Title: ‘Except where herein otherwise directed’ - Building with legal documents in early 19th
century England
Name: Tilo Amhoff
Address: 93 Kingsgate Road, NW6 4 JY London, UK
Email: t.amhoff@ucl.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)79 0668 4479
Abstract: This paper investigates the changes in architectural practice following the introduction of
contracting in gross in early 19th century England, emphasising the role of legal documents in
building.
Word count: 4992 words
Biography: Tilo Amhoff is Lecturer in Architecture History and Theory at the University of Brighton
and PhD candidate and teaching fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture. His PhD research looks
at the notion of the plan in 19th and 20th century Germany. He is a founder member of Netzwerk
Architekturwissenschaft.
Acknowledgments: This paper is based on my ‘Adapting the architect’s products to capitalist building
production. The development of legal obligations, building specifications and working drawings in the
first half of the 19th century in England’ (unpublished master’s thesis, University College London, The
Bartlett School of Architecture, 2004). I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Adrian Forty for
his careful and patient support in the development of this research project, Katie Lloyd Thomas for
her interest in my work, and both for their encouragement to do something with it.
“To show every minute portion of a building by drawing is next to impossible, and would be more
laborious than useful, and therefore description in writing is resorted to, by which much labour is
saved, and the intentions of the architect more readily conveyed to the mind of the operative.”i
Introduction
This paper investigates the changes in architectural practice following the introduction of contracting
in gross for the execution of building work in early 19th century England. This particular new form
referred to two different agreements, either contracting for a whole undertaking by a single builder
who agreed to erect the whole of an edifice at a predetermined price and time, or contracting for the
work of a specific trade only.ii
The changes in contracting the building work are understood as changes in building practice, whose
material product would be the building. In a similar manner the building contracts are considered as
the material products of the architectural practice, including not only the working drawings, but also
the legal obligations and building specifications. The paper investigates the contract documents that
were to be produced in the office in order to build on site as evidence for a response of architectural
practice to the changes in building practice. It traces this process in the adaptation of the writings of
the legal documents to contracting in gross by comparing the specifications of John Soane’s building
contract for Tendring Hall of 1784 with the instructions and model specifications of the early 19th
century handbooks and practical guides.
The paper further establishes a relationship between the conditions that this form of contracting set
for the production of architecture and building and the methods of describing and defining a project
in advance. The specific interest is in the role of these legal paper documents in the building process
and the way they established, formed or transformed the social relations of building production. The
emphasis will be on the writing strategies of the building specifications. While their general history is
relatively well known, their methods and their exact language needs to be discussed in more detail.iii
From building by measure to contracting in gross
It is commonly agreed that the rise of the general contractor together with contracting in gross and
competitive tendering were the reasons for the proliferation of building documents and practical
literature instructing and describing good practice in early 19th century England.iv In contrast to
building by measure, in which the costs of the building were calculated by measure after its
completion, contracting in gross wanted to guarantee a fixed price for the whole undertaking in
advance; allowing the client to control the expenditure of construction, the contractor to make a
profit, and requiring the trades to compete for work.
In England the first to apply contracting in gross was the Barrack Department under the Direction of
the Ordnance Office for the erection of their Cavalry Barracks during the Napoleonic Wars (17931815). After arrears of more than seven years in the accounts of the department and the following
Military Enquiry (1806-1816) contracting in gross was introduced in order to correct and prevent any
abuse and irregularities, and for the better conducting and managing of its business. During the
general examination of the Parliament into the public expenditure and the administration of public
businesses a second enquiry, this time investigating the Office of Works (1812-1828), was initiated.
The reasoning was much the same, the extreme disorder in the accounts of the office and the
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ambition to better control the spending of public money. The same commissioners came to the
conclusion:
“that the method which appears the most prudent and economical for individuals to
adopt could not prove disadvantageous to the Public; and they are therefore inclined to
think, that (…) the system of contracts in gross might be found to be the least
expensive.”v
Therefore contracting in gross began to be employed in the execution of building work by the Office
of Works. This was part of an ongoing economical reform of public businesses in England, starting in
the late 18th century and introducing the principles of trade into its conduct. As a consequences of
contracting in gross the whole project needed to be set out in advance. This was done by means of
new forms of contract documents.
