The solution is to get yourself into a position of being the person making those moral decisions. This could mean that you some day become partner in your current firm, OR that you eventually start your own firm, OR that you partner with a developer, OR that you run for the local zoning board... my point is that though it seems like you don't have much power now, you could soon get yourself into a position of authority.

I've realized over the years that in order to make the greatest social impact, you actually have to get out into the community and set an example by being involved and making things happen. most people are curious about what it is we do, and it's easier to open their eyes (and yours) when you're working along side them.

There are many things one can do with an architect's skill set that can make a positive impact aside from making buildings - and there are many people out there who would love your help and expertise.

my advice? volunteer. find an entrenched local organization that does something you think is great and volunteer. don't go in trying to change things - just learn as much as you can and talk to people. you never know what may come of it.

I don't know if professional codes of ethics constitute morality, but I thought I'd at least post the link:

http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/documents/pdf/aiap074121.pdf

If referencing zoning boards, santa monica, there is another (somewhat more extensive) code:

http://www.planning.org/ethics/ethicscode.htm

more firms need to make moral or ethical decision-making a part of their mission statement and guiding principles. "do no harm" should be a fundamental requirement for practice. if you feel strongly about morality or ethics in architecture, you should at least ask the question of the firm when you are interviewing and be sure your morality is aligned with theirs. (some firms may not see greenfield development as harmful; others will.) a good recipe for dissatisfaction is feeling like a cog at the will of unethical decision-makers.

Planning ethics code.... *snicker*. You and I both know that means almost nothing, urbanist!



Perhaps I'm grossly simplifying this...

But I think this notion might fall under the loose concept of "the myth of the masterbuilder."

I think the only time architects are actually responsible for this kind of immoral behavior is when they intentionally fulfill those through legal action -- i.e., variances, lawsuits.

But... when it comes to the actual building taking place, there are multiple parties responsible with some being more responsible than others.

If we're talking about tract development and sprawl... well, this is the chain of command:

U.S Department of Interior, State Government
--> Makes land available for development

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
--> Develops basic roads and flood control

Local Government (planners, economic development)
--> Approves land subdivision and parceling

Developer
--> Arrange preliminary site development, financing, improvements

Buyer
--> Purchases lot, decides use

Developer
--> Contracts and develop's clients wish

Planner
--> Approves basic land use, development, site considerations

Architect
--> Provides designs and documentation, oversees contractor

Contractor
--> Builds developed property to specification

Interior architect/designer (if necessary)
--> Preps and finishes structure for "use"

If anything, architects are fairly low on the chain when it comes to the overall progression of land to developed land. The "myth of the masterbuilder" suggests that the architect should be responsible for everything.

However, it takes quite a collection of individuals with their own varying weight and responsibility to make development come into fruition.

You'd only be morally responsible if you're one of those architects who builds megamansions on pristine mountain sides-- in which case, you end up having to do 95% of the work normally done by other people.

Unicorn,

I didn't say members of either profession are too good at following their respective codes.. they probably aren't, but they do exist, and they do represent a considered system of morality.

btw, I actually did get somebody debarred once with the APA.. it is possible.

also, morality in professional conduct isn't just about the type of projects you work on and the solutions you recommend. It's actually (mostly) about how you work. By professional morality, I'm more talking about (all too common) breaches such as breaching Chinese walls during competitions, fraudulently gaming RFP and other competitive bid processes (especially where internal firewalls are in place), lying in regulatory submissions and testimony (including EIS greenwashing), mis-reporting or lying on billing timesheets (as presented to the end client), gerrymandering work between offices and legal entities for the explicit purpose of violating contractual EEOC procurement requirements, defaulting on payments to subs when you have, in fact, been paid by the end client, failing to disclose material errors in drawings or specifications to clients upon discovery (hoping they won't figure it out), and that type of thing.

I remember back in school one of our cultural classes focused on works by Albert Speer and Fritz Ertl (Auschwitz). I think the lesson was lost to most of the students...

When you speak of morality in architecture, do you refer to individual morality of each professional, or a collective one? Last I checked, there was not a single unbuilt project in history of mankind that was not completed due to a lack of a willing designer.

In tough times like these, I could see a single architect refusing to work on Obama's death camps, but someone else would gladly take such project.

In short: there is no collective morality in Architecture.

also, urbanist's last post covers issues of ethical conduct within the profession pretty well. It's a mixed bag at best, just like everything else in life.

"Architects are pretty much high-class whores" - PJ












"Obama's death camps" ..... am in the wrong forum!?!?!?!??

Morality of the capitalist markets trumps all else. The naive architectural student morality means dick to speculative building practices that feed most of the profession.
If you insist, drop out and start with zero. Can you compromise your comfort zone and ferocious consumer appetite?

I think it is very easy to comment as a cynic here. The harder task is how to face the question raised.

To the extent that not all architectural projects serve the developer's bottom-line there is hope. Furthermore, there are also many decisions that demand an architect's skills and dispositions to improve life as a whole--decisions and small projects that do not require the act of buildings per se.

So the dilemma only occurs if and only if one must see the ethical aim achieved in the architectural work one does--and in no where else--for the developer. But this is untrue. It is possible to design luxury condos in the week for the developer and still maintain one's moral aspiration to serve the public beyond the scope of one's professional work. Personally, I don't think one's moral aspiration needs to stand or fall with what one does in the context of a profit-centered practice.

The example of 'death camps' is a little extreme; I think in that case one has to leave the practice than to be an architectural 'Eichmann'.

