architecture Archives - understand-culture

The architects’ fee scale

Die HOAI. Until 2019, German law set both minimum and maximum fees for architects and engineers. Charging below the minimum was not permitted. The justification, stated by the professional chambers, was that binding rates protect planners and clients from ruinous price competition that would endanger quality and safety.

The European Court of Justice struck the binding rates down on 4 July 2019, holding that they obstructed price competition contrary to the Services Directive. Germany had to be told by a foreign court that price is something to compete on.

The contract supplement

Der Nachtrag. In German construction contracting, work beyond the agreed scope is handled through a supplement — priced, documented and agreed before it is carried out. Deviation from the plan is itself a contractual act with its own paperwork.

Form follows function

The phrase is American, from Louis Sullivan. The building tradition that carried it furthest was German — the Bauhaus, and the functionalist architecture of the Weimar years.

Ornament removed, the structure left visible, the purpose of the thing made legible in its shape. Sachlichkeit as a building.

The nine phases

Die Leistungsphasen. German building projects run through nine defined service phases, from basic evaluation through preliminary design, permit planning, execution planning, tendering, construction supervision and final documentation. Each phase has a defined output and a defined share of the fee. The sequence is in the fee ordinance itself.

Open plan

American offices removed the walls, and then largely kept them off, through decades of well-documented complaints about noise and interruption. The argument that held the line was not about cost. It was that people who can see each other share more than people who cannot.

Standard construction terms

German construction runs on the VOB — a standard set of contract terms, technical conditions and award rules, maintained by a permanent committee of public clients, contractors and professional bodies. Most German building work is performed under the same document.

Who the subcontractor tells

Under German construction practice a subcontractor directs his notice of concerns to his own main contractor, not to the building owner. Notifying only the supervising architect is unreliable unless that architect is demonstrably authorised to receive such declarations.

The chain of responsibility is precise, and the courts have ruled on who counts as the right recipient.

The passive house

Passivhaus. A German building standard, developed in the early 1990s, specifying a house that needs almost no active heating — achieved through insulation, airtightness, triple glazing and heat recovery ventilation. The standard is defined by energy consumed per square metre per year. The building is designed backwards from the number.

Who may sign

German building applications, structural calculations, gas and electrical installations, and safety inspections must be signed by a person holding a specific qualification, entered in a specific register. The signature is not an approval of somebody else’s work. It transfers the liability to the person qualified to carry it.

Registering concerns

German construction law places a duty on the contractor: where he has concerns about the intended method of execution, about materials supplied by the client, or about the work of other trades, he must notify the client immediately and in writing, and preferably before starting. The provision is § 4 Abs. 3 VOB/B.

Doing so releases him from liability for defects arising from those points. Failing to do so leaves him liable for consequential damage he did not cause.

The obligation runs the wrong way for a contractor’s own interest, and it is the law.