Having read the recent article on whether or not architects should reject commissions/boycott competitions run by unethical clients, I got to thinking about the topic on a wider level. I can't help but think that in some way we as architects always compromise on morals when ever we agree to work for a client.
I'll try to keep this as brief as possible, but several things have occurred to me while reading this. Let's start at the most basic level of our architectural service. On a general level - that being the majority of commissions - buildings are required by those who can afford to have a building built. This is not going to be your average guy. This is a guy/company who has risen to the top; has acquired enough capital to commission a bespoke environment suitable to their own vision of how life should be lead. In the early days of recent architecture you could point at Fosters and praise them for their 'social' work spaces: the positioning of managers within the same open-plan areas as the workers. A forward thinking social architect for a company with a similar outlook.
However this turned out to be a bit of a red herring, exemplified not least by Foster's practice itself where the old PR line of 'he has a desk like everyone else' is at best disingenuous. Invisible barriers pervade and, from experience working there myself, employees are forbidden (I use that term deliberately) from approaching him on the rare occasion that he should descend from his penthouse and mix with the masses.
Architecture, then, can be seen to be a service to those better off than the average Joe. (simply by definition in these over-populated days where there are more people than land-area for individual housing can satisfy and supply is made more expensive due to over-demand). We are by our nature condoning a inheritance-based society where the work of one individual can exempt the next in line from having to contribute as much to society due to passed-down wealth. Personally, I believe inheritance should be capped for this very reason, but by designing architecture for those who can afford it I am implicit in their flourishing.
We are also in a relatively rare position. Our professional acts are both creative and economic. By investing our creative acts into a building we become part of the politics that sees that building come to reality. Yet in order to flourish ourselves - and preferably reach a stage where we can influence the politics through careful manipulation of spatial hierarchies etc - we require the capital gained only from servicing these existing politics.
This leaves us in an awkward position. Do we work from the inside with a view to a change or protest from the outside? Have there really been any great buildings built without the suffering of others - either directly through slave labour etc or indirectly through the manner in which the funds for the project were amassed? Can such a physical feat as a landmark building, which requires such a concentration of money and effort, ever occur without compromising on the 'norm' for these factors?
Some say - within the article - that to work for ethically questionable clients is to to try to change things from the inside. A kind of surreptitious act of good, flying beneath the radar of the evil-doers who finance the project. I'm unsure as to whether this is arrogance or well-placed faith. I'm erring on the side of arrogance. There is no doubt that Albert Speer's architecture did, if nothing else, have a commendable purity in it's phenomenological grandness (I'm not trying to be wordy, it's just the most succinct way to describe it). Yet the regime in which he realised his designs - and whose public image he was shaping - was the most horrific of recent generations. Is building for unethical clients really doing anything then? Is giving good design simply aiding the propaganda machine which seeks to convince the masses that it is the 'right' politic. Is it simply showing that this approach to society can result in successful design? Or are the architects somehow diluting the negative effects of such a regime through improving the public realm?
I don't like to reference Speer - at least for the Godwin's law - but it seems an appropriate extreme in this case. I have also worked (albeit briefly) on CCTV and have an option soon to work on a project in Abu Dhabi. My personal morals are starting to come into the frame when taking on work (I am still a student). I am not naive: I understand that architecture is a business and businesses blossoms under those with the most cash. But I think that if we as a profession start to question the morals of working for unethical clients, we have to look right down the chain at every client and realise that, in all probability, those with enough money to commission a building are in some way (either through propagating a culture of unearned wealth or gaining wealth at the expense of others) unethical.
It is also worth mentioning that I am aware that this is a symptom of capitalist culture. I am neither for or against this - I honestly haven't learned enough to make an informed decision. But I will say this: from what I know, communism oppresses equally and produces great architecture at the expense of many, capitalism oppresses few greatly and also produces great architecture. Both - in their current state - are surely harming the societal ideals that we aspire too. I only fear that, in order to fulfil these ideals, we have to acknowledge that architecture in its current form cannot play a role. If we are prepared to get on a soapbox and proclaim our condemnation of a few, we run the risk of hypocrisy unless we recognise that any system that allows the investment in such a concentration of physical stock and labour will result in the suffering of others.
