Ernest Flagg
Ernest Flagg was a noted American architect in the Beaux-Arts style. He was an advocate for urban reform and architecture's social responsibility. Flagg was born in New York, his father Jared Bradley Flagg was a notable painter. Ernest left school at 15 to work as an office boy on Wall Street. After working with his father and brothers in real estate for a few years, he designed duplex apartment plans in 1880 with the architect Philip Gengembre Hubert, for the co-operative apartment buildings Hubert was known for. Cornelius Vanderbilt II, Flagg's cousin through his marriage to Alice Claypoole Gwynne, was impressed by Flagg's work and sent him to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1889–1891, under his patronage. In 1891, Flagg began his architectural practice in New York influenced by his knowledge of the French ideas of architectural design, such as structural rationalism. During this time he joined with John Prentiss Benson to create Flagg & Benson, which became Flagg, Benson & Brockway with the addition of Albert Leverett Brockway.
FB&B designed St. Luke's Hospital in New York City. In 1894, he established the architectural firm of Flagg & Chambers with Walter B. Chambers, whom he met in Paris. Flagg alone is credited for some of the work he and Chambers worked on together, such as the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the U. S. Naval Academy, Pomfret School in Connecticut which he saw as "part of the process of evolution that would contribute to the creation of a national style of architecture.”Louisa Flagg Scribner, Flagg's sister, was the wife of Charles Scribner II. Through this familial connection, Flagg designed six structures located in Manhattan for the publishing family. Flagg is best known for his design of the Singer Tower. Completed in 1908, it was the tallest office building in the world, at 612 feet. Faithful to his Beaux-Arts training, Flagg allowed space around the tall building for light to enter, unusual for the time. Though Flagg is best known for his large institutional designs, he was interested in producing modest, attractive homes affordable to average Americans.
He developed innovative techniques toward that end and in 1922 published the book Small Houses, Their Economic Design and Construction. He packaged these techniques and ideas into the Flagg System, collaborated with builders scattered across the U. S. to build them. His contributions to zoning and height regulations were essential to New York's first laws governing this aspect of the city's architecture. Flagg argued in favor of zoning laws which would regulate the height and setback of buildings, to allow light and air to reach the streets below them, he was a president of the New York Society of Beaux-Arts Architects. A small collection of Flagg's personal and professional papers is held in the Department of Drawings & Archives at Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University; the homes that Flagg designed are modest, low to the ground, with stone walls, with steep roofs, distinctive ridge dormers, round-capped chimneys. Their styles suggest Cotswold Cottage, or French Provincial to various extents.
Flagg considered surface decoration "sham," and preferred to suggest styles with the general form of the building, adding interest with chimneys and dormers. As mentioned above, Flagg aimed to make attractive homes affordable to average families, he did this by the following means: The houses are somewhat small in scale compared to their contemporaries; this gives them an intimate cottage feel. Flagg designed the homes on a "module system. 45 inches was chosen to reduce cutting of standard-length boards and sheets of glass. The same standard sizes were used for vertical dimensions; this grid allowed simplified designs, easy for the builder to follow, standardized parts that could be produced in quantity for many houses. This was 25 years before the American Institute of Architects and the General Contractors Association settled on standardized sizes; the exterior walls are concrete. The builder constructed wooden forms and laid natural stone inside, with its flat side against the outside of the form.
Concrete was poured behind the stone, 16 to 20 inches thick. After the forms were removed, the joints were finished from the outside; the result was a load-bearing wall. Cost was reduced by designing most of the walls low enough to be built without scaffolding, with unskilled labor, or so Flagg claimed; the houses have no full basement or full attic, both of which Flagg considered expensive useless space. The lack of basement helped keep the walls low. Steep roofs reach down to the low walls, inside these roofs Flagg tucked storage space and sometimes rooms; the spaces within the roof are lit by dormers including unusual ridge dormers. These dormers can be opened in summer for ventilation. Many of the houses have distinctive round-capped stone chimneys on the end walls. Instead of gutters and rainpipes, a cement walk ran around the house under the eaves, so run-off would splash and run away, instead of eroding the landscaping. Inside, Flagg minimized hallways. Interior walls were constructed by stretching a jute screen where wanted plastering both sides, making a fireproof, sound-dampening partition only 1.5 inches thick.
