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

The rise of a Profession within a ProfessionLiterature reviewThe Development of the Architectural Technology Discipline within the Profession of Architecturebut on art skills mainly. At this stage in history the more technical part of the work todo relied on the master builder and the handicrafts. He says that this was possiblebecause the traditions within the handicrafts were so strong, this situation lasting farinto the nineteenth century (Brochmann 1969 p. 24).In actual fact, the situation lasted until the mid of last century if the majority of thebuilt square meters are considered. In line with this Graham, Linford and Lobban(2007 p. 27) state that: “the construction industry’s repair and maintenance clustercontains a wide range of activities that has not been recognised by the new buildindustry sector for at least the past 50 years.” However, Brochmann is perfectlycorrect, as early in the 19 th century new kinds of structures based on the industrialdevelopment began to occur (Clark 1971, Frampton 1980 pp. 32-37). One can noticestructures of cast iron with huge areas of glass already from the beginning of thecentury and can know for sure that this was in no way related to the old crafts andtherefore must have required a quite different kind of documentation than thetraditional one delivered (Pragnell 2007 p. 240, Brochmann 1969). However, most ofthese buildings were made by other professionals than architects – mainly engineers(Clark 1971 pp. 330-337, Graham, Linford and Lobban 2007).1.2.2 The craftsman and the master builderHistorically it can be claimed that architects undertook the artistic part of thearchitecture whereas craftsmen and master builders undertook the technical designalong with the manual work of execution (Groll 1979 p. 214).However, the truth may be rather more subtle because when saying ‘handicraft’ wedon’t just think of the simple fact that something is ‘made by hand’, butautomatically include the idea of ‘craft’ as something much more (Gelfer-Jørgensen1998 p. 388). That is, one would normally combine with the term ‘handicraft’something skilful and highly developed. It could even be said that we tend to think ofcraft as something involving a kind of art. It might be possible to describe differentcomponents within ‘handicraft’, thus being able to define what it is. This is very37