Tarquin Westbrook

Fifteen questions, off-duty.

Role on the line

Senior creative director, internal review. I chair the sign-off and refuse to let anything leave the studio that I would not put my own name on.

Where I grew up

Born in Tokyo, raised in Hampstead from the age of five. Tatami underfoot for the first half, parquet for the second.

Training

Architecture at the AA, then twelve years drawing for a Clerkenwell rendering studio when the work was still half hand and half mouse.

Years on the line

Twenty-five.

The blade I bring

Patience. Most renders fail in the second review, not the first. I sit through both.

Architect I would ride out for

Tadao Ando. Concrete with a quiet temper.

Compositions that read true on screen

Asymmetric thirds, a horizon at the lower third, a quiet sky, a foreground figure thinking about something other than the building.

Software I cannot lose

A 2B pencil and tracing paper. After that, anything will do.

Earliest architectural memory

Watching my grandfather build a small wooden gate in Setagaya, planing the same edge for an afternoon to take a tenth of a millimetre off.

The brief I am proudest of

A Soho conservation-area pub rebuild whose verified views I have chaired the review of since 2008. Three rounds of officer, no revisions on our side.

On the headphones while working

Ryuichi Sakamoto every morning, Bill Evans every afternoon.

London view I never tire of

The top floor of the Barbican Centre, library side, looking down into the lakes.

Coffee or tea

Sencha until midday, espresso after.

Off the line

Carving small wooden boxes in my shed in Highgate. Slow joinery. No deadlines.

The motto on my desk

"If the team is still arguing about the image, the image is not finished."