He worked as a furniture and model maker during 1937 before attending the London Polytechnic School of Architecture, studying under Sir Hubert Bennett, Peter Moro and Robin Day from January 1938 to April 1941.
He lived in Paris following the war, where he met many artists and writers, including Georges Braque,[3] Édouard Pignon, Jaime Sabartes, Juliette Gréco, Leon Gischia, Gertrude Stein, Alice Toklas, Andre L'Hote, Sylvia Beach and Le Corbusier.
[6] Yates returned to Paris in 1950 as a Chief Designer of Unité d’Informations Visuelles,[7] a commercial art studio located in the Old Alhambra night club in the gardens of the Champs Élysées.
In Paris, he collaborated with Pierre Boucher (photographer) [fr] from whom Ryder and Yates later commissioned murals for Norgas House, Killingworth.
Their buildings were highly regarded by the public and opened opportunities of large scale commissions of industrial complexes for British Gas, Sterling Organics and others.
[9] John Allan, director of Avanti Architects, said that 'Ryder and Yates were Lubetkin's sole professional heirs – a legacy mutually recognised.
Their work is a compelling reminder of Lubetkin's lesson that the poetic and the rational were inextricable impulses in modern architecture's original vision.