Setting aside for a moment the art and science aspects of Architecture, with the entrepreneurial role and responsibility to its Clients, all Architect's encounter both risks and rewards which are measurable. From my eighty (80) or so design and construction dispute case assignments, as Expert Witness, Mediator and /or Arbitrator, it has been my experience that the chance of an Architect being drawn into such matters is highly probable once there is a Plaintiff Complaint.
According to contemporary thinking, Imhotep was the first Architect to be known by name, in recorded history. He was the designer of the monumental step-pyramid building for the Egyptian pharaoh Djoser including perhaps, the first known use of stone columns to support a building structure. Fast forward approximately 4,680 years. Today Architecture has become so much more than a single building. Present-day Architecture is the art, science, and entrepreneurial business of designing and constructing individual spaces, buildings, neighborhoods, communities, and municipalities to add greater value to societies' future growth and viability.
January 28, 2015, The Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach offered a public exhibit to highlight fifteen recent examples of "Contemporary Modern Architecture in Palm Beach". The time period of these works ranged from approximately 1954 through to 2015. Although some residences have as of yet been constructed, this sampling of designs represented the characteristics of the "International Style" of Architecture with typically "white" rectilinear forms, cantilevered construction, interior/exterior openness, steel, glass and concrete wall planes, horizontal linear elements, asymmetrical composition absent of ornamentation and flat roofs, which typify one of the predominant residential Architectural style choices by owners in Palm Beach. Current examples are interspersed throughout Palm Beach.