The title was an afterthought after writing the text. Personally, I would broadly define an ethical act as one where - should you change places with the other party - you would have no complaints.
i think that it is sometimes hard to be 100% ethical when you are at the mercy of someone else. Unfortunately we live in a society that has an economic system (capitalism) which is based on the explotation of people/things.
there's actually a debate that will be airing on CNN on July 9 about this topic. it's between cameron sinclair, daniel libeskind, and peter head. i think the title of the debate is "principal voices." hopefully it's a good one
Capitalism is ethics because it allows you the choice not to work for a client you dont want or for a principle you dont like and rewards your vision or punishes your lack thereof. The market is the ultimate expresion and emalgamation of billions of personal choices democratized. The problem isnt exploitation. Its not understanding how exploit productively. even Cameron is exploiting something for something gained - or why would he be doing it? In a capitalist system he is free to raise money, freely distribute literature and hold competitions. In fact Id argue the lack of capitalistic ethics creates the vary problems AFH is trying to solve. so maybe it is ethical to participate in the system. its rightous to design that strip mall. Its good to create detached single family homes.
Remeber this that capitalism boils down to the concept of "intrest" - or time value of money - and that said einstein was the single greatest and complex creation of mankind.
No, architecture cannot have ethics. Architects can have ethics. They can apply the principals resultant of those ethics to their practice. They can even try to build in laws or guidelines based on those principals. But that is not the same as the profession having ethics. Ethics will not be generated by those rules, only behavior and eventually habit will be generated by them.
I would also disagree that capitalism is ethics: rather, capitalism is utility maximization (or rationalism), which may or may not include ethics as one of the measurements by which utility is measured.
The legal answer in the U.S. is yes - you must reject clients who have an illegal source of funding. Thus far only interior firms have been criminally charged on that count. Economic models, provided they are legal, are no factor in client selection.
Nuremberg rally in 1940s Germany - allowed
Armed compound in Bogata - you are going to have to pass on that one.
Commie TV - allowed
Oil bling - allowed
Ethics could flip that one around depending on your views.
I disagree with rationalist. To the extent that architecture construct power-relations, I think architecture can have ethics, too - although this may depend on a more precise definition of ethics. If that's going too far, then perhaps we could say that architecture embodies ethics.
this question is moot on all levels. examine you life on an objective basis, and if you find that your wants, supplant your needs, then we're all being hypocritical.
i work for a firm that does correctional facilities, and have managed - thankfully - to not do any as of yet, but i am now working on a behavioral health facility. even i find that i am slipping down the slope.
i wish i had more time to get into this one because it's a huge topic for me. since i don't, i'd simply recommend the book 'the ethical architect' by tom spector as a starting place. lays all the issues on the table and is a brilliant book.
perhaps i will oversimplify this as a statement of my beliefs, but yes, architecture can have ethics, as can architects, but it is up to the individual architect to draw that line. for some it may be designing in a place that is environmentally damaging (abu dhabi); for others it might be designing work envirnments that foster inequality. it's a good question to ponder, but a question without a clear answer. i would call it a two year question. every two years, you take it out and re-evaluate your practice within those terms. if you are dissatisfied with what you see, perhaps it is time for a change.
but agfa8x, the difference between has and embodies is a huge one! For architecture to actually have ethics it would have to think for itself, it would have to judge every instance on an ethical scale, and as a profession it cannot do that. It can merely have rules, which may happen to embody the ethics of some person or group of people, but they are still just rules.
rationalist - As the guy who wrote the title, can I ask that you drop the whole semantic thing and focus on the point of the text instead. Yes, clearly I did not mean to ask can architecture - a non-concious thing - have conscious thoughts. That would be a pretty quick conversation. Can we just drop it and move on to the question at hand?
