Architecture and its Ethical Dilemmas

A cast of leading writers and practitioners tackle these questions from a range of perspectives across architecture, the building and design industries, social theory and philosophy to contribute to the growing literature in the sociology of the professions.

Nicholas Ray is Reader Emeritus at the University of Cambridge Department of Architecture. He is Fellow and Director of Studies in Architecture for Jesus College, Cambridge, and Director of Nicholas Ray Associates, architects, a practice mostly engaged in buildings for tertiary education. He is the author of Cambridge Architecture: A Concise Guide, numerous articles in professional journals and a forthcoming study of Alvar Aalto.

ISBN 0-415-34869-2

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architecture and its ethical dilemmas

Architects and designers are constantly confronted by these ethical issues, ranging from professional issues to more philosophical questions. Should architects spend some of their clients’ money on features that would improve buildings even if they’re not necessary or part of the clients’ design brief? Who is architecture for? As the products of the architect’s work are often in the public domain and reflect society’s values, are architects, too, merely servants of society? What place does the professional architect–client relationship have in the twenty-first century? Can aesthetics be disassociated from ethics in a visual medium?

edited by nicholas ray

Provocative, timely and extensive in scope, Architecture and its Ethical Dilemmas examines the changing role of architects and the particular professional dilemmas they face.

architecture and its ethical dilemmas

edited by nicholas ray

Architecture and its Ethical Dilemmas

Provocative, timely and extensive in scope, Architecture and its Ethical Dilemmas examines the changing role of architects and the particular professional dilemmas they face. Architects and designers are constantly confronted by these ethical issues, ranging from professional issues to more philosophical questions. Should architects spend some of their clients’ money on features that would improve buildings even if they’re not necessary or part of the clients’ design brief? Who is architecture for? As the products of the architect’s work are often in the public domain and reflect society’s values, are architects, too, merely servants of society? What place does the professional architect–client relationship have in the twenty-first century? Can aesthetics be disassociated from ethics in a visual medium? A cast of leading writers and practitioners tackle these questions from a range of perspectives across architecture, the building and design industries, social theory and philosophy to contribute to the growing literature in the sociology of the professions. Nicholas Ray is Reader Emeritus at the University of Cambridge Department of Architecture. He is Fellow and Director of Studies in Architecture for Jesus College, Cambridge, and Director of Nicholas Ray Associates, architects, a practice mostly engaged in buildings for tertiary education. He is the author of Cambridge Architecture: A Concise Guide, numerous articles in professional journals and a forthcoming study of Alvar Aalto.

Architecture and its Ethical Dilemmas

Edited by Nicholas Ray

First published by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Taylor & Francis Inc, 270 Madison Avenue, New York NY10016 Taylor & Francis is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2005 Nicholas Ray, selection and editorial matter; individual chapters, the contributors Typeset in Photina by Bookcraft Ltd, Stroud, Gloucestershire Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Every effort has been made to ensure that the advice and information in this book is true and accurate at the time of going to press. However, neither the publisher nor the authors can accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. In the case of drug administration, any medical procedure or the use of technical equipment mentioned within this book, you are strongly advised to consult the manufacturer’s guidelines. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Architecture and its Ethical Dilemmas / edited by Nicholas Ray. – lst ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Architects – Professional ethics. 2. Architectural practice – Moral and ethical aspects. I. Ray, Nicholas. NA1995.A755 2005 174'.972—dc22 ISBN10: 0-415-34868-4 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-415-34869-2 (pbk) ISBN13: 9-78-0-415-34868-3 (hbk) ISBN13: 9-78-0-415-34869-0 (pbk)

For Camilla

Contents

ix

Illustration credits

xi

Notes on contributors

xv

Foreword John Worthington

1

Introduction Nicholas Ray

5 7

Part 1 The historical perspective Practical wisdom for architects: the uses of ethics Andrew Saint

23

The Cambridge History Faculty Building: a case study in ethical dilemmas in the twentieth century Nicholas Ray

35 39

Part 2 The professional context in the twenty-first century Architecture and its ethical dilemmas Michael Latham

49

Architecture, art and accountability Richard MacCormac

55

Responsive practice Giles Oliver

69

On being a humble architect Sjoerd Soeters

75 77

Part 3 Accountability and the architectural imagination Accountability, trust and professional practice: the end of professionalism? Onora O’Neill