The architect’s response to contracting in gross, as evidenced in the two parliamentary enquiries and
in the contemporary literature, was a mixed one. On the one hand the new contracting system was
held responsible for the decline in the quality of building. The most cited reasons were competitive
tendering, leading to the employment of unknown builders, the use of cheap labour and materials to
increase the margins, and the fact that no architect could sufficiently describe a building project in
advance, either in drawing or in writing.
At the same time they were engaging with this new form of production. But while the main concern
of this type of contract were the costs, and the need to set out everything in advance was driven by
that requirement, the architect’s concern was with the quality of building. In this new context they
saw quality as the exact execution of the documents of the building contract or the intentions of the
writers of it. The legal documents were hence understood as the means to ensure quality. In that
respect better specifications meant better building. The wide range of technical literature, from
manuals, handbooks, and directors, to the practical guides for writing building specifications is
evidence of that.
The writing methods of the building specifications
In mid 19th century England various architects were concerned with the writing of guides, directors,
handbooks, and other practical building manuals. Well-known examples are Alfred Bartholomew’s
Specifications for Practical Architecture (1841), Thomas Larkin Walker’s An Essay on Architectural
Practice (1841), and Thomas Leverton Donaldson’s Handbook of Specifications (1859). Among other
things it was their ambition to instruct the writing of specifications that would not allow the
imagination to be exercised, was not ambiguous, and could not be mistaken in execution.
Bartholomew for instance described his motivation for writing such a guide as follows:
“When more than twenty years ago, I began this description of technical literature, I
found generally prevalent in it a course style of vagueness, which though itself little
imaginative, left ample room upon a thousand points for Builders to exercise
imagination as to the intentions of the writer of it.”vi
But can this really be traced in the written specifications? What I suggest is a comparative reading of
an older specification I identified, John Soane’s particulars for Tendring Hall of 1784, and the model
2
specifications of Bartholomew’s guide of 1841, in order to see in which way imagination could have
been exercised and the attempts to prevent this.vii The investigation of the writing methods of the
published building specifications will be drawing our attention to some of their contradictions and
predicaments.
In the first instance more general observations can be made; such as the proliferation of the number
of building documents contained within one contract describing the building in ever more detail, the
change from a description of the building to a description for building, and also the inclusion of the
conditions of building as a general clause at the start or end of the specifications for the individual
trades.viii In a second instance more detailed observations, such as the variety of writing methods for
preventing the imagination to be exercised, can be made.
One method was the inclusion of dimensions in the written specifications, making a change from the
vagueness and openness of words such as ‘sufficiently’ to the accurateness of dimensions, from the
experience of the workman to the execution of the documents. Soane (1784) could still specify “to
build the chimneys and to raise the shafts sufficiently above the roofing”, relying on the experience
and expertise of the workman. In contrast Bartholomew (1841) instructed to write: “To put to each
fire-place a 4-inch brick trimmer and a chimney bar of wrought iron ½ inch by 2 ½ inches, 18 inches
longer than the chimney opening, and properly corked at the ends.” He was demanding the exact
execution of the dimensions of the document.
Both, the particulars and the guide, employ the method of inclusion and exclusion. While on the one
hand the specifications were expected to be clear and simple they also needed to be comprehensive
on the other hand. The first ambition required the reduction of technical expressions. In contrast the
second advocated the inclusion or exclusion of every possible detail. But this seems like contradicting
ambitions. To me at least it is not obvious if Soane’s (1784) specification of bricks as “perfectly sound
and well burnt, and no samel or soft bricks” is less or more clear, is less ore more ambiguous then
Bartholomew’s (1841) specification of all bricks as “to be the very best new approved, hard-burnt,
square grey-stock bricks, free from breakage, and from all admixture of soft bricks, place-bricks, or
other inferior bricks.”
One of the last resorts in the language of the specifications was the use of superlative. From Soane’s
(1784) “completed and finished in a good substantial and workmanlike manner and with good and
sound materials of all sorts” to Bartholomew’s (1841) “to execute in the very best and in the most
workmanlike manner” and “all the bricks are to be the very best new approved”. But where would
one go from there? Would it make the building better when specifying materials and workmanship
as ‘the absolutely very best’?
The legal documents of the building contract
Contracts in gross were meant to consist of three distinct legal documents; legal obligations, building
specifications, and working drawings. Each one described and defined the building and its execution
in a unique way, using different cultural techniques such as writing, drawing or numbering. At the
same time the individual documents contained references to each other. The specifications for
instance referred to the drawings according to which the work was to be executed.