I don't subscribe to a Cartesian mind-body split. For me, thinking is something that takes place materially, and in that sense, thinking can take place in architecture, not just in advance of it. Perhaps that's animism and I'm mad.
But I get the feeling Chch wants to end this line of discussion for some reason. Too abstract?
Before asking whether the action of doing a project is ethical, I ask what agency the architect does or does not have with regard to the unethical actions of their patron.
For instance, could SOM's work for the Mahattan project's housing have affected the outcome of the bomb project itself (like making the bomb shoot out fluffly bunnies instead of intense radiation)? Some might argue that SOM was in a state of war, a state of exception. Or they might argue nativistically that the bomb project itself saved American lives at the expense of enemy (Japanese) lives. But, was SOM part of this action or decision? How much agency did they really have in this case?
OMA's CCTV is a thornier question as it is actually part of the propaganda apparatus itself. If CCTV does indeed have architectural effects on a subject or group of subjects that can be intentioned by the designers, then the architect does indeed have agency. The calibrated freedom within the activated section of many of Rem's other projects (think men in boxing gloves eating oysters on the 87th floor) demonstrates a belief in this agency through architecture. He therefore is ethically obligated to produce good, i. e. nonoppressive, architectural effects.
I personally read the its-a-small-world like public communal space that snakes the tower to produce a sort of Brechtian V-effekt, cutting through the section of the building and removing the fourth wall of television production, and inviting a distancing of the subject from the media itself that is the content CCTV produces. The program of that building as architecture is in opposition to the project of Chinese Central Television as an organization. I see it as an attempt at an ethical response to the project in that sense.
No Etics there, Etics is ony something they talk about.
Why I say so -- well please know that I learned and there are no bad saur response or me taking the oppotunity to complain about lost credits, but have a look and ask yourself, how many space lattrice structures has been inspired by 3dh -- in this I see a lot of 3dh and before that, I seen plenty honeycomb structures -- so where are the etics.
I am not here to complain -- why shuld I complain about a design, where it is difficult not to find the 3dh aproach, but 3dh will remind architects, that design can also be develobing a method, design is not restricted to shaping the looks, and develobing a method is just as much design, as shaping some forms, in fact develobing some method is more basic design. Etics in architecture, is nothing but surface, like architecture you mention, tend to be a painting and not the structure --- it's as if the basic issues are simply silenced, etics go deeper and is not surface, guess this is why there are so much lookalike, when etics shuld dictate a paragime shift in construction.
Yet 3dh is victorious it seems -- and one day architects will meet the demands of structure --- that will be when a gloss painting is not enough to sell the project, when deper knowleage and a reson for the fancy looks is required, bound in production of the parts, when that are more important than the fancy looks, those that is just a sheer side effect of the building method.
Architecture is produced within all economic systems and will reflect the culture of the society in which it is produced. The dominant views will be built into the architecture, whether it is a "vernacular" structure or a standard form produced within the modern, Western architectural industry. And in our society yes, it is the most powerful who get buildings built and therefore it is the most powerful whose worldview is designed into buildings.
Yet architecture is not deterministic. We live in a multicultural and complex society; people choose to define and use architecture in their own ways. Hence, university campus by day, skateboard park by night. Victorian home for decades, internet cafe and restaurant today. And your example: egalitarian open-office by design, hierarchical and oppressive in use.
"Architecture" is an industry made up of the actions of individuals of many professions. Whether or not architecture has ethics depends upon the decisons and actions made by individuals within the industry. "Architecture" can have ethics if individuals within the industry choose to act "ethically." Each of us can choose to design and/or build for less powerful citizens in our communities. We can offer pro bono work to those who do not have connections or funding.
It is WE who determine how ethical the architecture industry is, by our daily decisions to act or to not act.
Jun 25, 08 12:38 pm ·
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Can architecture have ethics?