89

Moral imagination and the practice of architecture Jane Collier

101

Codes of ethics and coercion Tom Spector

113 115

Part 4 Personal and public ethos Hearth and horizon Andrew Ballantyne

123

Architecture, luxury and ethics Richard Hill

133 135

Part 5 Ethics and aesthetics Less aesthetics, more ethics Neil Leach

143

Architecture, morality and taste Julian Roberts

155

Afterword Nicholas Ray

157

Select bibliography

163

Index

Illustration credits

Nicholas Ray: 3.1–3.8 Peter Durant, Arcblue Picture Library: 5.1 Soeters Van Eldonk Ponec architecten: 7.1, 7.2, 7.4, 7.7, 7.9 Stadsdrukkerij Amsterdam: 7.3 Daria Scagliola and Stijn Brekke: 7.5, 7.8, 7.10, 7.11 Hollandse Hoogte/Maartje Geels: 7.6 Agence photographique de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux: 14.1

Notes on contributors

Andrew Ballantyne is Professor of Architecture at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He has also taught at the universities of Sheffield and Bath. He is author of Architectures: Modernism and After, Architecture, Landscape and Liberty and Architecture: A Very Short Introduction, and has edited a book of essays, What is Architecture?, to which he also contributed “The nest and the pillar of fire”. Jane Collier is Senior Research Associate at the Judge Institute of Management Studies in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College. She is Editor of Business Ethics: A European Review and Book Review Editor of Business Ethics Quarterly. She is Chair of the Cooperative Insurance Society SRI Advisory Committee, a member of the BT Corporate Social Reporting Independent Advisory Panel, and a Trustee of the Institute of Business Ethics. She currently consults with KPMG on the development of ethics training. Richard Hill trained as an architect and has had a varied career in research, teaching and the management of building projects in the public and private sectors. He is the author of Designs and their Consequences: Architecture and Aesthetics, published by Yale University Press in 1999. Sir Michael Latham is Chairman of the Construction Industry Training Board. In 1993–4 he was Chairman of the Joint Government/Industry Review of Procurement and Contractual Problems in the Construction Industry, arising from which he published Trust and Money (1993) and Constructing the Team (1994), which initiated far-reaching reforms affecting the building industry and professionals alike. He has been Visiting Professor at the University of Northumbria, the Bartlett School of Architecture and (currently) at the University of Central England. Neil Leach is an architect and theorist, teaching at the Architectural Association in London and the Dessau Institute of Architecture in Germany. He has also been Visiting Professor at Columbia University, New York, Professor of Architectural Theory at the University of Bath, and Reader in Architecture and Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of The Anaesthetics of Architecture, Millennium Culture, Camouflage (forthcoming), The Politics of Space (forthcoming) and Forget Heidegger (forthcoming); editor of Rethinking Architecture, Architecture and Revolution, The Hieroglyphics of Space, Designing for a Digital World; co-editor of Digital Tectonics; and co-translator of L. B. Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books.

Richard MacCormac is the senior partner of MacCormac Jamieson & Prichard. He was an undergraduate at Cambridge and taught at the Cambridge School of Architecture from 1976 to 1979. He was President of the Royal Institute of British Architects from 1991 to 1993. His contribution is an edited version of his previously unpublished keynote speech, Architecture: Art and Accountability, delivered at the RIBA/Interbuild Conference in Birmingham in June 2002. Giles Oliver practises as an architect in London, where he is an Associate at Penoyre & Prasad, principally engaged on primary healthcare and social housing projects. As joint co-ordinator he was instrumental in establishing the Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment master’s programme at the University of Cambridge in 1994, and continues to act as visiting tutor to the course. He chaired the Construction Research and Innovation Strategy Panel’s report on design published in 2001 and is presently a member of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment’s research steering group. He regularly contributes reviews to Architectural Review, arq and Architecture Today. Onora O’Neill is Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge. She lectures in the faculties of Philosophy and History and Philosophy of Science and has written books and articles on ethics, political philosophy, the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and bioethics. She is a former member and Chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and the Human Genetics Advisory Commission and chairs the Nuffield Foundation. She is a Member of the House of Lords, where she sits as a crossbencher and was a member of the Select Committee on Stem Cell Research. Nicholas Ray taught for 30 years at the University of Cambridge Department of Architecture, retiring as Reader in Architecture in 2004. He is Fellow and Director of Studies in Architecture for Jesus College, Cambridge, and Director of Nicholas Ray Associates, architects, a practice mostly engaged in buildings for tertiary education. He is the author of Cambridge Architecture: A Concise Guide, (Re) Sursele Formei Arhitecturale, numerous articles in professional journals and a forthcoming study of Alvar Aalto. He is a member of the editorial boards of arq and ptah (Helsinki). Julian Roberts grew up in Germany and England and took his PhD at Cambridge. He has taught at Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge, and the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. Since 1994 he has been Associate Professor at the Institute for Philosophy of the LMU Munich. He is a practising barrister (in London) and an attorney (in Munich). His books include Walter Benjamin, German Philosophy: An Introduction, The Logic of Reflection and (in preparation) The Philosophy of Law. Andrew Saint is Professor of Architecture at the University of Cambridge. He was previously Architectural Editor at the Survey of London and a Senior Historian for English Heritage. Among his publications are the monograph Norman Shaw, Towards a Social Architecture and The Image of the Architect. He is working on a book entitled Architect and Engineer – A Study of Sibling Rivalry. Andrew Saint is a frequent contributor of reviews to the Times Literary Supplement and London Review of Books.