3
The legal obligations determined the general conditions of the building contract. They were inserted
as general clause at the beginning or end of a contract, repeating the conditions for each individual
part of the agreement. The lines of the working drawings represented the general layout of the
project, and the words of the building specifications described in writing the characteristics of the
materials to be used and nature of the work to be done. The numbers in both of them gave the
accurate dimensions of the building. The building specifications and working drawings were directly
related to each other, or as Thomas Larkin Walker the writer of the guide on best practice in drawing,
considered by himself as a supplement to Alfred Bartholomew’s guide on specifications, put it:
“The drawings and specifications are considered mutually explanatory to each other.”ix
Sometimes the building specifications would even double the working drawings, when for instance
the project defined by lines in the drawing would again be described in words, using methods of
pictorial description and concrete dimensions. But in general they would complement each other,
describing in writing what could not be shown in drawing and vies versa. The white spaces of each
document were to be filled by the descriptions of the other element of the building contract.
Although it was only the combination of all the legal documents that fully described the architectural
project before its execution, the elements of the building contract were distinct. The specific cultural
techniques were rarely mixed. There were exceptions, when drawings contained descriptions of the
materials to be used and instructions for the execution of the work, or the specifications contained
drawings of the project, but as general rule there was no writing on drawings and no drawing in
writings. As a consequence it was only the full set of legal documents that was considered able to
describe the project completely. This was sometimes also reflected in their material nature when
they were bound into one booklet for the building contract.
The materiality of legal documents was a prerequisite for giving any information, evidence or proof in
writing or drawing and therefore the very concrete base of their becoming a document. This would
allow them to be fixed, approved and authorized, as well as to travel between the different sites of
production, between the architectural office and the building site. The paper documents were able
to mediate the exchange of knowledge, to communicate over a distance and in the absence of the
architect.
The nature of the legal documents
According to James Elmes, the editor of the first collection of cases connected with the jurisprudence
of building A practical treatise on Architectural Jurisprudence (1829), a “contract, contractus, Latin, is
an agreement or covenant between two or more persons, with a lawful consideration or cause.”x The
building contracts were agreed between the client, the builder, and the architect. The architect had
to provide all the legal documents of the contract, the builder had to agree to perform according to
these documents, and the client to confirm to pay the agreed sum. The contract defined the project,
the price for the whole undertaking, and the time when the building was to be finished.
More importantly we have to keep in mind that the contract was an agreement and not only a pure
instruction, meaning that it was imposing reciprocal obligations. According to Glen W. Cunningham,
the contemporaneous authority on architectural jurisprudence and author of The law in relation to
the legal liabilities of engineers, architects, contractors, and builders (1868), a “contract or agreement
4
is composed of two parts, imposing reciprocal obligations upon each of the parties to it in order to
compel each to perform his part of the agreement; and it imports two considerations, that is to say,
the performance of the agreement on either side is the consideration for the performance of the
agreement on the other side.”xi In that respect the building contract was not one directional, and
therefore cannot be understood as a mere instruction, imposing requirements to one side of the
agreement only, the builder for instance. But it has to be interpreted as an agreement that was
simultaneously imposing obligations on all parties involved, including the architect and the client,
and that also lost its validation or stopped imposing obligations the moment one side stopped
performing their part of the agreement.
The documents of the contract described and defined the building prior to its realization. They were
used for bills of quantity, instructions to workmen, and also served as legal documents, and in that
respect were accounts of and for building; a bill, a description, and a contract. The documents were
the basis for costing, and been used by the quantity surveyor for calculating the costs of materials
and labour. They were specifications of and for building, describing the materials to be used and
work to be executed, as well as contract documents, written in the language of law, whose words
had different consequences. They could be accounted for.
The contract documents could be interpreted as operating in the different frameworks of accounting,
building, and law. A better understanding of the nature of a building contract and the requirements
of its legal documents will allow us to clarify the nature of the descriptions of buildings and their
execution. It was for instance necessary that, “all contracts or agreements made between the
guardians and any other person or persons relating to any act, matter, or thing, to be done in
pursuance of that act, should be reduced into writing and signed by the parties thereto.”xii
While the nature of the building contracts would demand the translation of the object and process of
building into writing, we know that building descriptions were not only in writing but also in drawing,
since the building and its execution was as much represented by lines as in words. In the context of
building contracts they would also be exposed to and understood in the nature of legal documents.
