Macaulay’s training as an architect—he graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in architecture—allows him to pull double duty as both writer and illustrator, and maintain full creative control over his books. It is that control which appealed to him about book production, causing him to decide, just months before graduating college, that architecture was “a profession of compromise” between all those involved in the industry.

Macaulay says thinking about writing and illustrating at the same time is as complicated as it is rewarding.

“You do it simultaneously so that in the end, if you’ve done it right, you end up with a seamless connection of words and pictures,” Macaulay remarks. “It shouldn’t look like it was written at one time, and then I changed hats and became the illustrator. I think of myself as the guy who makes the book.”

This ‘maker of books,’ currently in the midst of his next project about the human body, said he hopes that his readers take hold of the message that architecture is something that affects us all at a fundamental and universal level. Whether it comes from Turkey, Rome, or the United States, Macaulay said, architecture is conceived of, built, and appreciated in the same manner.

“There’s an accessibility to these books that goes across age, and I hope that it’ll go across nationalities,” Macaulay said, adding that his books have been translated into a dozen languages. “We all admire common sense. Mosque is much more a book about the similarities between people than their differences. We can all relate to problems, and we can certainly relate to solving them.”