This saved space and cost that would have otherwise been spent on studs and plaster. Ceiling beams were left both to save plastering costs and to add interest. Inward-opening casement windows were used instead of sash
Marietta, Ohio
Marietta is a city in and the county seat of Washington County, United States. During 1788, pioneers to the Ohio Country established Marietta as the first permanent settlement of the new United States in the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio. Marietta is located in southeastern Ohio at the mouth of the Muskingum River at its confluence with the Ohio River; the population was 14,085 at the 2010 census. It is the second-largest city in the WV-OH Combined Statistical Area; the private, nonsectarian liberal arts Marietta College is located here. It was a station on the Underground Railroad before the Civil War. Marietta is the site of the prehistoric Marietta Earthworks, a Hopewell complex more than 1500 years old, whose Great Mound and other major monuments were preserved by the earliest settlers in parks such as the Mound Cemetery. Marietta is located at 39°25′15″N 81°27′2″W. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 8.75 square miles, of which 8.43 square miles is land and 0.32 square miles is water.
The Muskingum River and Duck Creek flow into the Ohio River at Marietta. The area is part of the Appalachian Plateau; the Appalachian Plateau consists of steep hills and valleys and is the most rugged area in the state. The area is within the ecoregion of the Western Allegheny Plateau; this portion of the state has some of Ohio's most abundant mineral deposits. The climate in this area is characterized by humid summers, cold winters, evenly distributed precipitation throughout the year. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Marietta has a Humid continental climate, abbreviated "Dfa" on climate maps. Succeeding Indian cultures lived along the Ohio River and its tributaries for thousands of years. Among them were more than one culture who built earthwork mounds, monuments which expressed their cosmology with links to astronomical events. Between 100 BC and AD 500, the Hopewell culture built the multi-earthwork complex on the terrace east of the Muskingum River near its mouth with the Ohio.
It is now known as the Marietta Earthworks. Developed over many years, it had a large enclosed square, within which were four platform mounds, used for ceremonial purposes and elite residential. A walled, graded path led to the river's edge. By the time of the historic tribes, such as the Shawnee, the purposes and makers of the monuments were no longer known. French explorers entered this area in the 18th century, in 1749 buried numerous leaden plates to mark their claim to the Ohio Country They ceded their territory east of the Mississippi to Great Britain after the French and Indian War. Two of their plates were discovered in the Marietta area in 1798, one was replicated for what is known as the French monument, erected in the 20th century. In 1770, the future U. S. president George Washington a surveyor, began exploring large tracts of land west of his native Virginia. During the Revolutionary War, Washington told his friend General Rufus Putnam of the beauty he had seen in his travels through the Ohio Valley and of his ideas for settling the territory.
After the American Revolutionary War, the United States sold or granted large tracts of land to stimulate development in this area. Marietta was founded by settlers from New England who were investors in the Ohio Company of Associates, it was the first of numerous New England settlements in what was the Northwest Territory. These New Englanders, or "Yankees" as they were called, were descended from the Puritan English colonists who had settled New England in the 1600s and were Congregationalists; the first church constructed in Marietta was a Congregationalist church, founded around 1786. Before the mid-1790s services were held at the fort or in Munsell's Hall at nearby Point Harmar. In 1798 the Muskingum Academy was built on the site of the 19th century Marietta Congregationalist Church; the academy building served for both religious purposes. In the summer of 1781, John Carpenter built Carpenter's Fort, or Carpenter's Station as it was sometimes called, a fortified house above the mouth of Short Creek on the Ohio side of the Ohio River, near present-day Marietta.
