'We want to make really good buildings and we just happen to be on the edge' in Peripheries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), edited by Ruth Morrow and M.G. Abdelmonem, 200-205.

This book chapter, published by invitation places particular emphasis on the nature of architectural practice in a physical and theoretical landscape that is geographically, socially and economically distant from the ‘centre’ of architectural practice in Scotland, the UK and Europe. Presented as an edited transcript of an interview featured in the second review, the book chapter explores the precise concerns of the architect as a member of the building team in remote situations, exploring architectural production as collaborative, social and environmental practice, and architectural practice as a complex social art. The original architectural research underpinning the development of the book chapter included a number of visits to and surveys of recently completed buildings in the architectural press undertaken by Brown between 2010-12. Two of these focus on the work of the Hebridean architecture practice Dualchas, and have been published as ‘Works: Scotland’s Housing Expo’ in Building Design 1930, pp. 10-13 (2010) and ‘Treasure Island: Dualchas Architects’ in Building Design 2016, pp. 10-13 (2012). The chapter builds upon Brown’s methodological research into how to prepare, conduct, and code interviews in order to introduce and communicate rigorous architectural practices to an international audience. Having previously conducted an interview-based survey of architectural educators in the UK and Ireland, for this work Brown deployed a semi-structured open-ended interview format in order to tease out and develop some of the book’s key themes in the interview