The terms of the contract for instance “need not, (…), be necessarily expressed in words; for if they
be clearly set out in a plan or drawing, signed by the architect, (…), such would be considered as
much an order in writing as if the whole of the details had been specified in words at length.”xiii
Since the logic of the legal documents requires the reduction of building to information on paper,
which can be given in different cultural techniques, drawn descriptions could become as much a legal
document as written ones. A signature would turn all building descriptions, from the legal
obligations, building specifications, to the working drawing into legal documents, part of the building
contract and agreements that could be enforced by a lawyer in front of a court.
“That if terms be reduced to writing and a man says that he will abide by those terms,
and will sign the agreement; that is what the case amount to as an authority,”xiv
So in addition to Brian Hanson’s argument in Architects and the Building World the authority of the
architect in building production was not only constructed through new working methods, but was
actually established through the signature and the consequent insertion of the documents of the
building contracts into a legal framework.xv
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The social relations of building production
For Linda Clarke a qualitative change in the social relations of building production occurred with the
end of artisan production and the beginning of contracting in gross, when by the 19th century the
contractor replaced the master and the wage labourer the journeyman. In Building Capitalism she
traces the change from feudalist to capitalist mode of production, from the division of labour in
artisan production to the social contradiction between labour and capital in contracting.
In her analysis of the process of urbanization she identifies the changes from building by measure to
contracting in gross as part of the transformations described above. She demonstrates that with the
new mode of production the role of all parties involved in building also changed, from the measurer
to the quantity surveyor for instance. She also notes the emergence of the architect as designer of
buildings as commodities.xvi
In the chapter on the fetishism of commodities Karl Marx describes in Capital how labour assumes a
social form the moment men begin to work for one another. But according to him the relations of
the producers are not presented to them as social relations between themselves, but assume a
fantastic form, namely that of a relation between the products of their labour. For Marx “the
relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social
relations between individuals at work, but as what they are, material relations between persons and
social relations between things.”xvii
This mirrors the architects complaints about contracting in gross, who were mourning the loss of the
personal relations with the familiar people in building production, such as the patron and the builder,
and expressing their doubts and anxieties about building with an unknown builder, or as they said, “a
builder of unknown character”. Contracting in gross and the process of competitive tendering would
introduce building to the logic of the market economy of capitalism. As one consequence the social
relations of building production would gradually change. The tradesmen employed were no longer
those well known, with the most experience or best reputation, but the ones with the lowest bid,
marking the beginning of what could be called material relations between architect, client, and
builder; that could also be described as professional and economic relations between parties.
It was also the particular legal nature of the building contracts that would turn the personal relations
between individuals into professional relations between parties; entering into a contract a person
would become a legal entity. In that respect contracting in gross established a particular kind of
relation between the parties involved, that of an agreement imposing reciprocal obligations,
separating between design and execution, and laying out the terms of the co-operation.
For Marx the co-operation of a greater number of wage labourers in the manufacture and the factory
for the production of a commodity under the leadership of a capitalist constituted the starting point
of capitalist production. Clarke has shown that a similar process can be observed with the rise of the
general contractor in building production and the changes in social relations that followed. For Marx
these relations appear yet again in another form.
“The connexion existing between their various labours appears to them, ideally, in the
shape of a preconceived plan of the capitalist.”xviii
According to him it was only the capitalist who had a preconceived idea and also interest in their cooperation, being the one who had an overview. In that respect it is important to note that the totality
6
of all contractual documents was also sometimes called a plan, such as John Soane’s ‘The Plan of the
new intended Mansion House’ (Tendring Hall, 1784). For Marx the co-operative character of the
labour process demanded the necessity for control, for a direct and constant supervision of the
individual workman, executed by a special kind of wage labourer. The new role of the architect
within contracting in gross could also be understood as that of the maker of plans in that sense,
connecting the various labours, and supervising their execution.
In contrast to Clarke my interest is therefore not primarily in the relations between capital and
labour, but between the architect and the workman. My evidence for their social relation comes
from the products of the offices, from the legal paper documents of the building contracts, which
established the relations of the parties involved. In addition to her I would like to demonstrate that it
was not only the social relations between the people involved in building production and their
individual roles that changed, but that also other actors in the form of legal documents intervened
and substituted for people and labour.
