Niels Barrett PhD.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon University

The rise of a Profession within a ProfessionPrefaceThe Development of the Architectural Technology Discipline within the Profession of Architectureappeared – that the lecturers in general considered it the most important ability for anarchitect to be able to shape a building according to the “right” political, sociologicaland artistic opinions of their peer professional fellows.It became obvious to me that one could graduate without being able to build a house.The most detailed drawings to do would be in scale of 1:20 leaving an empty spacebetween the surfaces of the walls and other building parts. This was initially ratherfrustrating, but later I realised all the valuable characteristics of the Danish educationof architects, including a sharp focus on spatial and aesthetic design. I now feel I hada good and really useful architectural training at the Royal Academy of Fine Art inCopenhagen.Looking back at my architectural education I appreciate all the training in therelationship between function and shaping – although not the almost religiousoccupation with the political issues of the mid-seventies! If I ask myself whether Ithink it would have been possible to deal with all the technicalities of a building to amuch further extent within the same space of time the answer tends to be no!Newly graduatedAfter graduation I worked in drawing offices and also ran a small business myself. Inthe drawing office I soon learned a lot of practical things, and especially how much ittook to inform sufficiently about a building. All the information I had had beforeconsisted of the main drawings and the few relatively simple details a drawing officein the old days would produce plus a tiny hand typed description of very few pages.At the attic of the office, which was a rather old one, I could find a lot of old folderswith all the documentation the office had had to produce to account for thearchitectural features of a building. I realized that ten times more documents thanbefore were needed and wondered why. I concluded that it had to do with all thechanges in technique, the many new materials and that architecture had totally leftthe old tradition the craftsmen earlier knew so well.15