Ethics of the Architectural Profession.

Progress, Volume XVI, Issue 8, 1 April 1921, Page 176

Ethics of the Architectural Profession.

By Mr. W. A. Langton

[We publish these extracts because of their appropriativeness to our New Zealand conditions. If the profession in this country would only uphold similar ideals there would be great hope for the rapid development of architecture here. —Editor.] The first point, and the principal point, in the ethics of architectural practice is that the architect should be able to do the work he undertakes to do. He must fit himself to deserve the confidence that is placed in him. Most architects get the length of insisting that they be given the full confidence of their clients. They are always ready to exalt the architect. There are, no doubt, some who think that this Institute is intended to exalt the architect, to take care of his interest. It is not. This Institute and our provincial associations are intended to exalt the art and practice of architecture, to create high ideals of both in the minds of architects and so help them to better performance. These bodies are, therefore, really intended to take care of the interests of the clients of architects. There is no room for any other aim, for the practice of architecture is the service of clients. The architect must have not only no otner aim which contradicts this, but he may give himself up wholeheartedly to this aim with the cerainty that in it will be fulfilled all legitimate ends of his calling, art, honour, profit, and good-will to men. It may be asked in connection with this—ls not the architect to think of his fee at all? In reply to this we must recognise that, though the carrying out of an architectural design is of so complicated a nature that the joy of performance can hardly obtain all through for the artist, as it does in

simpler arts which are executed by the artist’s own hand, yet it is created; and the result, in their development and attainment, are an end in themselves and enough to absorb the mind of a real artist to the exclusion of thoughts of the reward. But the architect’s mind, or the composite mind of a firm of architects, must include a grasp of the means of financing the expensive operation of producing good work. He must, for that reason, think of his fee. But the fact is that for nearly all kinds of services there is no occasion to tnmk of it. Ihe schedules of fees fixed by the associations are intended to make such chough, unnecessary. They are arranged, so far as possible, to secure for all kinds of work a payment that will enable the architect to keep up the means of performing it properly. If the provisions of the schedule prove to be insufficient, or an architect thinks he is entitled to more, he has a perfect right to fix a fee to suit his own ideas; and, indeed, he ought to do so. He cannot meet an insufficient fee by work to match. 1 here is but one grade of professional work—the best; and it must be paid for. It must also be paid for by the client. Ihe latter consideration opens up another point of proper practice. It is not conducive to the proper practice of architecture, that is to say, to the true service of the client, that the architect should receive pay from any one but the client or should find pecuniary profit in building for clients in any other way than by direct payment from the client.