Having read the recent article on whether or not architects should reject commissions/boycott competitions run by unethical clients, I got to thinking about the topic on a wider level. I can't help but think that in some way we as architects always compromise on morals when ever we agree to work for a client.
I'll try to keep this as brief as possible, but several things have occurred to me while reading this. Let's start at the most basic level of our architectural service. On a general level - that being the majority of commissions - buildings are required by those who can afford to have a building built. This is not going to be your average guy. This is a guy/company who has risen to the top; has acquired enough capital to commission a bespoke environment suitable to their own vision of how life should be lead. In the early days of recent architecture you could point at Fosters and praise them for their 'social' work spaces: the positioning of managers within the same open-plan areas as the workers. A forward thinking social architect for a company with a similar outlook.
However this turned out to be a bit of a red herring, exemplified not least by Foster's practice itself where the old PR line of 'he has a desk like everyone else' is at best disingenuous. Invisible barriers pervade and, from experience working there myself, employees are forbidden (I use that term deliberately) from approaching him on the rare occasion that he should descend from his penthouse and mix with the masses.
Architecture, then, can be seen to be a service to those better off than the average Joe. (simply by definition in these over-populated days where there are more people than land-area for individual housing can satisfy and supply is made more expensive due to over-demand). We are by our nature condoning a inheritance-based society where the work of one individual can exempt the next in line from having to contribute as much to society due to passed-down wealth. Personally, I believe inheritance should be capped for this very reason, but by designing architecture for those who can afford it I am implicit in their flourishing.
We are also in a relatively rare position. Our professional acts are both creative and economic. By investing our creative acts into a building we become part of the politics that sees that building come to reality. Yet in order to flourish ourselves - and preferably reach a stage where we can influence the politics through careful manipulation of spatial hierarchies etc - we require the capital gained only from servicing these existing politics.
This leaves us in an awkward position. Do we work from the inside with a view to a change or protest from the outside? Have there really been any great buildings built without the suffering of others - either directly through slave labour etc or indirectly through the manner in which the funds for the project were amassed? Can such a physical feat as a landmark building, which requires such a concentration of money and effort, ever occur without compromising on the 'norm' for these factors?
Some say - within the article - that to work for ethically questionable clients is to to try to change things from the inside. A kind of surreptitious act of good, flying beneath the radar of the evil-doers who finance the project. I'm unsure as to whether this is arrogance or well-placed faith. I'm erring on the side of arrogance. There is no doubt that Albert Speer's architecture did, if nothing else, have a commendable purity in it's phenomenological grandness (I'm not trying to be wordy, it's just the most succinct way to describe it). Yet the regime in which he realised his designs - and whose public image he was shaping - was the most horrific of recent generations. Is building for unethical clients really doing anything then? Is giving good design simply aiding the propaganda machine which seeks to convince the masses that it is the 'right' politic. Is it simply showing that this approach to society can result in successful design? Or are the architects somehow diluting the negative effects of such a regime through improving the public realm?
I don't like to reference Speer - at least for the Godwin's law - but it seems an appropriate extreme in this case. I have also worked (albeit briefly) on CCTV and have an option soon to work on a project in Abu Dhabi. My personal morals are starting to come into the frame when taking on work (I am still a student). I am not naive: I understand that architecture is a business and businesses blossoms under those with the most cash. But I think that if we as a profession start to question the morals of working for unethical clients, we have to look right down the chain at every client and realise that, in all probability, those with enough money to commission a building are in some way (either through propagating a culture of unearned wealth or gaining wealth at the expense of others) unethical.
It is also worth mentioning that I am aware that this is a symptom of capitalist culture. I am neither for or against this - I honestly haven't learned enough to make an informed decision. But I will say this: from what I know, communism oppresses equally and produces great architecture at the expense of many, capitalism oppresses few greatly and also produces great architecture. Both - in their current state - are surely harming the societal ideals that we aspire too. I only fear that, in order to fulfil these ideals, we have to acknowledge that architecture in its current form cannot play a role. If we are prepared to get on a soapbox and proclaim our condemnation of a few, we run the risk of hypocrisy unless we recognise that any system that allows the investment in such a concentration of physical stock and labour will result in the suffering of others.
