Environmental, economic, and social responsibility make up the foundation of sustainable architecture. But architects who sign on to be part of the lucrative reconstruction projects in Iraq have clients -- such as the CIA and Pentagon -- that engage in chemical and biological warfare. Can these architects continue to justifiably claim to be adherents of sustainable architecture, or are they now war profiteers? The War Architect (via)
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F war architects
and the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem school blog identifies a mapping project grenzgeografien.org/ that he/she participated in or attended a conferance on. its very interesting work of the symposium particularly that of Anselm Franke and Eyal Weizman on 'territorial lives' which i recently saw presented at the bartlett.
architecture is being utilized as an activator for the palestinian/isreali war[both sides]. this work reflect it and if very interesting to see it not only in a contractural sense[infrastructure building] but a critical tool of conflict.
two coments...
the first is that i agree, but unfortunately, even without the war, there is always plenty of architects operating with no moral in their profession...come to think about it we are probably the profession with the lowest professional ethics...how many doctors that would do something that pleases them regardless of the consequences on the patience have you heard of?
not that morals make for good architecture, mind you...
the second is that lately the professions seems to be struggling back to gain its prominence in society (the terms of this "prominence i am not able to define, i don't know if it even exists), and this means having to do exactly wjhat the client wants...and who can refuse clients? what i am trying to say is how can we judge where the good of the client ends and the good of society begins? isn't providing exactly what your client wants a form of moral obligation as well? wouldn't turning down a client be immoral, in the sense of refusing someone your services? I'm playing the devil's advocate, and the situation the article describes is probably beyond this discussion, but how do you know who your clients really are? how would we rebuild iraq without warloving corporations' money?
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