After the war, the newly formed United States had little cash but plenty of land. Eager to develop additional lands, the new government decided to pay veterans of the Revolution with warrants for land in the Northwest Territory, organized under federal authority in 1787 by the Northwest Ordinance. Competing states had agreed to end their claims to the lands. Arthur St. Clair was appointed by the president as governor of the new territory; the Ohio Company of Associates had supported provisions in the ordinance to allow veterans to use their warrants to purchase the land. They bought 1.5 million acres of land from Congress. On April 7, 1788, 48 men of the Ohio Company of Associates, led by General Putnam, arrived at the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio rivers; the site was on the east side of the Muskingum River, across from Fort Harmar, a military outpost built three years prior. Bringing with them the first government sanctioned by the US for this area, they established the first permanent United States settlement in the Northwest Territory.
(Older European settlements in the Northwest Territory region include Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, 1668.
Michael Middleton Dwyer
Michael Dwyer is an American architect practicing in New York City known for renovating historic structures and designing new ones in traditional vocabularies known as New Classical Architecture. Michael Dwyer graduated from Columbia College and received a master's degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, he was associated from 1981–1996 with the architecture firm Buttrick White & Burtis, where he was a member of the project team that designed the Saint Thomas Choir School, a fifteen-story boarding school in Midtown Manhattan, completed in 1987. He helped design the Dana Discovery Center in New York City's Central Park, completed in 1993 as part of the Central Park Conservancy's rehabilitation of the Harlem Meer. In an interview with the magazine Progressive Architecture in December 1993, Dwyer noted that the building's "picturesque character" reinforced the park's "romantic landscape design." In 1992–1993, he was part of the team of architects that restored Bonnie Dune, the Southampton residence of Ambassador Carl Spielvogel and his wife, the preservationist Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, a project executed in collaboration with the interior designer Jed Johnson.
During his time at Buttrick White & Burtis, Dwyer was an advocate of New York's pre-war, traditional style of architecture. In a 1995 survey by The New York Times of the then-emerging New Classical school of architects, the reporter Patricia Leigh Brown noted that, "Michael Dwyer...an architect at Buttrick White & Burtis...has completed a classical-style yacht and an $8.95 million town house on the Upper East Side and is renovating Rudolph Nureyev's former apartment in the Dakota."In 1996, after establishing his own firm, he was the architect for the Eleanor Roosevelt Monument in New York City's Riverside Park, designed by the landscape architects Kelly/Varnell, with a statue sculpted by Penelope Jencks. The surrounding granite pavement contains inscriptions designed by Dwyer, including a quotation from Roosevelt's 1958 speech at the United Nations advocating universal human rights. In 1997, he restored the exterior of the George F. Baker House, a designated New York City landmark, from 1998–2008, he was the architect for the restoration of the Cosmopolitan Club, a private social club for women.
In addition to institutional projects, Dwyer completed residential projects for eminent New Yorkers, including Eddie Lampert, Scott Bessent, Arthur Altschul, Carl Spielvogel and Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel. The financier Dick Jenrette, who called Dwyer his "favorite young neoclassical architect," commissioned him to build a pair of classical pavilions at Edgewater, Jenrette's Hudson River Valley villa; the July 2018 issue of Architectural Digest featured Hollyhock, Dwyer's design for a new house in Southampton for the real-estate executive Mary Ann Tighe, comparable in scale and detail to the pre-war houses of architects like David Adler and John Russell Pope. In addition to his architectural work, Dwyer wrote two volumes of architectural history: Great Houses of the Hudson River and Carolands. 35 Meter Cruising Yacht. Eleanor Roosevelt Monument, Riverside Park, New York City. George F. Baker Jr. House, 75 East 93rd St. New York. Edgewater, Garden Pavilion and Poolhouse, New York. Gin Lane Residence, Southampton, NY.
