Drafting Culture

by Johnston, George Barnett

• ISBN13: 9780262101226
• ISBN10: 026210122X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-09-30
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

Winner, 2009 Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SESAH) Publication Award. Architectural Graphic Standardsby Charles George Ramsey and Harold Reeve Sleeper, first published in 1932 (and now in its eleventh edition), is a definitive technical reference for architects-the one book that every architect needs to own. The authors, one a draftsman and the other an architect, created a graphic compilation of standards that amounted to an index of the combined knowledge of their profession. This first comprehensive history of Ramsey and Sleeper's classic work explores the changing practical uses that this "draftsman's Bible" has served, as well as the ways in which it has registered the shifts within the architectural profession since the first half of the twentieth century. When Architectural Graphic Standardsfirst appeared, architecture was undergoing its transition from vocation to profession-from the draftsman's craft to the architect's academically based knowledge, with a concomitant rise in social status. The older "drafting culture" gave way to massive postwar changes in design and building practice. Writing a history of the architectural profession from the bottom up-from the standpoint of the architectural draftsman-George Barnett Johnston clarifies the role and status of the subordinate architectural workers who once made up the base of the profession. Johnston's account of the evolution of Ramsey and Sleeper's book also offers a case study of the social hierarchies embedded within architecture's division of labor. Johnston investigates what became of the draftsman and of drafting culture, and asks-importantly, in today's era of digital formats-what price is exacted from architectural labor as architecture pursues new professional ideals.

Author Biography

George Barnett Johnston is Associate Professor in the College of Architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vi
Introduction to Drafting Culture	p. 1
Drafting Manuals and Manual Training	p. 9
Rouillion and Ramsey's Architectural Details
The Manual Training Movementwt	p. 13
Louis Rouillion and Charles G. Ramsey	p. 20
The Mechanics Institute: An Aristocracy of Accomplishment	p. 30
Reading Architectural Details	p. 38
Drafting Room Journal	p. 53
Dialectics of the Architect and the Draftsman in Pencil Points, 1920-1932
Architect-Draftsman Relations before World War I	p. 56
Pencil Points: The Journal of the Drafting Room	p. 62
Culture in the Drafting Room	p. 65
The Division of Architectural Labors	p. 74
"The Drafting-Boards Are Covered with Empty Smocks"	p. 86
Drafting Standards	p. 91
Architecture as a Social Service in the Office of Frederick L. Ackerman
Ackerman's Intellectual Affiliations	p. 95
Experiments in a New Order	p. 110
Office Standards	p. 134
Drafting Conventions	p. 139
Ramsey and Sleepers Architectural Graphic Standards
Drafting History, 1930-1932	p. 143
Unpacking Graphic Standards	p. 155
Customs of Practice	p. 177
Epilogue	p. 209
Drafted Culture
Revised Editions	p. 212
Draftsmen Organize	p. 220
Names and Wages	p. 224
"Who's Going to Sit at All Those Drafting Tables?"	p. 229
The Ebb and Flow of Muffled Voices	p. 235
Notes	p. 237
Index	p. 281
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