no code can say which is which, but that an architect should condemn himself to voluntary oblivion is at least a needless limitation.
3. It is not unprofessional to guarantee results. If an architect has not the courage of his own convictions and can prove it, he has no place in this busy, practical world. If he is a mere dreamer, changing his mind as easily as he changes his drawings and cannot maintain his promises to his clients, he is a bad and faithless business man, and I would that every architect were held to the same degree of accountability which exists in France, where for ten years after the completion of a building the architect is liable for damages if anything wrong happens, and where not infrequently an architect financially guarantees the results of his work. No individual could possibly be harmed by accepting responsibility and facing the consequences.
4. It is not unprofessional for an architect to assume the capacity of a master builder.
If an architect is not a builder, pray what on earth is he? If he who creates in his mind is to be debarred from creating in fact, we then go back on all the principles of the world previous to the Renaissance. The architect is preeminently the one to carry out his own ideas and give them just the right shape. We admit it in our practice by our close supervision and by our wrestling with contractors who have no interest except a financial one, but just because the profession has tried to put itself apart and assumed a cloistered attitude we try to believe that we are taking high professional ground when we refuse to carry our directing to its logical conclusion, and, by declining to give the final personal touch which will make the building just right, we stamp ourselves as poor business men, as unfaithful servants and as inconsistent artists.
5. It is not unprofessional to compete.
As to the expediency of competitions at all, that is a very different question, but with every young man there comes hundreds of cases where he is eager and anxious to show what he can do, and suppose he does take part in a competition which has not received the sanction of the Institute, wherein is he wronging anyone on earth if he is honestly trying to show what he can do ? I do not say he might not be very unfair in his methods, but certainly we have had plenty of cases of unfairness and rank injustice perpetrated by competitors in competitions which have been approved by the Institute. No code of ethics would of itself change human nature, but we to-day do compete in lines that the Institute looks at askance, we do offer our
services provided the conditions of employment are satisfactory, and to say that we should not unless we are acting under strict union rules is simply making it easier for the untrained, ignorant practitioner to impose on the public while we stand aside and refuse to give our best to the community.
There is a positive element of professional practice which must not be ignored. It is unprofessional to take a job away from another architect. Everyone agrees to that, always has and always will, but that is simply the golden rule put in practice and needs to be neither defined nor explained. The line between fairness and unfairness in our dealings with our neighbor cannot be laid down by mere words. Sometimes an architect will unconsciously take work away from another man by doing his own work- better and thereby unknowingly influencing a client, but that is not his fault. In the great majority of cases we know perfectly well when we are acting fair in the matter of infringing upon someone else’s territory, and I believe if rigid distinctions were obliterated from a code and the matter were left to individual honor we would have no more trouble than we have now and might have a great deal less, while each architect would be freer to take what comes to him in a perfectly fair, honorable way and would not be liable to vituperation and charges of unprofessionalism by a disappointed fellow practitioner who did not get the job.
Now why is it not possible to formulate a positive code of ethics something like this?
1. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
2. Be a self-respecting gentleman in every act of life.
3. Be a conscientious, faithful business man in all your dealings with clients, builders and associates. 4. Give everybody a square deal.
What more is there to say? The architect who conscientiously carries out the four foregoing can solicit work, advertise, guarantee his contracts, act as a builder, finance an operation if he has the means and ability, roll up his sleeves and go into competition of any sort, sell his services for cash or its equivalent just because he likes the job and yet be self-respecting, professional and square with the world and all about him. Is it not about time that we admitted that is just what we are doing now, that these four comprise the duty of man toward man, and these duties are no more specialized in the case of architecture than they are in any other calling, and that professionalism after all is fundamentally the golden rule and a square deal ?
3. It is not unprofessional to guarantee results. If an architect has not the courage of his own convictions and can prove it, he has no place in this busy, practical world. If he is a mere dreamer, changing his mind as easily as he changes his drawings and cannot maintain his promises to his clients, he is a bad and faithless business man, and I would that every architect were held to the same degree of accountability which exists in France, where for ten years after the completion of a building the architect is liable for damages if anything wrong happens, and where not infrequently an architect financially guarantees the results of his work. No individual could possibly be harmed by accepting responsibility and facing the consequences.
4. It is not unprofessional for an architect to assume the capacity of a master builder.
If an architect is not a builder, pray what on earth is he? If he who creates in his mind is to be debarred from creating in fact, we then go back on all the principles of the world previous to the Renaissance. The architect is preeminently the one to carry out his own ideas and give them just the right shape. We admit it in our practice by our close supervision and by our wrestling with contractors who have no interest except a financial one, but just because the profession has tried to put itself apart and assumed a cloistered attitude we try to believe that we are taking high professional ground when we refuse to carry our directing to its logical conclusion, and, by declining to give the final personal touch which will make the building just right, we stamp ourselves as poor business men, as unfaithful servants and as inconsistent artists.
5. It is not unprofessional to compete.
As to the expediency of competitions at all, that is a very different question, but with every young man there comes hundreds of cases where he is eager and anxious to show what he can do, and suppose he does take part in a competition which has not received the sanction of the Institute, wherein is he wronging anyone on earth if he is honestly trying to show what he can do ? I do not say he might not be very unfair in his methods, but certainly we have had plenty of cases of unfairness and rank injustice perpetrated by competitors in competitions which have been approved by the Institute. No code of ethics would of itself change human nature, but we to-day do compete in lines that the Institute looks at askance, we do offer our
services provided the conditions of employment are satisfactory, and to say that we should not unless we are acting under strict union rules is simply making it easier for the untrained, ignorant practitioner to impose on the public while we stand aside and refuse to give our best to the community.
There is a positive element of professional practice which must not be ignored. It is unprofessional to take a job away from another architect. Everyone agrees to that, always has and always will, but that is simply the golden rule put in practice and needs to be neither defined nor explained. The line between fairness and unfairness in our dealings with our neighbor cannot be laid down by mere words. Sometimes an architect will unconsciously take work away from another man by doing his own work- better and thereby unknowingly influencing a client, but that is not his fault. In the great majority of cases we know perfectly well when we are acting fair in the matter of infringing upon someone else’s territory, and I believe if rigid distinctions were obliterated from a code and the matter were left to individual honor we would have no more trouble than we have now and might have a great deal less, while each architect would be freer to take what comes to him in a perfectly fair, honorable way and would not be liable to vituperation and charges of unprofessionalism by a disappointed fellow practitioner who did not get the job.
Now why is it not possible to formulate a positive code of ethics something like this?
1. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
2. Be a self-respecting gentleman in every act of life.
3. Be a conscientious, faithful business man in all your dealings with clients, builders and associates. 4. Give everybody a square deal.
What more is there to say? The architect who conscientiously carries out the four foregoing can solicit work, advertise, guarantee his contracts, act as a builder, finance an operation if he has the means and ability, roll up his sleeves and go into competition of any sort, sell his services for cash or its equivalent just because he likes the job and yet be self-respecting, professional and square with the world and all about him. Is it not about time that we admitted that is just what we are doing now, that these four comprise the duty of man toward man, and these duties are no more specialized in the case of architecture than they are in any other calling, and that professionalism after all is fundamentally the golden rule and a square deal ?