Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/488

 466 THE BUILDING NEWS. experience, and which will be proposed for adoption, are looked upon with disfavour by a small number of ultra-conservatives. There are a few who, on the other hand, are under- stood to desire modifications such as it would be impossible to admit. Let all this be con- sidered calmly, temperately, and dispas- sionately, and if the result be to procure one seale of charges and rules throughout the country, a great good will have been accom- plished ; andthe effort of those rather enthu- siastic young architects who set on foot the ‘* Architectural Alliance ” a good many years ago will have borne good fruit. The subject of competitions is to engage attention. As now conducted, these, though not without their great advantages, are weighted with many and grievous scandals and obstacles. ‘The heavy expense, the wasted and utterly unnecessary labour, the bitter disappointments—are but the least of these evils. Loss of honour among individuals, and standing for the profession— bribery, corruption, back-stairs’ influences, false estimates, heartburnings, distrust, and general demoralisation—are more serious, more fatal evils ; and all these often attend compe- titions as they are now carried on. Let the Conference boldly face these matters, and see what can be done to set some of them straight, and we will admit that they have done a good week’s work, and may go home content. One word more. We have alluded to the grave and grievous discussions to which matters architectural have given rise in the public prints. We do not think that on an occasion like this a gathering of the foremost members of a liberal profession ought to meet and part without some expression of opinion as to recent attacks on Mr. Street and Mr. Burges, and the controversies con- nected with the Law Courts and §. Paul’s. We doubt whether the managers of the under- taking will have the courage to bring these matters forward, but if they are too—let us say—prudent, we trust that the country architects will show more appreciation of the situation. Without any verdict being chal- lenged as to the merits of Mr. Burges or the skill of Mr. Street, the fairness of Mr. Fergusson, or the politeness of Mr. Pugin, we do holdthat the great question of internecine strife among rival artists ought to be opened unflinchingly, and the members of the pro- fession ought to say and say boldly what they holdto be fair and what unprofessional in the way of pamphlets and newspaper letters. Less than what we have sketched ought not to be accomplished, more ought hardly to be attempted ; but between a brilliant success and a decided failure there is no middle course. The Conference answered well a year ago. It was then settled to repeat it because there was so much to be done. The only way to justify the step will be, the things to be done being such, and of such importance as we have pointed out, to go and do them. oS cs: —_ > — BINDING UP “THE QUANTITIES.” ROM all accounts that reach us, the approach- ing Architectural Conference is likely to be well attended this year by the provincial architects, who (many of them very extensive practitioners) neither attend nor belong to the Institute, or to any of the provincial Architectural Societies. These worthy “bumpkins,” or, let us say, pagani, never read papers on architecture themselves, aud don’t care to listen to them. Yet we hear of their carrying out large edifices, and carrying on a roaring practice in Downshire, &c., “just in a quiet way,” if we may here apply the phrase. They are the very men who ought to come up to London, to—if “only once a year”—talk over professional questions with their metropolitan brethren. It is of the utmost consequence that architects in town and in the provincial cities should observe a uniform system of practice ; and, just at this time, the action of the associated London builders and of the Royal Institute of British Architects is tending to seriously affect, for good or evil, the future course of archi- by schedule of prices. between this old and nearly exploded process and that proposed (the quantity-binding process)—that, whereas in the old one, the client had the advantage of a bona-fide admeasurement of works, and no further charge to encounter; in the process pro- posed he will have to run the gauntlet of a double operation—the “quantities,” with any possible errors of excess (naturally undisturbed by the builder), and their rectification by admeasurement, wherever short quantities or omissions can be claimed for. evil must accrue in the very nature of things, wherever the client by means of his architect is not must be paid for doing the work. tectural practice all over the kingdom, more especially in the management of building contracts. There is, for example, that most important measure of binding up the ‘ quantities” with the specification. What do our provincial architects think of that measure ? It has, to be sure, been well considered by the London builders, and by the Council of the Institute ; but, as architectural Britain is very far indeed from being confined to London, it is indispensable to know what the country architects—the architects of Dublin, Edinburgh, and Glasgow ; of Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Bristol, &c.—have to say about it. This quantity question is not a question of ‘‘ art-architecture” or even of archi- tectural science; but aprosaic question of practice —of trade, in fact. It cannot be settled by a report of the Architectural Association; but the general body of country architects must be heard upon it— to say nothing of the clients in both country and town; hard-headed justices of the peace, poor-law guardians, and building capitalists generally, whose opinion will have to be taken upon, what is, after all, in plain parlance, nothing less than a London Builders’ Strike. Let us look fairly in the face this proposal of binding up the “quantities” with the specification. It emanates not from the London architects, but from the London builders, and is made, without doubt, in perfect good faith, and with the most commendable motive. the art of building as practised in this kingdom forty years ago—that is to say, to the principle of It is, virtually, a simple step backward to “measure and value,” or measurement and valuation, But there is this difference This fully enabled to enter like a surveyor into the minutest details of the challenged quantities. In fact, we see nothing but one of two plain courses to adopt, if this quantity-binding becomes general— either they (the ‘‘ quantities”) must be treated at the close of the works as a tentative document, and (as is the custom in Glasgow) an entire re-admea- surement of the whole works be taken; or thé archi- tect himself must, with or without a building sur- veyor, take out, and be paid for taking out, the “quantities.” Of course, if he takes them out, he It is not the usual work of an