Proposal: Architectural design companies increasingly recognize that time spent on management is not at the expense of their production and there are always better ways to organize business. Although architects have long placed a traditional emphasis on quality, quality management is still a new concept for the majority of architectural design companies, which have to organize relatively more complicated operations nowadays to meet their clients' expectations. This study aims to understand how architectural design companies define quality and explores the extent to which Total Quality Management (TQM) principles like continual improvement, employee involvement, customer satisfaction and others can be pertinent in these companies. Adopting a qualitative research strategy, the authors interviewed with the owner-managers of 10 widely-recognized architectural design companies of different size in Istanbul. The results from the content analysis of semi-structured interview data suggest that i) TQM principles cannot be directly applied in architectural design companies without an appropriate translation; ii) special characteristics of design services are important to explain quality-related perceptions of owner-managers; iii) the owner-managers feel the pressure from the changing internal and external environmental conditions, however few of them adopt a systematic and documented approach to quality management. Architectural design offices which aim to establish a quality management system can benefit from this study to understand potential problem areas on their road.

This paper investigates construction systems of historical buildings in Azerbaijan-Iran by comparing and classifying their architectural elements in detail. Mithrava Mosque in Binab-city and Forty-Column Palace in Qazvin-city are presented as case studies that illustrate Azerbaijan timber architectural traits according to its style. The plans, sections and other technical data have been presented for evaluation of Azerbaijan timber constructions as an architectural style according to their special factors. The plans and all details of exemplary figures are presented based on field survey after controlling all the mentioned plans that are documented in heritage and cultural organization of eastern Azerbaijan in I.R Iran. There is a historical review of Azerbaijan timber architecture extending to 3000 years ago, covering Urartian, Maday and Safavid dynasties before attending to the technical details of construction methods in this paper. Then, important construction elements are analyzed in detail by their plans and sections that are documented on field survey.