Any thoughts?
define ethics
The title was an afterthought after writing the text. Personally, I would broadly define an ethical act as one where - should you change places with the other party - you would have no complaints.
i think that it is sometimes hard to be 100% ethical when you are at the mercy of someone else. Unfortunately we live in a society that has an economic system (capitalism) which is based on the explotation of people/things.
there's actually a debate that will be airing on CNN on July 9 about this topic. it's between cameron sinclair, daniel libeskind, and peter head. i think the title of the debate is "principal voices." hopefully it's a good one
Capitalism is ethics because it allows you the choice not to work for a client you dont want or for a principle you dont like and rewards your vision or punishes your lack thereof. The market is the ultimate expresion and emalgamation of billions of personal choices democratized. The problem isnt exploitation. Its not understanding how exploit productively. even Cameron is exploiting something for something gained - or why would he be doing it? In a capitalist system he is free to raise money, freely distribute literature and hold competitions. In fact Id argue the lack of capitalistic ethics creates the vary problems AFH is trying to solve. so maybe it is ethical to participate in the system. its rightous to design that strip mall. Its good to create detached single family homes.
Remeber this that capitalism boils down to the concept of "intrest" - or time value of money - and that said einstein was the single greatest and complex creation of mankind.
No, architecture cannot have ethics. Architects can have ethics. They can apply the principals resultant of those ethics to their practice. They can even try to build in laws or guidelines based on those principals. But that is not the same as the profession having ethics. Ethics will not be generated by those rules, only behavior and eventually habit will be generated by them.
I would also disagree that capitalism is ethics: rather, capitalism is utility maximization (or rationalism), which may or may not include ethics as one of the measurements by which utility is measured.
The legal answer in the U.S. is yes - you must reject clients who have an illegal source of funding. Thus far only interior firms have been criminally charged on that count. Economic models, provided they are legal, are no factor in client selection.
Nuremberg rally in 1940s Germany - allowed
Armed compound in Bogata - you are going to have to pass on that one.
Commie TV - allowed
Oil bling - allowed
Ethics could flip that one around depending on your views.
BTW - its Sir Norman Foster to you
I disagree with rationalist. To the extent that architecture construct power-relations, I think architecture can have ethics, too - although this may depend on a more precise definition of ethics. If that's going too far, then perhaps we could say that architecture embodies ethics.
this question is moot on all levels. examine you life on an objective basis, and if you find that your wants, supplant your needs, then we're all being hypocritical.
i work for a firm that does correctional facilities, and have managed - thankfully - to not do any as of yet, but i am now working on a behavioral health facility. even i find that i am slipping down the slope.
i wish i had more time to get into this one because it's a huge topic for me. since i don't, i'd simply recommend the book 'the ethical architect' by tom spector as a starting place. lays all the issues on the table and is a brilliant book.
perhaps i will oversimplify this as a statement of my beliefs, but yes, architecture can have ethics, as can architects, but it is up to the individual architect to draw that line. for some it may be designing in a place that is environmentally damaging (abu dhabi); for others it might be designing work envirnments that foster inequality. it's a good question to ponder, but a question without a clear answer. i would call it a two year question. every two years, you take it out and re-evaluate your practice within those terms. if you are dissatisfied with what you see, perhaps it is time for a change.
but agfa8x, the difference between has and embodies is a huge one! For architecture to actually have ethics it would have to think for itself, it would have to judge every instance on an ethical scale, and as a profession it cannot do that. It can merely have rules, which may happen to embody the ethics of some person or group of people, but they are still just rules.
rationalist - As the guy who wrote the title, can I ask that you drop the whole semantic thing and focus on the point of the text instead. Yes, clearly I did not mean to ask can architecture - a non-concious thing - have conscious thoughts. That would be a pretty quick conversation. Can we just drop it and move on to the question at hand?
if a villian want u to built a hospital for the good guy?
or some mr. nice guy want u to built a concentration camp for the villian?
which one is unethical?