Mead Point Residence, Greenwich, CT. Lampert Residence, Greenwich, CT. Toylsome Place Residence, Stone Cottage, Southampton, NY. Cosmopolitan Club, New York City. Jefferys Lane Residence, East Hampton, NY. Tighe Residence, Southampton, NY. Triplex Penthouse, San Remo, Central Park West, New York City. Meadowlark Lane Residence, Bridgehampton, NY. Michael Dwyer, with a foreword by Mario Buatta. Carolands. Michael Dwyer, ed. with preface by Mark Rockefeller. Great Houses of the Hudson River. Buttrick White & Burtis Dick Jenrette Architectural Digest July 2018 Website of Michael Dwyer Architect Institute of Traditional Architecture 2015 Rankings. Franklin Report Card at The Franklin Report
Rockefeller family
The Rockefeller family is an American industrial and banking family that owns one of the world's largest fortunes. The fortune was made in the American petroleum industry during the late 19th and early 20th centuries by John D. Rockefeller and his brother William Rockefeller through Standard Oil; the family is known for its long association with, control of, Chase Manhattan Bank. The Rockefellers are considered to be one of the most powerful families, if not the most powerful family, in the history of the United States. One of the founding members of the Rockefeller family in New York was businessman William Rockefeller Sr., born to a Protestant family in Granger, New York. He had six children with his first wife Eliza Davison, the most prominent of which were oil tycoons John D. Rockefeller and William Rockefeller Jr. the co-founders of Standard Oil. John D. Rockefeller was a devout Northern Baptist, he supported many church-based institutions; the combined wealth of the family—their total assets and investments plus the individual wealth of its members—has never been known with any precision.
The records of the family archives relating to both the family and individual members' net worth are closed to researchers. From the outset the family's wealth has been under the complete control of the male members of the dynasty, through the family office. Despite strong-willed wives who had influence over their husbands' decisions—such as the pivotal female figure Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr.—in all cases they received allowances only and were never given partial responsibility for the family fortune. Much of the wealth has been locked up in the notable family trust of 1934 and the trust of 1952, both administered by Chase Bank, the corporate successor to Chase Manhattan Bank; these trusts have consisted of shares in the successor companies to Standard Oil and other diversified investments, as well as the family's considerable real estate holdings. They are administered by a trust committee. Management of this fortune today rests with professional money managers who oversee the principal holding company, Rockefeller Financial Services, which controls all the family's investments, now that Rockefeller Center is no longer owned by the family.
The present chairman is David Rockefeller Jr. In 1992, it had five main arms: Rockefeller & Co.. S. during the 20th century. Chief among them: Rockefeller Center, a multi-building complex built at the start of the Depression in Midtown Manhattan, financed by the family International House of New York, New York City, 1924 Wren Building, College of William and Mary, from 1927 Colonial Williamsburg, from 1927 onwards, Abby Aldrich, John III and Winthrop, historical restoration Museum of Modern Art, New York City, from 1929 Riverside Church, New York City, 1930 The Cloisters, New York City, from 1934 The Interchurch Center, New York City, 1948 Asia Society, New York City, 1956 One Chase Manhattan Plaza, New York City, 1961 Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza, New York, 1962 Lincoln Center, New York City, 1962 World Trade Center Twin Towers, New York City, 1973–2001 Embarcadero Center, San Francisco, 1974 Council of the Americas/Americas Society, New York City, 1985 In addition to this is Senior and Junior's involvement in seven major housing developments: Forest Hill Estates, Ohio City Housing Corporation's efforts, Sunnyside Gardens, New York City Thomas Garden Apartments, The Bronx, New York City Paul Laurence Dunbar Housing, New York City Lavoisier Apartments, New York City Van Tassel Apartments, Sleepy Hollow, New York A development in Radburn, New Jersey A further project involved David Rockefeller in a major middle-income housing development when he was elected in 1947 as chairman of Morningside Heights, Inc. in Manhattan by fourteen major institutions that were based in the area, including Columbia University.