xii

CONTRIBUTORS

Sjoerd Soeters is an architect who established his own office 25 years ago and is based in Amsterdam. The office, now with 65 people, works on projects varying from city planning and master-planning to architecture and interiors. His work is published in a monograph (Uitgeverij 010 Publishers, 1995). He has been involved in master-planning in several European countries as well as Holland and has examined in schools of architecture in Britain. Tom Spector trained as an architect but undertook a master’s degree in philosophy. He is the author of The Ethical Architect: The Dilemma of Practice, which outlines a number of ways in which ethical dilemmas intersect with architectural practice, and The Guide to the Architecture of Georgia. His interests include the theory and practice of perspective drawing, and architecture design theory, especially as it relates to professional practice issues and moral philosophy. John Worthington was a founder member of the international practice DEGW in 1973, where his work has involved pioneering methods of adapting urban and space planning techniques to meet the needs of the emerging knowledge economy, and is Chairman of CABE’s Building Futures. He is Graham Willis Professor at the Sheffield School of Architecture and also Visiting Professor at Chalmers University of Gothenburg. He is Deputy Chairman of Regeneration Through Heritage and also Trustee of the Urban Design Group. He is the co-author of numerous books.

CONTRIBUTORS

xiii

Foreword Being a professional or acting professionally John Worthington

1

Nicol and Pilling 2000.

Architecture and its Ethical Dilemmas highlights the uncertainty that pervades architectural practice, thinking and academia today. Fifty years ago the profession of architecture would have confidently held a singular view. The integrity of the professional was above the providers. To use the analogy of cricket, the architect was the ‘gentleman’ and the contractor the ‘player’. Architectural honesty followed the belief of the modernist in ‘form following function’. The architect was recognised as the independent agent between the client (demand) and the contractor (supply), who balanced the particular client’s interest with the wider interest of the community. The professions, each with their own body of knowledge, were above question. The acceptance of the professional’s integrity and independence was reflected in the trust of the client and society. Today trust has frequently been replaced by a proliferation of boxticking audits, the professional is often a subcontractor to the supplier and, with the internet, information has become available to all. From being a small professional elite, we have moved to a position where in the knowledge economy a large sector of the working population are now members of professional organisations, each with its own codes of conduct. In parallel the one-to-one relationship of client to professional adviser has been largely superseded by the client as ‘committee’, with decision-making dissipated. From the seemingly simple binary world of fifty years ago the architectural profession is faced with a diverse, paradoxical world of multiple values and with a need to make balanced judgements between many points of view.1 Nicholas Ray and the Cambridge School of Architecture are to be applauded for exploring in greater depth than the current debate has allowed the shape of the construction industry and its professions. The two-day conference in March 2004 on ‘Ethical Dilemmas’ and this subsequent book draw together the varying strands of architecture as both a cultural product and means of production, and expose the architect’s dilemma of meeting a diversity of expectations while holding to a set of aesthetic values of significance to his or her peers. The contributors, representing practice, academia and professions outside architecture, provide a

