Within the wider context of generic volume-builder house developments, these four projects explore and celebrate the distinctiveness of a physical place and its ability to inform and impact on our creative design process. Four individual house commissions of similar briefs but radically different clients and sites, are the vehicle for an examination of how modest, everyday contexts can be closely read to produce architecture of distinction and variety. In doing so, the creative architectural design process is examined in terms of three key components, namely communication exchange, the insecurity of creativity and the relationship between part and whole.