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Book Cover
Book
Author Johnston, George Barnett.

Title Drafting culture : a social history of Architectural graphic standards / George Barnett Johnston
Published Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, [2008]
©2008

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Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 WATERFT ART&ARCH  720.28040973 Joh/Dca  AVAILABLE
Description vii, 285 pages : illustrations ; 30 cm
Contents Introduction to drafting culture -- Drafting materials and manual training : Rouillion and Ramsey's Architectural details -- Drafting room journal : dialectics of the architect and the draftsman in Pencil points, 1920-1932 -- Drafting standards : architecture as a social service in the office of Frederick L. Ackerman -- Drafting conventions : Ramsey and Sleeper's Architectural graphic standards -- Epilogue. Drafted culture
Summary "Architectural Graphic Standards by 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 Standards first 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 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."--BOOK JACKET
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages [237]-280) and index
Subject Ramsey, Charles George, 1884-1963. Architectural graphic standards.
Architectural practice -- United States -- History.
Architects -- United States -- Social conditions.
Drafters -- United States -- Social conditions.
LC no. 2007039853
ISBN 9780262101226 hardback alkaline paper
026210122X hardback alkaline paper