The result, in 1951, was the six-building apartment complex known as Morningside Gardens. Senior's donations led to the formation of the University of Chicago in 1889; this was one instance of a long family and Rockefeller Foundation tradition of financially supporting Ivy League and other major colleges and universities over the generations—seventy-five in total. These include: Harvard University Dartmouth College Princeton University University of California, Berkeley Stanford University Yale University Massachusetts Institute of Technology Brown University Tufts U
Ionic order
The Ionic order forms one of the three classical orders of classical architecture, the other two canonic orders being the Doric and the Corinthian. There are two lesser orders: the Tuscan, the rich variant of Corinthian called the composite order, both added by 16th-century Italian architectural writers, based on Roman practice. Of the three canonic orders, the Ionic order has the narrowest columns; the Ionic capital is characterized by the use of volutes. The Ionic columns stand on a base which separates the shaft of the column from the stylobate or platform. Since Vitruvius, a female character has been ascribed to the Ionic; the major features of the Ionic order are the volutes of its capital, which have been the subject of much theoretical and practical discourse, based on a brief and obscure passage in Vitruvius. The only tools required to design these features were a straight-edge, a right angle, string and a compass. Below the volutes, the Ionic column may have a wide collar or banding separating the capital from the fluted shaft, or a swag of fruit and flowers may swing from the clefts or "neck" formed by the volutes.
The volutes lay in a single plane. This feature of the Ionic order made it more pliant and satisfactory than the Doric to critical eyes in the 4th century BC: angling the volutes on the corner columns ensured that they "read" when seen from either front or side facade; the 16th-century Renaissance architect and theorist Vincenzo Scamozzi designed a version of such a four-sided Ionic capital. The Ionic column is always more slender than the Doric. Ionic columns are most fluted. After a little early experimentation, the number of hollow flutes in the shaft settled at 24; this standardization kept the fluting in a familiar proportion to the diameter of the column at any scale when the height of the column was exaggerated. Roman fluting leaves a little of the column surface between each hollow. In some instances, the fluting has been omitted. English architect Inigo Jones introduced a note of sobriety with plain Ionic columns on his Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace and when Beaux-Arts architect John Russell Pope wanted to convey the manly stamina combined with intellect of Theodore Roosevelt, he left colossal Ionic columns unfluted on the Roosevelt memorial at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, for an unusual impression of strength and stature.
Wabash Railroad architect R. E. Mohr included 8 unfluted Ionic frontal columns on his 1928 design for the railroad's St. Louis suburban stop Delmar Station; the entablature resting on the columns has three parts: a plain architrave divided into two, or more three, with a frieze resting on it that may be richly sculptural, a cornice built up with dentils, with a corona and cyma molding to support the projecting roof. Pictorial narrative bas-relief frieze carving provides a characteristic feature of the Ionic order, in the area where the Doric order is articulated with triglyphs. Roman and Renaissance practice condensed the height of the entablature by reducing the proportions of the architrave, which made the frieze more prominent; the Ionic anta capital is the ionic version of the anta capital, the crowning portion of an anta, the front edge of a supporting wall in Greek temple architecture. The anta is crowned by a stone block designed to spread the load from superstructure it supports, called an "anta capital" when it is structural, or sometimes "pilaster capital" if it is only decorative as during the Roman period.
In order not to protrude unduly from the wall, these anta capitals display a rather flat surface, so that the capital has more or less a rectangular-shaped structure overall. The ionic anta capital, in contrast to the regular column capitals, is decorated and includes bands of alternating lotuses and flame palmettes, bands of eggs and darts and beads and reels patterns, in order to maintain continuity with the decorative frieze lining the top of the walls; this difference with the column capitals disappeared with Roman times, when anta or pilaster capitals have designs similar to those of the column capitals. The ionic anta capitals as can be seen in the Ionic-order temple of the Erechtheion, are characteristically rectangular Ionic anta capitals, with extensive bands of floral patterns in prolongation of adjoining friezes; the Ionic order originated in the mid-6th century BC in Ionia, the southwestern coastland and islands of Asia Minor settled by Ionian Greeks, where an Ionian dialect was spoken.
