of them in one of the buildings she has included in her study. Francisco Sutherland herself has lived in the area longer than I have and lives in another of the buildings. Meeting her to discuss the book, she explained how it started as a research project alongside starting her own practice which took on a new impetus during the pandemic in 2020.

This decade-long project is personal. In it, Francisco Sutherland has compiled building profiles, interviews with the architects and their families as well as their clients. As Neil Bingham points out in his introduction Francisco Sutherland has taken advantage of the fact that the construction of many of the buildings and the lives of their designers and occupants are within living memory. She has documented a compelling oral history of her subject(s) and has ‘woven a story of relationships.’

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