][< wrote:

>Just as it is often difficult for design professionals to distinguish
between competent and ethical contractors and/or traditional trades, a
reverse distinction can be made that traditional trades are not always
clear on the distinction between competent and ethical design
professionals.<

Its obvious architects are more effective in client expectation control
when I witness clients writhing in anguish when I tell them they have no
choice but to pay the architect to do his job. In Ohio it is now
mandated by law on any commercial project. The problem however is all
too often the architect has next to no knowledge about the traditional
trade of timber frame building. Even the father/son architectural team I
am working with currently, who have a ten year reputation for adaptive
reuse of timber buildings, clearly are self educated (and incompetent by
my standards) in this area. Most timber framers I know find this same
problem and solve it by acting as the architects on their own projects.
I've done it for over twenty years. Is this unethical?

I think the ethics in this situation have to be based on the willingness
on both sides to admit one's lack of competence. If learning traditional
trades is an oral and tactile process and learning architecture is an
institutionalized one it can hardly be logical to assume that someone
who chooses one path will have the same understanding of process as the
other. Specification and application are spelled different for a reason.
The rub comes when the engineer is added to the mix and the architect
chooses to specify process and methodology to a degree beyond his or her
real understanding in an attempt to emulate the empirical.

As Ken suggests there is much energy flowing in the direction of
education. I would hope in the end we can develop a mechanism where the
sources of that education will include the masters of their fields, be
they the traditional trades or the technical ones, in order that one
will have the opportunity to learn from the other. It is already
happening in the field. I am teaching the father/son team traditional
timber repairs. I'm sure there are many more such relationships out
there that represent examples of how this process is working in both
directions. Now if we can just get the engineer's to lighten up.....

Rudy

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