The Ethical Function of Architecture

The Ethical Function of Architecture PDF Author: Karsten Harries
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262581714
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
Can architecture help us find our place and way in today's complex world? Can it return individuals to a whole, to a world, to a community? Developing Giedion's claim that contemporary architecture's main task is to interpret a way of life valid for our time, philosopher Karsten Harries answers that architecture should serve a common ethos. But if architecture is to meet that task, it first has to free itself from the dominant formalist approach, and get beyond the notion that its purpose is to produce endless variations of the decorated shed. In a series of cogent and balanced arguments, Harries questions the premises on which architects and theorists have long relied—premises which have contributed to architecture's current identity crisis and marginalization. He first criticizes the aesthetic approach, focusing on the problems of decoration and ornament. He then turns to the language of architecture. If the main task of architecture is indeed interpretation, in just what sense can it be said to speak, and what should it be speaking about? Expanding upon suggestions made by Martin Heidegger, Harries also considers the relationship of building to the idea and meaning of dwelling. Architecture, Harries observes, has a responsibility to community; but its ethical function is inevitably also political. He concludes by examining these seemingly paradoxical functions.

The Ethical Function of Architecture

The Ethical Function of Architecture PDF Author: Karsten Harries
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262581714
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Get Book

Book Description
Can architecture help us find our place and way in today's complex world? Can it return individuals to a whole, to a world, to a community? Developing Giedion's claim that contemporary architecture's main task is to interpret a way of life valid for our time, philosopher Karsten Harries answers that architecture should serve a common ethos. But if architecture is to meet that task, it first has to free itself from the dominant formalist approach, and get beyond the notion that its purpose is to produce endless variations of the decorated shed. In a series of cogent and balanced arguments, Harries questions the premises on which architects and theorists have long relied—premises which have contributed to architecture's current identity crisis and marginalization. He first criticizes the aesthetic approach, focusing on the problems of decoration and ornament. He then turns to the language of architecture. If the main task of architecture is indeed interpretation, in just what sense can it be said to speak, and what should it be speaking about? Expanding upon suggestions made by Martin Heidegger, Harries also considers the relationship of building to the idea and meaning of dwelling. Architecture, Harries observes, has a responsibility to community; but its ethical function is inevitably also political. He concludes by examining these seemingly paradoxical functions.

The Architecture of Ethics

The Architecture of Ethics PDF Author: Thomas Fisher
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351065726
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Ethics is one of the most important and least understood aspects of design practice. In his latest book, Thomas Fisher shows how ethics are inherent to the making of architecture – and how architecture offers an unusual and useful way of looking at ethics. The Architecture of Ethics helps students in architecture and other design disciplines to understand the major approaches to ethics and to apply them to the daily challenges they face in their work. The book covers each of the four dominant approaches to ethics: virtue ethics, social contract ethics, duty ethics, and utilitarian ethics. Each chapter examines the dilemmas designers face from the perspective of one of these categories. Written in an accessible, jargon-free style, the text also features 100 illustrations to help integrate these concepts into the design process and to support visual understanding. Ethics is now a required part of accredited architecture programs, making this book essential reading for all students in architecture and design.

Architecture as the Ethics of Climate

Architecture as the Ethics of Climate PDF Author: Jin Baek
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317438000
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
At a time when climate and ethics have become so important to architectural debate, this book proposes an entirely new way for architects to engage with these core issues. Drawing on Tetsuro Watsuji‘s (1889-1960) philosophy, the book illuminates climate not as a collection of objective natural phenomena, but as a concrete form of bond in which "who we are"—the subjective human experience—is indivisibly intertwined with the natural phenomena. The book further elucidates the inter-personal nature of climatic experiences, criticizing a view that sees atmospheric effects of climate under the guise of personal experientialism and reinforcing the linkage between climate and ethos as the appropriateness of a setting for human affairs. This ethical premise of climate stretches the horizon of sustainability as pertaining not only to man’s solitary relationship with natural phenomena—a predominant trend in contemporary discourse of sustainability—but also to man’s relationship with man. Overcoming climatic determinism—regional determinism, too—and expanding the ethics of the inter-personal to the level where the whole and particulars are joined through the dialectics of the mutually-negating opposites, Jin Baek develops a new thesis engaging with the very urgent issues inherent in sustainable architecture. Crucially, the book explores examples that join climate and the dynamics of the inter-personal, including: Japanese vernacular residential architecture the white residential architecture of Richard Neutra contemporary architectural works and urban artifacts by Tadao Ando and Aldo Rossi Beautifully illustrated, this book is an important contribution to the discourse which surrounds architecture, climate and ethics and encourages the reader to think more broadly about how to respond to the current challenges facing the profession.

Why Architecture Matters

Why Architecture Matters PDF Author: Paul Goldberger
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300267665
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
A classic work on the joy of experiencing architecture, with a new afterword reflecting on architecture’s place in the contemporary moment “Architecture begins to matter,” writes Paul Goldberger, “when it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our heads.” In Why Architecture Matters, he shows us how that works in examples ranging from a small Cape Cod cottage to the vast, flowing Prairie houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, from the Lincoln Memorial to the Guggenheim Bilbao. He eloquently describes the Church of Sant’Ivo in Rome as a work that “embraces the deepest complexities of human imagination.” In his afterword to this new edition, Goldberger addresses the current climate in architectural history and takes a more nuanced look at projects such as Thomas Jefferson’s academical village at the University of Virginia and figures including Philip Johnson, whose controversial status has been the topic of much recent discourse. He argues that the emotional impact of great architecture remains vital, even as he welcomes the shift in the field to an increased emphasis on social justice and sustainability.