I don't know how or when this 'all-or-nothing' moral mentality turned into the foundations of our common architectural-moral intuition...Might be a 'modern' phenomenon. Not all for-profit developers' projects are bad; some might look bad but in their daily use there are nonetheless windows for betterment. Increasingly, there is a greater social awareness even among the most hard-core developers such that it is no longer in vogue to maximize profits at the expense of the environment or society.

It is not possible to use 'do no evil' or the Precautionary Principle in architecture because every project--paper, developer's or high architecture--is uncertain and involves unknowable and unintended consequences. Every design is more or less an experiment. Hence the only thing that the architect can find assurance is this: is one willing to be responsible for one's design? I think if your answer is 'yes', then whatever you design--whether casinos or speculative housing, is going to fulfill your moral aspirations despite how it is practically used in everyday life. In all possible sense, this is all you can be responsible for as the designer.

So there is hope. But this is a very different kind of 'hope' in vogue today. It is a kind of concrete hope you are able to shape, express and develop in your responsible commitments for your designs.

Read David Watkin, also Charles Jencks wrote an interesting article in Architectural Design about morality and architecture and how architectural movements evolve...

Basically history is full of moralizing architects... Every architect thinks they know what is good or bad and maybe that is also reflected in the time and place and how architecture develops broadly... So morality is not a static thing... Everybody has theirs, and architects moralize all the time...

What Jencks does is basically map out architectural history and illustrate how architectural movements and how design evolves is basically driven by different moral positions... Like politics, each individual has their *own* morality... Idea or vision about what architecture *should* be...

And what is the predominant movement changes, throughout architectural history, it shifts and ebbs and flows and evolves like branches of an evolutionary tree...

for me an ethical grounding is more valuable than 'morality': less based on bad/good and more based on balanced consideration of consequences.

tom spector's book 'the ethical architect' is a great starting place for considering our ethical challenges and opportunities.

the issue of morality or ethics in architectural design is a part of why it seems arch education should ground theory/approach more in the nitty gritty details of practice and build a better transition to practice from design education

design does matter and sometimes the status quo is ethically questionable -- but even so, if it is the status quo, then to successfully challenge it means having a workable alternative -- otherwise no one will listen

I disagree. The presumption that there is something 'workable' already prejudiced the issue. Perhaps there is nothing 'workable', for example in the case of the death camps raised earlier, and in this case, the architect must walk away.

Many of the posters here mentioned the idea that in architecture, there has been lots of moralizing discourse. This may be true. However in practice, what usually occurs is usually the diametrically opposite: designs are couched in aesthetic appeal, technical ('green') appeal, and specious social & cultural beneficial claims, etc. These are often reinforced by equally specious tech spreadsheets informing us of its suggested 'performance' or 'performative' coefficients, all the while distracting from the questions of performance for whom and for what and why!

In this context, to even suggest the ethical in design only promises you an indifferent silence if not outright dismissal. There are of course cases where ethics is more salient than others. But in every other day to day projects the ethics of design tends to become conflated with professional ethics, and I am unsure if this is all there is in the ethics of design.

correct. This is 'Architects Gone Wild'.

Now show us some tit.

@stationeryMed: "But in every other day to day projects the ethics of design tends to become conflated with professional ethics, and I am unsure if this is all there is in the ethics of design.

You said 'ethics' three times in the same sentence, and thus left me feeling confused. Should I cheer for cowboys or the Indians?

Ha! You used 'the' twice in your sentence, should I be confused as well?

The 'ethics' I referred to is not a stand alone word. Ethics of design is different from professional ethics, hence, there are only two major use of ethics in what you have quoted.

@stationery: you need placeholders then. ethics of design=bloods, professional ethics=crips. Therefore:

"But in every other day to day projects the bloods tends to become conflated with crips, and I am unsure if this is all there is in the bloods."

Still not cohesive enough to make it into Architectural Digest.

Also, I used 'the' once in two separate sentences.

i don't know stationarymad, while in the case of death camps the only option is to walk away, in everyday practice I think there are opportunities to be more ethical without being forced into drastic alternatives. But in my experience doing so is like a perk. If you choose to be forthright in an instance where that may not be the firm's typical response, or you plainly admit fault, or you choose to challenge a premise b/c it is out of line with the objective, but no one wants to tell the client or principal that what is needed is a change of perspective, or you choose to report time accurately when their is pressure to massage man hours or any number of other examples -- you can do it, but you need to deliver at a level high enough that being more forthright than is typical is tolerated. It is a perk extended to you for performance, in my experience. Thus my comment, when people are not in a position to perform very well in some capacity coming out of school, they are more likely to go along to get along b/c it is their most valuable currency.

Of course, perhaps in this economy that is all out the window anyway.

I don't disagree on being forthright about certain issues in the workplace. But I think there are two points that ought to be addressed. One, the idea of that being ethical is also consequentially meritorious (and beneficial). And two, the idea that given the practicalities of practice right now (read 'crisis'), ethics of design can be superceded by an ethic of survival.

I suppose it is fair to say that being ethical should have nothing to do with receiving tangible rewards. It is nice to be rewarded for being ethical; but the state of being rewarded should not be the governing motive for being ethical.

On the other hand, if ethics is a variable practice that changes with the economic climate--that is, in good times we talk ethics and in bad times we return to a state of nature of all against all--then it is not ethics we are talking about but a kind of survivalist instincts. In fact, this is a survivalism tainted with hypocrisy.

I don't know about fresh-out-of-school being more easy-going compared to more seasoned practitioners...Sometimes, one is more cautious because one is simply inexperienced. In other times, one upsets the apple-cart because one does not know which is the sacred cart. In any case, I think ethics of design is some kind of knowledge that permits one to examine and evaluate what you have just shared; and if so, then what you have just shared cannot be ethics of design but a kind of forthrightness in practice that happens to be rewarding at the same time (in your experience).