If we take the architects responses to contracting in gross seriously then we will have to notice that
one of the most common and serious concern was the anxieties of building with a stranger, and the
uncertainty of their character. Because of the unknown character that could no longer be trusted, at
least according to the architect’s point of view, the legal documents of the building contract became
ever more important. They were meant to compensate for the lack of trust, to prevent any abuse or
misconduct, and to secure the execution of the project to the satisfaction of the architect’s intention.
The function of the legal documents in building production
Contracting in gross altered the way of building from a process where the details of the construction
were set out while a building was still in progress, very often done by the workmen of the individual
trades, to one where a minute description of every aspect of the project had to be prepared by the
architects in advance of the execution of the work.
There were two main reasons for the production of comprehensive building descriptions in advance.
The first was the demand to calculate the exact price of building before its execution for contracting
in gross and the second the desire of architects to ensure the quality of building with this new mode
of production. Since the contractor had agreed to a fixed price and the execution of the contracted
work these descriptions were to be as accurate and comprehensive as possible. Every detail of the
project, its materials and the different types of labour were to be known in order to be included in
the calculation of the costs. This was the more economic reason for the comprehensive building
descriptions and the intended direct and concrete consequence of the new contracting system.
On the other hand the architects also expected that their products would prevent bad workmanship
and the decline in the quality of building. Therefore some of them were occupied with providing all
the necessary information for adapting the architectural practice to contracting in gross in their
practical manuals mentioned above. It is evident that the architects needed to gain a lot of the
traditional knowledge of the workmen in order to prepare all the details for the execution of the
work, formerly done by the individual trades. With the transfer of responsibilities in building came
also a transfer of knowledge. Much of the workman’s expertise was being transcribed in the building
manuals and their skills externally codified by the writings and drawings of the contract documents.
7
An embodied knowledge would become a discursive knowledge, prepared for a professional
practice. As a consequence the architects would have to gain more knowledge about building,
something that they might have left to the builder before, a builder that they would of course still
trust.
One could observe a shift from an architectural practice that was largely based on personal relations
and speech, to the practice based on professional relations and writing, a change from the trust and
reputation of the workman to the stringency of legal contracts, from the actual work on the building
site to the work in the architectural office, and from spending days or even weeks at the country seat
of the client to distant communication by means of legal documents. The nature of contracts and the
character of their distinct elements as legal documents was becoming ever more prevalent by the
19th century.
The problem of the uncertain character of the workman and the complaints about the decline of
excellence in English building were of course linked. With the anonymity of the competitive process
came the regime of the cheapest price and with it the demand to employ cheap labour and cheap
materials. This would replace the regime of a good reputation, honour and integrity for the quality of
work. The loss of personal relations within the building practice and the beginning of material
relations, forced the architects to become professionals within the development of this particular
economy. They were faced with the necessity of adopting their way of producing architecture, the
predominant site of production becoming the office. The investigated practical manuals for example
instructed the architects how their products were to be developed in order to be able to build within
this new economic system.
Conclusion
Despite the model specifications attempts for clarity, comprehension, and little room for imagination
they had to operate within the confinements of language. And as I have hoped to show with the
short examples at the beginning of the paper these limitations were not only a question of the
quality of the writing but of the capacity of writing itself. And that is not yet to talk about the
complications of reading them.
With the help of these minute descriptions of every aspect of the project the architects expected to
compensate for the loss of confidence in the quality of workmanship. But the writing of building
specifications without ambiguity was not only driven by the desire for the quality of building, but also
fuelled by an anxiety about the new professional relations, about the unknown builder, and by
economic realities based on competition. These were only just further enhanced by an anxiety about
an observed inability to describe everything in advance and the limitations of language.
