Assembling the Architect: The History and Theory of Professional Practice by George Barnett Johnston (review)

George Barnett Johnston's Assembling the Architect: The History and Theory of Professional Practice is a study of architectural practice in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. He writes that the purpose of this book is twofold: to create a broader awareness of architectural practice by situating it within a larger cultural history and to separate the overlapping and ever shifting interests of the owner, architect, and builder. Johnston approaches these aims through a history of the development of standards of practice and ultimately suggests that they reflect changing allegiances and power dynamics among the principal actors in building projects. Central to his argument is a contrast between the American Institute of Architect's The Handbook of Architectural Practice (1920) written by the architect Frank Miles Day (1861–1918) and the work of Frederick Squires, a young architect who wrote a series of satirical essays in the New York-based periodical Architecture and Building that were collected and published in the book Architec-tonics: The Tales of Tom Thumtack, Architect (1914). Day's standards describe an idealized mode of practice, one that positions the architect as the ultimate authority. Squires, on the other hand, wanted to "prick the bubbles" of the profession, exposing its flaws.¹

Johnston begins the first of five chapters, "Seeing Double: Histories of Architectural Practice," with the history of Day's Handbook. Day created a book of standard practices for his Philadelphia firm and, thinking this material would be helpful to other offices, expanded it and made it available to the entire membership of the AIA in 1920. Day wanted the architectural profession to rise to the status of physician or lawyer and to separate itself from the building trades. In his opinion, contracts establishing responsibilities and fees were central to achieving this elevated status, and thus Johnston positions contracts as central to Day's theory of the practice. The AIA's Uniform Contract of 1888 was one of the earliest attempts to standardize the relationship between owner, architect, and builder. This contract made the architect an agent of the owner and subordinated the builder to the architect. Day was tasked with reexamining the Uniform Contract when he served as chair of the AIA Committee on Contracts in 1916 and used it to establish his theory of the profession laid out in The Handbook.

Johnston presents a social and cultural history of the architectural profession during the early twentieth century in the second chapter through an analysis of D. Everett Waid's writings that described and illustrated the offices of over two dozen architectural practices in New York City. Waid used plans and photographs to show office spaces that accommodated all aspects of an architect's work from meeting the client to drafting to construction management. Johnston also uses this chapter to delve into the careers of Day, Squires, and two of their contemporaries, George S. Chappell and Rockwell Kent, sketching biographies of these men as examples of how fluid the profession was at the time. Each, with the exception of Day, left architecture to pursue other careers.

Day's description of the relationship of the architect and owner constitutes the third chapter. The Handbook, which focused on the business practices of the architect as opposed to his design expertise, outlines the mutual responsibilities of architects and owners in the design and construction process. Johnston discusses the various fee structures for architects and examines the changes to standardized contracts during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. These contracts were, according to Johnston, intentionally vague. In them the architect was relieved of some of the responsibility for design, which was given to other nascent design professions (engineers, interior designers, etc.). The consequence of shared responsibility meant the architect no longer had sole authority over the project, thus allowing the builder to gain some decision-making power and interfering with the owner–architect relationship.

Johnston turns to the relationship...