The Ionic order column was being practiced in mainland Greece in the 5th century BC. It was most popular in the Archaic Period in Ionia; the first of the great Ionic temples was the Temple of Hera on Samos, built about 570–560 BC by the architect Rhoikos. It stood for only a decade. A longer-lasting 6th century Ionic temple was the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of t
Legion of Honour
The Legion of Honour is the highest French order of merit for military and civil merits, established in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte and retained by all French governments and régimes. The order's motto is Honneur et Patrie, its seat is the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur next to the Musée d'Orsay, on the left bank of the Seine in Paris; the order is divided into five degrees of increasing distinction: Chevalier, Commandeur, Grand officier, Grand-croix. During the French Revolution, all of the French orders of chivalry were abolished, replaced with Weapons of Honour, it was the wish of Napoleon Bonaparte, the First Consul, to create a reward to commend civilians and soldiers. From this wish was instituted a Légion d'honneur, a body of men, not an order of chivalry, for Napoleon believed that France wanted a recognition of merit rather than a new system of nobility. However, the Légion d'honneur did use the organization of the old French orders of chivalry, for example the Ordre de Saint-Louis; the insignia of the Légion d'honneur bear a resemblance to those of the Ordre de Saint-Louis, which used a red ribbon.
Napoleon created this award to ensure political loyalty. The organization would be used as a façade to give political favours and concessions; the Légion d'honneur was loosely patterned after a Roman legion, with legionaries, commanders, regional "cohorts" and a grand council. The highest rank was not a Grand Cross but a Grand aigle, a rank that wore the insignia common to a Grand Cross; the members were paid, the highest of them generously: 5,000 francs to a grand officier, 2,000 francs to a commandeur, 1,000 francs to an officier, 250 francs to a légionnaire. Napoleon famously declared, "You call these baubles, well, it is with baubles that men are led... Do you think that you would be able to make men fight by reasoning? Never; that is good only for the scholar in his study. The soldier needs glory, rewards." This has been quoted as "It is with such baubles that men are led." The order was the first modern order of merit. Under the monarchy, such orders were limited to Roman Catholics, all knights had to be noblemen.
The military decorations were the perks of the officers. The Légion d'honneur, was open to men of all ranks and professions—only merit or bravery counted; the new legionnaire had to be sworn into the Légion d'honneur. It is noteworthy that all previous orders were crosses or shared a clear Christian background, whereas the Légion d'honneur is a secular institution; the badge of the Légion d'honneur has five arms. In a decree issued on the 10 Pluviôse XIII, a grand decoration was instituted; this decoration, a cross on a large sash and a silver star with an eagle, symbol of the Napoleonic Empire, became known as the Grand aigle, in 1814 as the Grand cordon. After Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French in 1804 and established the Napoleonic nobility in 1808, award of the Légion d'honneur gave right to the title of "Knight of the Empire"; the title was made hereditary after three generations of grantees. Napoleon had dispensed 15 golden collars of the Légion d'honneur among his family and his senior ministers.
This collar was abolished in 1815. Although research is made difficult by the loss of the archives, it is known that three women who fought with the army were decorated with the order: Virginie Ghesquière, Marie-Jeanne Schelling and a nun, Sister Anne Biget; the Légion d'honneur was visible in the French Empire. The Emperor always wore it and the fashion of the time allowed for decorations to be worn most of the time; the king of Sweden therefore declined the order. Napoleon's own decorations were captured by the Prussians and were displayed in the Zeughaus in Berlin until 1945. Today, they are in Moscow. Louis XVIII changed the appearance of the order. To have done so would have angered the 35,000 to 38,000 members; the images of Napoleon and his eagle were removed and replaced by the image of King Henry IV, the popular first king of the Bourbon line. Three Bourbon fleurs-de-lys replaced the eagle on the reverse of the order. A king's crown replaced the imperial crown. In 1816, the grand cordons were renamed grand crosses and the legionnaires became knights.
The king decreed. The Légion d'honneur became the second-ranking order of knighthood of the French monarchy, after the Order of the Holy Spirit. Following the overthrow of the Bourbons in favour of King Louis Philippe I of the House of Orléans, the Bourbon monarchy's orders were once again abolished and the Légion d'honneur was restored in 1830 as the paramount decoration of the French nation; the insignia were drastically altered. In 1847, there were 47,000 members, yet another revolution in Paris brought a new design to the Légion d'honneur. A nephew of the founder, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, was elected president and he restored the image of his uncle on the crosses of the order. In 1852, the first recorded woman, Angélique Duchemin, an old revolutionary of the 1789 uprising against the absolute monarchy, was admitted into the order. On 2 December 1851, President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte staged a coup d'état with the help of the armed forces, he made himself Emperor of the French one year on 2 December 1852, after a successful plebiscite.
