The Architect and the Law
Multiple and growing responsibility“Contractors must perfectly execute the undertakings to which they have subscribed, such that they must ensure all vices, even small, their incidence or the moment they are discovered, thus ‘whether they represent an inadequacy or a non-conformity, as minor as they may be, of the completed work or during performance of the specifications, plans, and so on,’ except to demonstrate that the proper execution of the undertakings was made impossible by force majeur. The same may be said of architects,” the authors write at the beginning of the first chapter in the third part, which is devoted to the architect’s responsibility. This last point in no way limits the ten-year guarantee but also applies, in the context of contractual responsibility, to their responsibility when the work is accepted. As regards extra-contractual responsibility, it may also be invoked based on Articles 1382, 1383 et seq. of the Belgian civil code. In other words, architects place their work in the public sphere and if harm results from their personal actions following an error, they will be held responsible. Urban and spatial planningThe fourth part, called “Les autorisations administratives et l’architecte” focuses on rules on the law of urban and spatial planning with which the architect must comply, regulations that continue to evolve every year concurrent with this growing complexity in the practise of the profession. “By virtue of Article 17 of the regulation on conduct established by the national Council of the Belgian Architects’ Association, the architect ‘shall ensure compliance with all legal and regulatory provisions that apply to the mission in which he has been entrusted’,” the authors note. “Architects must thus be sure that it is possible to build on the land, become familiar with all the planning and regulatory constraints, direct their clients requests depending on the urban constraints, ensure compliance with all constraints imposed by administrative authorities, and so on. The architects’ responsibility may be triggered because of various failures in connection with the planning rules. Their task is not facilitated by many amendments to the decrees or regulations that regularly appear in different bodies of regional rules.” |
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© 2007 ULi�ge
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