An Architect's Guide to Construction

Tales from the Trenches Book 1

After more than 35 years "in the trenches" as an architect, specialist consultant and now quality director for a large North American construction company, Brian Palmquist has written An Architect's Guide to Construction in order to share a balanced wealth of knowledge and experience about the construction phase of building projects. Considering both the consultant and contractor perspectives, he uses 70 true tales to illustrate many of those moments in the building construction phase that confound and confuse designers, builders and their clients. He proposes practical solutions in straightforward language and illustrations targeted to students, interns and young practitioners as well as to experienced professionals. Heavily illustrated with more than 200 diagrams, charts and useful forms, the book uses its 70 tales to introduce practical ways to design and build more efficiently, based on just four principles and three simple Internet-based toolsets. An Architect's Guide to Construction concludes with an invitation to link to a freely available sample project on the Internet, illustrating Palmquist's approach. The reader is provided with detailed instructions and invited to "...borrow what you will, challenge what you disagree with and contribute what you think makes your approach better."