Ethics in Architectural Design.

Progress, Volume XVI, Issue 9, 1 May 1921, Page 205

Ethics in Architectural Design.

That men retain an architect to design their buildings is a confession that they themselves know little of architecture. That they engage interior decorators is further proof that art holds aloof from them shrouded in a haze of misunderstanding.

What is the mental process of the architect or the decorator when a client first consults him? Where does sincerity enter into his calculations in conforming to the wishes of the client?

Should an architect or a decorator express the client’s individuality even if the result be artistically bad, or should he express his. own properly

The chances are that if he is tactful he can prevail upon a client to modify his preconceptions. Hence the importance of his influence and the need for his having a point of view.

An architect is a professional man who by education and training has a certain public responsibility to bear. He must uphold the dignity and beauty of architecture, and through it the dignity and beauty of human beings. He cannot assume that certain persons are inferior. It is up to him to do his part to keep them at the level of their best moments. A man’s intercourse with an architect may be the one contact of a lifetime with art. If architects are to do their full duty to raise the standards of living, they can find ample

developed sense of art though it may not represent the client. Shall he descend to a French rococo house for the prim spinster who has inherited a fortune but knows nothing of art, or may he build a pure Georgian for the artistically ignorant butcher. Shall he design an inferior house to represent an inferior person, or shall he make it possible for an artistically ignorant man to pose as a connoisseur by means of a few well learned phrases about the beauty with which an architect or a decorator may have surrounded him? These questions sooner or- later force themselves upon every architect. The very fact that an architect is retained presupposes a certain amount of carte blanche for him.

opportunity in their intercourse with prospective clients, to teach them the whys and the wherefores of good architecture, and make it something to be respected and loved, and then logically followed. While to adapt the architecture to the type of owner is considerably simpler than to adapt tne owner to the type of architecture, it is desirable to do this in cases where it seems possible to develop the owner. Instead of building down to the level of the inartistic butcher, give him the sort of house that he must live up to. If he is surrounded with certain refinements in his home, these will inevitably- tell, for environment is more powerful than we suspect. By going intotthe elements of architectural design with a client, it is possible either to

teach him, or to convince him that your experience and advice is the thing he has sought. If the artistically ignorant man poses in his new home, the very fact that he acts the artist gradually tends to give him the artist point of view. One cannot pretend to appreciate a thing without soon really appreciating it. It is, of course, fortunate when a client sincerely yearns for good architecture and is willing to defer to his architect for most of the details. But such clients are rare and hard to find. It is infinitely more to the credit of an architect to succeed when all the circumstances are trying and difficult; when the client is perverse, the money scarce, and all the rest. In the building of homes, architects do more to conserve and promote the happiness and wellbeing of communities than can be readily conceived. When they do it without co-operation, when they turn antagonism into harmony, when they raise vulgarity to refinement, then, indeed, have they done a great work. —American Architect.