Internally Yours: Your AIBC Intern Architect Rep to Council Blog

Rattenbury

If I'm going to study for the Oral, I might as well start with the beginning. So I'm reading, again, Don Luxton's article "Taming the West: The Thirty-Year Struggle to Regulate the Profession in British Columbia", in Architecture Canada, Vol. 23 (4), 1998 - this blog is based on my second re-reading.

And I can see that the beginning has not ended.

Starchitects like Sir Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando would not be able to practice architecture independently here in BC, even if they were the best living architects in the world. Just checked up on Arthur Erickson. He is listed as an honourary architect; honourary membership does not confer rights of architectural practice.

British Columbia, in its early days, was a power struggle of two prime cultures - British and American. Each culture had its way of producing an architect: the British had its apprenticeship system; the American favoured the educational - many of its leading architects were educated at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.

While architects with formal architectural training had been pushing since 1891 for legislation to limit entry into the profession, the government was not into creating such a monopoly, limiting as it were the potential of the "self-made man". A sense of freedom and opportunity was part and parcel to the attraction and development of this wild west.

Perhaps because the legislative assembly at the time was sitting in the glorious halls designed by an uncredentialed 'architect' was why it was reluctant to introduce restrictive legislation? Twenty-five year old (!) Francis Rattenbury of Leeds, England, an architect by apprenticeship, won the competition for the design of the Parliamentary Buildings in 1892. He also designed the Empress Hotel in Victoria and the Court House (now Art Gallery) in Vancouver. He was the president of another 'architectural association', one which was in competition with the AIBC to be the 'one' BC architectural association. It registered members as architects without educational credentials.

Perhaps many in this now obsolete 'rogue' club were more accurately builders. Perhaps a few in fact experienced master builders or apprenticed architects.

Perhaps we do not allow the over-qualified (foreign starchitects), nor under-qualified (anyone), to instantly practice architecture here today - all need to have the precise pieces of paper in hand, pay the yearly fees, take the CES courses. But will the AIBC ever recognize and, indeed, celebrate Rattenbury as a legitimate architect, by virtue of his "portfolio" of works and pioneering contribution to public architecture in BC?

Or would such a recognition mean that the AIBC acknowledges the legitimacy of other roads to successful and outstanding architectural practice in BC - and therefore the Institute simply cannot by virtue of its Act, the foundation of its being?

Every year at the AIBC AGM, there are moving descriptions of the lives of architects who had passed away that year. All in attendance at the meeting stand for a minute of silent remembrance and respect. However, Rattenbury, murdered in 1935, for years rested in an unmarked grave in Bournemouth, Dorset, England. It was only just one a year ago that a gravestone was put up, funded by a family friend. (Source: Telegraph 19 Nov 2007).

posted by Lisa @ 8:00 PM