The Ethical Architect

The Ethical Architect PDF Author: Tom Spector
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1568988443
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Many believe that the moral mission of architecture has been in serious decline for the last 25 years. In this important new book, Tom Spector points out the dilemmas of architectural practice and offers a theoretical and practical basis for an examination and transformation of the quandaries the profession now faces. What makes a good building or a good architect? Are there limits to an architect's ethical or legal responsibilities in a building process where architecture plays an increasingly smaller role? Is preservation a moral imperative? What happens when building codes and ethical responsibilities are in conflict? In The Ethical Architect, Spector investigates the moral underpinnings and implications of leading architectural theories, subjecting them to the analytical techniques of moral philosophy. His conclusions provide a road map to help architects make the right decision in the difficult tradeoffs that confront designers on a daily basis: Spector estimates that more than 100,000 decisions go into the design of an average sized building. The Ethical Architect is a work of theory but refers to real buildings and real-world problems. It is Spector's call-to-arms for his profession and a must-read for practicing architects and students alike.

The Contradiction Between Form and Function in Architecture

The Contradiction Between Form and Function in Architecture PDF Author: John Shannon Hendrix
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415639131
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Continuing the themes that have been addressed in The Humanities in Architectural Design and The Cultural Role of Architecture, this book illustrates the important role that a contradiction between form and function plays in compositional strategies in architecture. The contradiction between form and function is seen as a device for poetic expression, for the expression of ideas, in architecture. The book contributes to the project of re-establishing architecture as a humanistic discipline, to re-establish an emphasis on the expression of ideas, and on the ethical role of architecture to engage the intellect of the observer and to represent human identity.

The Ethics of a Potential Urbanism

The Ethics of a Potential Urbanism PDF Author: Camillo Boano
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1134883285
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
The Ethics of a Potential Urbanism explores the possible and potential relevance of Giorgio Agamben’s political thoughts and writings for the theory and the practice of architecture and urban design. It sketches out the potentiality of Agamben’s politics, which can affect change in current architectural and design discourses. The book investigates the possibility of an inoperative architecture, as an ethical shift for a different practice, just a little bit different, but able to deactivate the sociospatial dispositive and mobilize a new theory and a new project for the urban now to come. This particular reading from Agamben’s oeuvre suggests a destituent mode of both thinking and practicing of architecture and urbanism that could possibly redeem them from their social emptiness, cultural irrelevance, economic reductionism and proto-avant-garde extravagance, contributing to a renewed critical ‘encounter’ with architecture’s aesthetic-political function.

Architecture and its Ethical Dilemmas

Architecture and its Ethical Dilemmas PDF Author: Nicholas Ray
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1134274718
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
A cast of leading writers and practitioners tackle the ethical questions that architects are increasingly facing in their work, from practical considerations in construction to the wider social context of buildings, their appearance, use and place in the narrative of the environment. This book gives an account of these ethical questions from the perspectives of historical architectural practice, philosophy, and business, and examines the implications of such dilemmas. Taking the current discussion of ethics in architecture on to a new stage, this volume provides an accumulation of diverse opinions, focusing on architects' actions and products that materially affect the lives of people in all urbanized societies.

The Ethics of Architecture

The Ethics of Architecture PDF Author: Mark Kingwell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197558550
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
A lively and accessible discussion of how architecture functions in a complex world of obligation and responsibility, with a preface offering specific discussion of architecture during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. What are the special ethical obligations assumed by architects? Because their work creates the basic material conditions that make all other human activity possible, architects and their associates in building enjoy vast influence on how we all live, work, play, worship, and think. With this influence comes tremendous, and not always examined, responsibility. This book addresses the range of ethical issues that architects face, with a broad understanding of ethics. Beyond strictly professional duties - transparency, technical competence, fair trading - lie more profound issues that move into aesthetic, political, and existential realms. Does an architect have a duty to create art, if not always beautiful art? Should an architect feel obliged to serve a community and not just a client? Is justice a possible orientation for architectural practice? Is there such a thing as feeling compelled to "shelter being" in architectural work? By taking these usually abstract questions into the region of physical creation, the book attempts a reformulation of "architectural ethics" as a matter of deep reflection on the architect's role as both citizen and caretaker. Thinkers and makers discussed include Le Corbusier, Martin Heidegger, Lewis Mumford, Rem Koolhaas, Jane Jacobs, Arthur Danto, and John Rawls.

Prospects for an Ethics of Architecture

Prospects for an Ethics of Architecture PDF Author: William M. Taylor
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135723362
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Bringing together the reflections of an architectural theorist and a philosopher, this book encourages philosophers and architects, scholars and designers alike, to reconsider what they do as well as what they can do in the face of challenging times. It does so by exploring the notion that architecture and design can (and possibly should), in their own right, make for a distinctive form of ethical investigation. The book is less concerned with absolutist understandings of the two components of ethics, a theory of ‘the good’ and a theory of ‘the right’, than with remaining open to multiple relations between ideas about the built environment, design practices and the plurality of kinds of human subjects (inhabitants, individuals and communities) accommodated by buildings and urban spaces. The built environment contributes to the inculcation of all sorts of values (good and bad). Thus, this book aims to change the way people commonly think about ethics, not only in relation to the built environment, but to themselves, their ways of thinking and modes of behaviour.