In the Graduate Schools

Instituting a striking innovation in the curriculum of the School of Architecture. Charles H. Lench, of New York, will conduct an "Architectural Clinic" on the business side of architecture in the large lecture room of Robinson Hall every Monday at 12 o'clock, beginning today. The course is voluntary and is open to any student, in the University as well as to interested professional architects.

Lench's theory is that architectural schools teach design, engineering, freehand, water colour, history, and other subjects pertaining to the profession of architecture, but leave out one fundamental in failing to teach a man how to be an architect. All of the fundamentals which determine the real character of a building are discussed and determined in the private office of the head of the firm. The draftsman, let alone the architectural student, is entirely unaware of what is going on. Mr. Lench is attempting in his course to take the student into the private office. He will use a case system and show what actually goes on between the architect and his client, his promoter, his engineer, his banker, his real estate agent, his renting agent, and the many other people with whom he must work out his architectural problem. A student will thus acquire a knowledge of a phase of architecture which is most important and in which he has had hitherto no instruction whatever.

Lench, who received his Bachelor's degree in architecture from Syracuse and did graduate work at Harvard, has been a successful commercial architect in New York and is the author of a book entitled "Promotion of Commercial Buildings."

Several prominent Boston architects are intending to take the course.