As argued above the legal building documents constituted the architect’s authority on the building
site and substituted for its voice and presence at the same time. It can be observed that the legal
obligations and building specifications were therefore often written as direct verbal requests or
instructions for the execution of work. It was John Gelder who noted in Specifying Architecture that
two groups, the literate and illiterate people were both building. He further explained that the
illiterate were relying on oral description and tradition, while the literate were using written
descriptions and innovation. By the 19th century the second form was displacing the first. Since then
8
the legal documents became an ever more important in building production, and as a consequence
was their production.xix The legal obligations, building specifications and working drawings became
the material products of architectural practice, prepared in the site of the architectural production,
the architectural office, in order to build on the site of capitalist building production. The central
position of the architects within the process of preparation, exchange and execution of legal paper
documents and the set up of their products in the document based building practice, so I would like
to argue, provided the key in the establishment of their professional architectural practice.xx
As I have hoped to have demonstrated it was the change in building production and the changes in
the social relations which followed, from social to material relations, and the question of the
unknown character of the builder, that established the centrality of legal documents in building
production. But it seems that architects were merely making a virtue out of necessity when they
began to engage with the question of the quality of the contract documents. While traditionally
being more interested in design they had to address the new realities of building. In that respect
even the procedure that was originally held responsible for the decline in building and that was
motivated by the question of controlling the costs of building, namely the comprehensive and correct
contract documents, was used and understood by architects as means to ensure the execution of the
original design. But more then that the legal documents, so I would like to argue, operated as a
substitute for the architect on site. While Soane (1784) could still specify “as shall be directed”,
indicating further directions, most likely verbal instructions and outside the contract document,
Bartholomew (1841) would demand to write “except where herein otherwise directed”, immediately
referring back to the documents in question, eradicating any possibility of an outside. It were the
legal documents that were supposed to direct the building process.
i
Thomas Larkin Walker, An Essay on Architectural Practice, being an attempt to supply a guide for students at
their first entrance on the practice of architecture as a profession, (London: R.A. Sprigg, 1841), p. 4.
ii
The best account is still E. W. Cooney, ‘The Origins of the Victorian Master Builders’, in The Economic History
Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, (1955), pp. 167-176.
iii
In working drawings outline was recommended over shadows, and dimensions over scale drawings. All work
was to be clearly defined and explained in large scale detailed working drawings, and in a greater number of
those. In parallel to the development of the building specifications it was the ambition to produce working
drawings that, as Thomas Larkin Walker stated, “appeal to the understanding of the clerk of works and the
workman, and that nothing should be left undecided so as to allow their imaginations to be exercised, and
errors committed.”
iv
The most recent writings on building specifications by John Gelder, Katie Lloyd Thomas, and Maihri McVicar
all refer to that.
v
Parliamentary Papers, Report from the Select Committee on the Office of Works and Public Buildings, Sess.
1828, (446.), p. 5.
vi
Alfred Bartholomew, Specifications for practical architecture, preceded by an essay on the decline of
excellence in the structure and in the science of modern English building; with the proposal of remedies for
those defects, (London: John Williams and Co., 1846, [1841]), p. 11.
vii
John Soane Museum, Tendring Hall, Suffolk: survey, design and working drawings with record drawings for a
house and offices together with specifications, estimates and contract for Admiral Sir Joshua Rowley, 1783-89. I
would like the Joan Soane Museum and its archivists for helping me to locate these sources.
viii
There are a variety of examples in the RIBA Library and Archives, such as Georg Dance, Descriptions, (1769)
and Rickman & Hutchinson, Specifications, (1828). I would like to thank Katie Lloyd Thomas for sharing her
references with me.
ix
Thomas Larkin Walker, p. x.
x
James Elmes, A practical treatise on Architectural Jurisprudence; in which the constitutions, canons, laws and
customs relating to the art of building, are collected from the best authorities for the use of architects,
9
surveyors, landlords, tenants, incumbents, church wardens and ecclesiastical persons on general, (London: W.
Benning, 1827), p. 1.
xi
Glen W. Cunningham, The law in relation to the legal liabilities of engineers, architects, contractors, and
builders, including the law of contracts, arbitrations, masters and workmen, and combination or strikes,
(London: Atchley & Co., 1868), p. 1
xii
Glen W. Cunningham, p. 28.
xiii
Glen W. Cunningham, p. 31.
xiv
Glen W. Cunningham, p. 3.
xv
See Brain Hanson, Architects and the “Building World” from Chambers to Ruskin: Constructing authority,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
xvi
See Linda Clarke, Building Capitalism. Historical change and the labour process in the production of the built
environment, (London: Routledge, 1992).
xvii
Karl Marx, Das Kapital, (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1867), translated by Samuel Moore and Edward
Aveling for first English edition of 1887, Capital, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 44.
xviii
Karl Marx, Das Kapital, p. 203.
xix
See John Gelder, Specifying Architecture, a guide to professional practice, (Milsons Point: Construction
Information Systems Australia Pty Ltd, 2001, [1995]), p. 19.
xx
It might therefore not be by chance that the formation of John Soane’s architectural office coincided with the
commission for Tendring Hall (1784). He began employing apprentices that year, and stopped doing everything
by himself.
10