The Architect's Handbook of Professional Practice Update 2005 (Architect's Handbook of... by The American Institute of Architects and Joseph A. Demkin

The Architect's Handbook of Professional Practice Update 2005 (Architect's Handbook of...

Features

Cover Type: Hard Cover with 192 pages

Published by: Wiley; Bk&CD-Rom 2005 Update edition April 7, 2005

Written in: English

ISBN 10 Number: 0471719374

ISBN 13 Number: 978-0471719373

Book Dimensions: 11 x 8.5 x 0.9 inches

Weighs: 1.2 pounds

Product Description
The third companion volume to the Thirteenth Edition of The Architect's Handbook of Professional Practice provides architects and others working in the architectural community with new information on important issues affecting day-to-day operations, emerging business trends, and the latest AIA contract documents. This easy-to-use reference is divided into three sections:

Practice reports -- Read real-world reports from practitioners, including a survey of client decision makers in the higher education sector describing how they perceive services performed by architects. Discover how firms have successfully applied strategic planning. Sharpen your project management skills by learning from actual management mistakes. Learn how to effectively market design services on the Internet.
Practice topics -- Learn practical techniques for developing leadership skills and team building. Update your knowledge of how to select environmentally preferable products and how to use digital technology to perform building surveys. Gain an understanding of project financing, land surveying, LEED certification, and urban design services.
AIA contract documents -- Examine new AIA documents, including agreements for design-build services and several scope documents for use with the B141 Standard Form of Agreement Between Owner and Architect. Update your files with the accompanying CD-ROM containing samples of all existing, revised, and new AIA contract documents.

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Book Info
Definitive guide to architectural practice for almost a century. Now the 13th editions brings that experience to the cutting edge of the profession with vital information to help architects manage the change from product-based practices to those are knowledge-based and service-oriented. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: The Architect's Handbook of Professional Practice (Hardcover) This book is an impressive accomplishment, admittedly. It is a vast amount of information, very thorough, complete, and seems to cover every aspect of professional practice for an architect. I have other editions of this book back to the 1958 copy, and they are fairly extraordinary records of the changes in the profession. The failures of this book are to some extent caused by its subject matter. Architectural practice has changed in the last decade for some firms, and this book admirably tries to reflect and analyze that change -- although this probably holds true for a very small number of firms. If you're a partner at Skidmore Owings and Merrill and trying to broadly envision where practice is heading, hey this book is perfect for you. But I imagine many firms are not going to have that much use for re-examining the nature of the "client" or "project," a lot of this material would be better served by smaller (cheaper) specialized books. It's an ambitious goal to attempt a comprehensive overview of architectural practice but its editing doesn't rise to the occasion. In between interesting insights and clear explanations of practice topics you really can't find elsewhere, you find some seriously clunky essays and information that is comically useless. For example, consider this gem in an essay on architecture and the web: "Email is a personal, direct connection to the Internet. You can send messages, attach drawings, and communicate instantly across the globe with a few clicks of the mouse. Email is much like regular mail. You send mail to particular addresses, and they write to you at yours..." Okay, this for a book published in 2001. Not 1981, but 2001. Are they also going to explain what a telephone thingy is on my desk, or what I'm supposed to do with this fax machine here? It might have been useful to have a page about email's legal status, or how a firm should set policies about email, but what we've got here is a page long description for someone who's been living under a rock and has no idea what email actually IS. Although this is simply one minor example, it is the kind of thing that makes this book wildly uneven and screaming for a competent editor. For the price of this book I think we deserve more. Comment | | (Report this)

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Updated on 6-4-2008.