American architectural practice has been the subject of many scholarly and professional studies during the century since the publication of the first Handbook of Professional Practice by the American Institute of Architects in 1920. George Barnett Johnston's Assembling the Architect is the first study dedicated to the origins of the Handbook, as a valuable compendium of contracts, documents, and accumulated expertise that has guided the profession ever since.
Johnston teaches architecture at Georgia Tech and runs his own design firm. As he writes, the goals of this book are “to describe some of the forces that have been in play” in the building industry in the United States and to examine the roles of the dominant parties in that realm, namely, the architect, the owner, and the builder (1). However, given that his critical method is colored more by European social science theories than by conventional historiographical schemata, the...
University of California Press