ETHICS AND ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICES

In this section we provide a theoretical and practical frame-work for critical examination of architecture / nethics nexus.

FIVE LENSE OF INQUIRY

Architectures purposefulness and social benefit Material production

Aesthetics
Architectures ideologies and rhetoric Praxis ; ethics that emerge in Architectural Practices

The Lens of Architectures purposefulness and social benefit

Its social purpose in support of beneficial programs to improve life, and its social purpose as a cultural communal construction.
For example, some intentions and purpose may be perceived to be beneficial or good (providing a day-care center) or harmful or evil (creating a genocide machine). Intentions, motives, and purposes of architectural undertakings may serve the political, social,and economic interests of democracies, despots, dictators, or military juntas

Ethical judgement may need to be reached in evaluating

architectural project intentions and purposes. Beyond intent and purpose, judgment of how well intentions and purposes are met through architecture is a measure of relative merit or goodness of the built result- goodness, in this sense, being the ethical virtue of work.

Architecture is grounded in human intention and purpose. It is, therefore, subject, as are other human affairs, to judgment with respect to its intentions: who and what purposes are served by those intentions are met. These are not only practical or utilitarian judgments, but also ethical ones.

Architects

are the one of the participating agents in that shaping, the ones who propose form and images, bringing to bear their specialized knowledge and skills of history, technology, construction, and aesthetics.

The key is that architects are enmeshed in the making of

the environment and are responsible for the critical and ethical consideration of project purposes, social benefits and decision processes.

I thought it best to pospone this until after I had treated the practical merits of the material out of which, when they are brought together, buildings are constructed with due regard to the proper kind of material for each part, until I had shown of what natural elements those materials are composed.
(Vitruvius, in the introduction to book II)

The Lens of Material production

Architecture is a material production

Material production uses resources upon which all persons and global ecologies are dependent. Those resources may be used well or wastefully; more than one society has made itself extinct due to desertification of its locale. This aspect of material production leads to a cosideration of the matter of construction materials themselves.

The term of material construction : proper, progress, perfection, appropriate, and ought to be are value terms that define the quality of excellence, or virtue

Knowing about materials and how to utilize them for various construction purposes in order to realize a design vision is another aspect of the special knowledge architects are expexcted to master. It constitutes a pertaining to material production.

virtue ethics,

The lens of aesthetics

The third lens is that of aesthetics: architectures relationship to art, its being an art, and its relationship to philosophy of art and aesthetics, the beautiful and the sublime, and human flourishing. This may be the most debated issue of ethics in architecture because for many it is the selfaware art fulness of architecture, the desire to make beautiful buildings, that differentiates architecture from mere building. In its role of giving form, beauty, image and meaning to societal expectations, aspirations, or needs, we look to discern architectures aesthetic embodiment of ethical force.

In all cases, aesthetics and beauty matters : either as art production per se, or as a beneficial contribution to human happiness or flourishing. Thus, a buildings aesthetic embodiment is a part of its virtue, its ethical value.

The architect is responsible ethically for knowledge of the theoritical and historical sources of form, beauty, and appearance, and for possessing the skills and creativity to generate them.

The Lens of Architectures ideologies and rhetoric

Design and process rhetoric and ideologies, which speak to architectures purposes, aesthetics, and methodologies, define the discipline. Understanding these definitions and acting from them comparise another basic frame work for considering architectures ethics.

The Lens of Praxis

Praxis : 1a. Action, practice;spec. the practice of a technical subject or art, as opp. to or arising out of the theory of it;2. an example or a collection of examples used for practice in a subject (SOED)

This lens is keyed to praxis : Architecture as a practice or a collection of practices, an art. The pratitioner is obliges to master the discipline : its history and theory; its technological foundations, its order of beauty and formal conception, the order of designing and speculation that is part of architecture, its impact on human well-being, processes of community involvement and contribution, and its representational and symbolizing capacity.

Virtue is used here in the sense that MacIntyre has recaptured from aristotle : that of the virtous praxis of a discipline thet defines its content, quality, and ends, and that therefore can judge its excellence. This applies to both the actions of practice and the resultant works of practice