architect—or, to speak more defi- nitively—it is not such work as usually is, or ought to be, included in an architect’s professional fee or percentage. of Aberdeen this very year which may here be use- A case was tried in the Sheriff’s Court fully cited in proof of our view of that question. It is that of a firm of architects, who had taken out the quantities (or “schedules,” as our Scotch friends call them) of a building they had carried out; the contractors had included the fee for these schedules in their “summary” in the usual way, and had paid it over to the architects. The client’s contention was that their computation was part and parcel of an architect’s service, and he claimed to deduct it from his architect’s bill, The judgment is a very inte- resting one, well worth the quiet consideration of the London and provincial architects who are to assemble next week in Conference; a thing more in their way than that irrepressible political topic, the recent judgment of Mr. Justice Keogh. Our readers need only attach a conventional meaning to the Sheriff's phrase, “architect trade.” After proof, Sheriff Wilson pronounced the following judgment :—“ Having tried the cause, finds—(1) That the defender employed the pursuers as archi- tects for a cottage, and agreed to remunerate them by a commission, at the rate of 4 per cent., on the cost of the building ; that the cost amounted to the sum of £500 13s. 6d., and that the pursuer’s com- mission accordingly ameunted to the sum of £20 0s.6d. (2) That this commission did not, either by the custom of the trade or by the special bargain between the parties, include the cost of preparing the schedules, which the pursuers charged to the success- ful contractors. (3) The plea that the pursuers are not entitled to charge for making theschedules, in addition to their commission, seems ill founded. The parties are agreed that there was a special bargain fixing the commission at 4 per cent. The defendant says that it was further specially agreed that this should include the scheduling, and he also maintains that he should have been specially told if it was meant Juxn 7, 1872. to charge extra for them. Both parties are agreed that the schedules were ordered, though they differ as to whether it was done when the commission was fixed or at a subsequent date. In reference to the alleged special agreement that the schedules should be included in the commission, it is needless to say more than that the defender “has failed to prove it. In reference to his argument, founded on the fact that he was not told that there was to be an extra charge for them, it is proved that it is the custom iu the architect trade tocharge for scheduling over and above the commission. The defender contends that he was not bound to know the custom of the trade; but that does not settle the question. The implied contract between one of the public employing a pro- fessional man and the latter in regard to the amount of remuneration, when nothing is said, is, that he will pay him for the value of his labour; and this value is necessarily fixed at the usual charges in the trade, unless there be something unfair or unreason- able about them, either in themselves or in their application to the particular case. Now, there is nothing unfair in itself in architects making an extra charge for scheduling, because the scheduling is not a necessary thing in the erection of a house, and when it is done it is part of the work of a professional measurer rather than of the architect. There seems nothing unfair in making the extra charge in this case, because the pursuers were not answerable for the defender, supposing that the 4 per cent. included everything.” So much for the Aberdeen case; and, indeed, for the very common custom of English provincial archi- tects. In London but few architects observe it; and we do not see how (refraining from “ scheduling,” as they do with a very creditable motive) they can, when the “quantities” are bound up with the speci- fication, do full justice to their employers when, as must often be the case, their contractors challenge the accuracy of these documents, and prefer before the surveyors their claims for items of artificers’ work, or materials omitted or under-measured. London building surveyors are, as a body, very honourable :aen; but it is not in human nature to expect them at great cost and without fee for the task to search out and expose their possible errors in excess, as a set-off in justice against their alleged errors in omission or short measure. This an archi- tect, sitting as an equity judge in his office (or he is no true architect), would be well willing to do; but then would arise the question which, under the quantity-binding process, forces itself on one’s common-sense—Is he able? If he is not, the only fair course under what we have termed the quantity- binding process is an entire re-admeasurement of the whole of the works by the building surveyor who originally got out the “schedules” or “ quan- tities.” What honest objection is there to this course? Its general adoption all over the three kingdoms would do more to purify the building trade, to satisfy fair-deating clients, and to relieve archi- tects of a never absent source of worry, than any measure we can conceive. a THE POETRY OF GERMANY. Act the meeting of the Society for the Encourage- ment of the Fine Arts on Thursday evening, the 30th ultimo, Mr. George Browning delivered a lecture before a numerous and fashionable audience, the subject being ‘The Poetry of Germany.” Sir M. Digby Wyatt, F.S.A., Slade Professor of Fine Art, Cambridge, occupied thechair. In commencing, the lecturer drew attention to the innate love of poetry that, from the earliest times, has existed among the Germans, and attributed this in a great measure to the climate and the phlegmatic senti- mentalcharacter of the people. Mr. Browning then proceeded to divide his subject into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, the first embracing a short history of German poetry from the earliest records down to the time of Martin Luther; the second from Luther to Klopstock; and thirdly the more modern, more brilliant period from the middle of the eighteenth century down to the present time. Tacitus, the Roman historian about 100 years after Christ, mentioned the verses and hymns of the Germans while in a state of primitive barbarism. The most ancient poetry of a people is its mytho- logy. In Iceland, among the archives of the Scandinavians, is preserved a full and ecomprehen- sive account, in two books, supposed to have been compiled in the fourth or fifth century, called the “ Ancient ‘and Modern Edda of ‘Teuton Heathen Mythology.” Immediately subsequent to the intro- duction of Christianity, German poetry consisted simply of translations and paraphrases from the Bible, Ottfried’s ‘“ Harmony of the Gospels” being the most important. Twenty years later, about the year 880, dates the earliest ballad, the triumphal