Claude Edward Armstrong Architect

Practitioner/Educator, United States

(University of Florida)

Abstract

Specifying Architecture: Peculiarities of The text in Practice

Architectural Specifications are the Text of Architecture in contemporary

practice. A modern project of any size has a compendium of prescriptive

text, compiled and edited by the architect, to determine the quality of

materials and labor. One thousand pages of text to accompany drawings is not

unusual for a moderately sized project.

The organization, terminology, grammar, and syntax of these modern

Architectural Specifications are so codified, conventionalized, and

systematized that they are now not much more than a list of products and

assembly instructions. Pre-industrial texts, from which modern

Specifications derive, outlined both the practical and the theoretical

underpinnings of architecture, with the understanding that the result was

ultimately an embodiment of good construction technique and poetry. The

older the sample of text, the more we find a moral imperative directed at

the architect/ builder (e.g. "he shall", "in a goodly manner", "with all due

care") The specification was at once the practical and theoretical guide to

architecture.

By investigating some of the significant sources of the modern specification

we may see how present "everyday" texts of architecture were, indeed, The

Text of architecture. Vitruvius' Ten Books of Architecture, defines the

role of the architect, the physical preconditions necessary for architecture

to be achieved, and the poetic and technical knowledge needed for quality

construction of any kind. His famous phrase that includes the terms

"firmitatis, utiitatis, venustatis" translated as 'strength, utility,

grace', or later, 'firmness, commodity, delight', is the kernel

specification for all architecture in western language. The Four Books of

Architecture by Andrea Palladio ( mid 16th c) which carries on the

all-in-one approach to the practical and theoretical requirements of

architecture, for the first time provides drawings which are not marginalia

and describe projects designed and built by the author. 19th century

architectural specifications per se were often directly implied by the

conventions of 'working drawings' and not very elaborate for buildings of

moderate complexity. Engineering projects, in contrast, preceded building

construction in the development of technical specifications.

(Further historic examples may be discussed in this presentation).

The necessary integration of the poetic process with technique came apart in

the evolution of these texts. The modern specification's ancestor is the

treatise. In contemporary practice the empirical aspect of construction

predominates specifications, and the so-called theory of architecture

emerges as a distinct, discursive body of literature.

Recently there have been movements toward modifying the structure and

content of the specifications to encompass the current concerns for ecology,

human health and social responsibility. This may result in specifications

that are more akin to Vitruvius' call for strength, utility, and grace.

This search asks the question: How has the fragmentation of the ethical,

poetic, and technical components of the Text of Architecture in practice

affected the sense and structure of Architectural Specifications?