PROBLEMS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE 647 



century to see to it that they themselves be the inaugurators of such 

 changes, holding them under the control of high artistic principles, 

 instead of allowing them to be forced upon the art from the outside 

 and to be dominated by wholly utilitarian and philistine influences. 



The next three problems are problems of professional relations 

 and practice. The architect and the engineer, the architect and the 

 craftsman, the architect and the contractor, how shall these stand 

 related in their joint task of realizing in permanent form the artistic 

 dreams, the structural conceptions, which the architect delineates on 

 the drawing-board? It is of course clear that their labors must be 

 pursued in a spirit of collaboration; the problem is to secure greater 

 cordiality, and above all a greater predominance of the artistic 

 feeling and sympathy in this collaboration. The precise measure of 

 relative independence, and hence of relative subordination of one to 

 the other, must be differently adjusted, the labor differently divided, 

 from what is now customary. There is too much engineering exacted 

 of the architect to-day for the best results, from either the artistic 

 or engineering point of view. He should not be required to know less 

 of engineering than he commonly knows under present conditions, 

 but to do less of it. If it were exacted of him only that he should 

 design constructive edifices, the specific engineering of which should be 

 turned over to experts working in collaboration with him, making 

 universal the procedure now possible only in the largest offices, he 

 would be freer to devote himself to this proper and special work 

 of artistic design. In like manner the artisan should have a freer 

 hand, and artisanship be encouraged as the handmaid of archi- 

 tecture. Something of this mingling of freedom and collaboration 

 exists in the relations of architecture to the sister arts of painting 

 and sculpture. It is a healthy and stimulating relation when the 

 responsibility is rightly apportioned. To determine the right balance 

 of apportionment is a serious but not an insoluble problem. To this 

 problem both individuals and organized bodies will no doubt devote 

 their best thought in the years to come. There is less promise of 

 successful coping with the inherent difficulties of the contract system. 

 which is not likely soon to be displaced. Both its vices and its virtues 

 are too strongly entrenched for easy dislodgment. Only the years 

 can decide whether the vices can be extirpated or must be endured. 

 It is not easy to forecast any line of action for the future in this 

 field of endeavor. 



The fifth of our problems is that of the education of the architect. 

 The nineteenth century has witnessed the disappearance of profes- 

 sional training by apprenticeship in law. medicine, theology, and 

 engineering, and the substitute in its place of the modern system 

 of analytical and theoretical studies in the class-room with practical 

 applications in the laboratory and office. Business and journalism 



