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TRANSACTION'S OF THE AMF.RICAN SOCIETY 



tween the collaborators and the client as 

 to what the relations are to be. 



The workability of any method of col- 

 laboration depends upon the personal 

 qualities of the collaborators ; they must 

 have a reasonable equipment of tact, of 

 sympathetic insight, and of mutual re- 

 spect. There are some people who can 

 only play a lone hand. I know certain 

 architects and engineers and other pro- 

 fessional men of considerable personal 

 ability with whom I should refuse to at- 

 tempt any collaboration, because they are, 

 personally, so constituted that they can 

 not, or will not, honestly try to cooperate. 

 They are "rule or ruin" men. 



But, assuming the necessary personal 

 qualities, cooperation can best be carried 

 on, in my opinion, when the relations are 

 defined in one of the ways above set 

 forth : .A collaborator must either be pure- 

 ly a consultant, with no responsibilit}' 

 beyond giving advice and answering 

 questions, with no responsibility of 

 initiative, with no responsibility for en- 

 suring the final results ; or else he must 

 be the responsible designer of some de- 

 fined entity, of all that comes within a 

 certain boundary, and at the same time be 

 made a consultant as to all related parts 

 of the whole design. 



Almost anybody who has the money, 

 whether he be an architect, an engineer, 

 a landscape architect, or a mere com- 

 mercial exploiter of money-making op- 

 portunities, can hire as assistants men of 

 a high degree of competence in any field 

 he chooses. But that does not justify 

 him, as a professional man, without ex- 

 plicit warning to his client, in assuming 

 the sole professional responsibility for 

 work of a sort which is beyond his own 

 power to comprehend and skillfully guide 

 in all its details. The man who takes 

 such responsibilities may pose as a pro- 

 fessional man, but in reality he is, in so 

 far, a quack. 



I may add, since it is easier and much 



more interesting to pluck the mote from 

 another man's eye than the beam from 

 one's own, that some architects often do 

 assume responsibilities in regard to land- 

 scape work, which, as individuals, they 

 appear very ill fitted to carry out suc- 

 cessfully. There is nothing in the fact 

 that a man is an architect that should, in 

 itself, interfere with his becoming a com- 

 petent landscape architect also, any more 

 than there is any reason why the reverse 

 should not take place ; but. ars longa. 

 And the simple fact is that the instances 

 are few in which both fields are well cov- 

 ered. The infrequency of a successful 

 union of these two professions in the 

 same individual is rather surprising, in 

 view of the closeness and frequent over- 

 lapping of their fields and the vagueness 

 of the boundary which separates them. 

 It remains surprising, even after due con- 

 sideration of the bigness of the range of 

 technical information required for each of 

 the professions. And I believe this in- 

 frequency is partly due to a radical difter- 

 ence in the [)oint of view which is normal 

 to the two professions, a difference which 

 is apt to be inborn in difTerent individ- 

 uals, but which is clearly emphasized and 

 cultivated by differences in the general 

 run of problems which are presented to 

 the architect and to the landscape archi- 

 tect respectively. 



Normally, the architect deals with ma- 

 terials which he is required to shape into 

 a result that shall be perfect, complete 

 and final, as it leaves his hand- — a thing 

 expected to remain thenceforth substan- 

 tially unchanged until its day is done. 



Normally, the landscape architect deals 

 with materials which he is required to 

 shape into a kind of organism that grows 

 and changes, and, with the aid of those 

 who control it, continues for an indefinite 

 time constantly to readapt itself to new 

 factors of its environment. A normal, 

 healthy-minded architect rebels at the 

 necessity of waiting for growth in land- 



