Architecture, Ethics and Technology

Description

The essays in this collection focus on crucial ethical concerns largely absent from the practice of architecture during the last two centuries. The contributors are aware of a crisis in our culture's concepts of architecture and hope to ensure a greater future relevance for the discipline. An enlightened discussion of all relevant aspects of architecture shows the necessity for revision of commonly held assumptions about the nature of architectural history, theory, representation, and ideation; the production of buildings in the post-industrial city; and professional ethics. These topics provide the basis for the 14 interdisciplinary papers presented here. The introductory section includes an examination of the epistemological origins of technology in the early modern European context and two alternative visions of ethics and its potential relevance for architecture. The second part presents four perspectives on important questions about how we represent buildings and the ethical values involved in that representation. The book considers the role of philosophical ethics (ie. a rational structure of categories in architectural practice) and the possibility, and desirability, of incorporating ethical reflections into the generation of architectural form. It explores alternatives for articulating an ethical attitude in forms of discourse other than philosophy and science.