An Imperial crown was added. During Napoleon III's reign, the first American was admitted
Architect
An architect is a person who plans and reviews the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that have human occupancy or use as their principal purpose. Etymologically, architect derives from the Latin architectus, which derives from the Greek, i.e. chief builder. Professionally, an architect's decisions affect public safety, thus an architect must undergo specialized training consisting of advanced education and a practicum for practical experience to earn a license to practice architecture. Practical and academic requirements for becoming an architect vary by jurisdiction. Throughout ancient and medieval history, most of the architectural design and construction was carried out by artisans—such as stone masons and carpenters, rising to the role of master builder; until modern times, there was no clear distinction between engineer. In Europe, the titles architect and engineer were geographical variations that referred to the same person used interchangeably.
It is suggested that various developments in technology and mathematics allowed the development of the professional'gentleman' architect, separate from the hands-on craftsman. Paper was not used in Europe for drawing until the 15th century but became available after 1500. Pencils were used more for drawing by 1600; the availability of both allowed pre-construction drawings to be made by professionals. Concurrently, the introduction of linear perspective and innovations such as the use of different projections to describe a three-dimensional building in two dimensions, together with an increased understanding of dimensional accuracy, helped building designers communicate their ideas. However, the development was gradual; until the 18th-century, buildings continued to be designed and set out by craftsmen with the exception of high-status projects. In most developed countries, only those qualified with an appropriate license, certification or registration with a relevant body may practice architecture.
Such licensure requires a university degree, successful completion of exams, as well as a training period. Representation of oneself as an architect through the use of terms and titles is restricted to licensed individuals by law, although in general, derivatives such as architectural designer are not protected. To practice architecture implies the ability to practice independently of supervision; the term building design professional, by contrast, is a much broader term that includes professionals who practice independently under an alternate profession, such as engineering professionals, or those who assist in the practice architecture under the supervision of a licensed architect such as intern architects. In many places, non-licensed individuals may perform design services outside the professional restrictions, such design houses and other smaller structures. In the architectural profession and environmental knowledge and construction management, an understanding of business are as important as design.
However, the design is the driving force throughout the project and beyond. An architect accepts a commission from a client; the commission might involve preparing feasibility reports, building audits, the design of a building or of several buildings and the spaces among them. The architect participates in developing the requirements. Throughout the project, the architect co-ordinates a design team. Structural and electrical engineers and other specialists, are hired by the client or the architect, who must ensure that the work is co-ordinated to construct the design; the architect, once hired by a client, is responsible for creating a design concept that both meets the requirements of that client and provides a facility suitable to the required use. The architect must meet with, question, the client in order to ascertain all the requirements of the planned project; the full brief is not clear at the beginning: entailing a degree of risk in the design undertaking. The architect may make early proposals to the client, which may rework the terms of the brief.
The "program" is essential to producing a project. This is a guide for the architect in creating the design concept. Design proposal are expected to be both imaginative and pragmatic. Depending on the place, finance and available crafts and technology in which the design takes place, the precise extent and nature of these expectations will vary. F oresight is a prerequisite as designing buildings is a complex and demanding undertaking. Any design concept must at a early stage in its generation take into account a great number of issues and variables which include qualities of space, the end-use and life-cycle of these proposed spaces, connections and aspects between spaces including how they are put together as well as the impact of proposals on the immediate and wider locality. Selection of appropriate materials and technology must be considered and reviewed at an early stage in the design to ensure there are no setbacks which may occur later; the site and its environs, as well as the culture and history of the place, will influence the design.
The design must countenance increasing concerns with environmental sustainability. The architect may introduce, to greater or lesser degrees, aspects of mathematics and a
