A Handbook of Architectural Practice

Description

The American Institute of Architects wrote this handbook to go with its Standard Documents, and it is the closest thing to an official account of how the profession worked between the wars. It moves from the architect’s relation to his client through the running of an office — the work book, the record of drawings, the office diary, all reproduced as ruled forms — to the letting of contracts, the execution of the work, and the architect’s position at law.It is dedicated to Frank Miles Day, who had begun the book and died before finishing it. Much of the value is in the appendices: model forms of agreement between owner and architect, a model registration law, the Institute’s by-laws and canons of ethics, and the schedule of proper minimum charges. For anyone working on a building of the 1920s, or on the history of the profession, this is the document that says what practice actually was.