I don't subscribe to a Cartesian mind-body split. For me, thinking is something that takes place materially, and in that sense, thinking can take place in architecture, not just in advance of it. Perhaps that's animism and I'm mad.
But I get the feeling Chch wants to end this line of discussion for some reason. Too abstract?
I sure hope so.......
Before asking whether the action of doing a project is ethical, I ask what agency the architect does or does not have with regard to the unethical actions of their patron.
For instance, could SOM's work for the Mahattan project's housing have affected the outcome of the bomb project itself (like making the bomb shoot out fluffly bunnies instead of intense radiation)? Some might argue that SOM was in a state of war, a state of exception. Or they might argue nativistically that the bomb project itself saved American lives at the expense of enemy (Japanese) lives. But, was SOM part of this action or decision? How much agency did they really have in this case?
OMA's CCTV is a thornier question as it is actually part of the propaganda apparatus itself. If CCTV does indeed have architectural effects on a subject or group of subjects that can be intentioned by the designers, then the architect does indeed have agency. The calibrated freedom within the activated section of many of Rem's other projects (think men in boxing gloves eating oysters on the 87th floor) demonstrates a belief in this agency through architecture. He therefore is ethically obligated to produce good, i. e. nonoppressive, architectural effects.
I personally read the its-a-small-world like public communal space that snakes the tower to produce a sort of Brechtian V-effekt, cutting through the section of the building and removing the fourth wall of television production, and inviting a distancing of the subject from the media itself that is the content CCTV produces. The program of that building as architecture is in opposition to the project of Chinese Central Television as an organization. I see it as an attempt at an ethical response to the project in that sense.
No Etics there, Etics is ony something they talk about.
Why I say so -- well please know that I learned and there are no bad saur response or me taking the oppotunity to complain about lost credits, but have a look and ask yourself, how many space lattrice structures has been inspired by 3dh -- in this I see a lot of 3dh and before that, I seen plenty honeycomb structures -- so where are the etics.
I am not here to complain -- why shuld I complain about a design, where it is difficult not to find the 3dh aproach, but 3dh will remind architects, that design can also be develobing a method, design is not restricted to shaping the looks, and develobing a method is just as much design, as shaping some forms, in fact develobing some method is more basic design. Etics in architecture, is nothing but surface, like architecture you mention, tend to be a painting and not the structure --- it's as if the basic issues are simply silenced, etics go deeper and is not surface, guess this is why there are so much lookalike, when etics shuld dictate a paragime shift in construction.
Yet 3dh is victorious it seems -- and one day architects will meet the demands of structure --- that will be when a gloss painting is not enough to sell the project, when deper knowleage and a reson for the fancy looks is required, bound in production of the parts, when that are more important than the fancy looks, those that is just a sheer side effect of the building method.
Etics ; -- spetaculate my pavilion, .
Architecture is produced within all economic systems and will reflect the culture of the society in which it is produced. The dominant views will be built into the architecture, whether it is a "vernacular" structure or a standard form produced within the modern, Western architectural industry. And in our society yes, it is the most powerful who get buildings built and therefore it is the most powerful whose worldview is designed into buildings.
Yet architecture is not deterministic. We live in a multicultural and complex society; people choose to define and use architecture in their own ways. Hence, university campus by day, skateboard park by night. Victorian home for decades, internet cafe and restaurant today. And your example: egalitarian open-office by design, hierarchical and oppressive in use.
"Architecture" is an industry made up of the actions of individuals of many professions. Whether or not architecture has ethics depends upon the decisons and actions made by individuals within the industry. "Architecture" can have ethics if individuals within the industry choose to act "ethically." Each of us can choose to design and/or build for less powerful citizens in our communities. We can offer pro bono work to those who do not have connections or funding.
It is WE who determine how ethical the architecture industry is, by our daily decisions to act or to not act.
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