rich variety of perspectives on the ethical dilemmas facing the architect as creator, producer and teacher. The Professionals’ Choice, a recent Building Futures publication, saw three paradoxical demands the architectural profession is facing today that could be of increasing significance in the future.2 Firstly, clients today desire to minimise risk, yet increasingly the major area where value can be added is through innovation. It is rapidly being recognised that good architecture can provide meaning and identity and can express an organisation’s values, while at the same time there is an awareness that ‘zero risk’ may be highly risky. Secondly, markets are making a sincere effort to be ethical, yet professions are meant to be above market demand. Thirdly, the more information that each of us has as a consumer and client, and with it the ability to act independently, the more, paradoxically, we appreciate trusted expert advice. As conventional perceptions are questioned it is possible to recognise a growing gap between being professional and being a professional. Being a member of a professional body sets an implicit code of conduct which inevitably sets the most general of expectations,3 while each of us acting professionally is reliant on personal values and moral judgements that are based on past experience gained through our family, education and friendships. Nicholas Ray, in his case study of James Stirling’s Cambridge History Faculty Building, sets the ethical dilemma of the building’s ‘aesthetic worth’ against a more “responsible judgement of it in a more complete sense, as a work of architecture”. The contribution sharply focuses the need to exercise judgement in the face of conflicting opinions concerning value. He points out that perceived value will differ according to the values the outcome is judged by. Except against the most general set of principles, judgement will reflect the specific context. In his paper, originally delivered at an RIBA/ Interbuild Conference, Richard MacCormac argues for architectural judgement as being a balance between its “cultural role and its obligation to commerce”. He sees the challenge of both achieving the magic of the intangible and working to measurable requirements. His paper argues for conceptions of buildings – in an economy which increasingly depends on creativity – as “inspirational assets rather than cheap necessities”. The paper is a strong plea for the architect’s duty to uphold the values of good design that can be ‘intellectually exhilarating’ and add to the creative value of the business. Onora O’Neill explores the relationship between accountability and trust as they impact on professional practice. Despite the high ideals of integrity, competence and respect for others set out in the RIBA Code of Professional Conduct, are professionals not inevitably acting in self-interest? How often do we as architects help clients return to the brief and assess whether the proposed scheme meets their expectations and clearly spell out the potential risks that may lie ahead? It is too easy for professionals to use their specialist knowledge as a means of control. Architecture has been particularly bad at setting out the evidence from which a decision can be taken and at continuing to build that body of evidence from experience in use.4 O’Neill, in discussing accountability and trust, recognises a commitment to ‘trust’ if it is well placed, ‘evidence based’ and not blind: “Regulation, accountability and transparency cannot eliminate the need to judge where to place and where to refuse trust.” Giles Oliver, a practitioner working in the context of public–private partnerships where the architect is a member of the xvi

FOREWORD

2

Foxell 2003.

3

RIBA 2005.

4

The move towards researchbased design and evidencebased practice is beginning to be accepted by sections of the profession.

provider’s team, recognises the dilemma of answering what he terms the managerial demands, such as economies in cost and efficiencies in use, at the same time as meeting the user organisation’s demands to deliver an effective service. To meet both these expectations within tight timescales he describes the process as one of “listening, mirroring and effectively adjudicating”, and using transparent tools for generating and testing options where possible. Such openness will result in respect and trust. How then should public legitimacy be gained? Will it result from more formal controls, combined with the client’s appointed ‘watchdog’, or a culture of trust created through individual behaviour? Tom Spector, an American academic and practitioner, argues that architects’ professional codes of conduct on both sides of the Atlantic “do more to help sustain the practices of the elites in our profession than they do to actually express what we might think of as our ideals or our cherished values”. As an example he takes the principle of a member to “conduct himself in a manner which respects the legitimate rights and interests of others”.5 Respect, he argues, is for the architectural production of one’s peers, which tends to be rated on its aesthetic innovation rather than how well it serves the client, user and community. “A strong ethic of practice grounded in public service … will tend to limit disciplinary autonomy to pursue and create the most aesthetically daring work.” In a code of conduct that cherishes respect for others, it is surprising how many named architectural practices give scant recognition to the real authors, preferring instead to continue the myth of the founding partner being the sole creator. In the wider context of professional and business ethics, as Jane Collier points out, robust, commonly held values are growing from global concerns such as sustainability, tolerance of diversity and generosity. It is ironic that achieving these ends suggests a loose-fit, adaptable, generic approach to design, which is the very antithesis of the crafted, precisely functional building so praised by the elite of the profession. Architecture and its Ethical Dilemmas poses the issues for practitioners and the profession: if we are to act professionally it is for each of us to draw on contributions such as these to establish our values and standards of behaviour.

5

RIBA 1999.

FOREWORD

xvii

Chapter 1

Introduction

The purpose of this book is to examine some of the implications of the ethical dilemmas that are special to architecture. Architecture intersects with ethics in numerous ways, and although this book aims to examine some of them, it cannot pretend to be comprehensive. Ethical dilemmas arise for all of us as individuals and in every kind of work, since we all make decisions daily which imply a scale of values as to where to place our energy or our resources. At a global scale the huge disparities in affluence between differing parts of the world, and between differing sectors of society in the so-called developed world, raise awkward issues of judgement that have led many who are trained in the design disciplines to feel that the exercise of their skills is irrelevant, at least until such disparities are substantially reduced. But the focus of this book is on the particular professional dilemmas that architects face, broadly within the context of the developed world. Within this topic there is plenty to concern us. Like any professional activity, the practice of architecture involves codes of behaviour (discussed by Tom Spector in Chapter 10), but the results are visible artefacts which necessarily reflect society’s values, and this makes for particularly interesting problems of interpretation and judgement, across a very broad field. Among the many issues which are entailed and which are discussed in the following pages are the following.

•

•

• 1

Leatherbarrow 1993.

How should architects attempt to resolve what might be called a central paradox in their activity – that, since it “intends what ought to be, it has a quasi-theoretical character; yet because it is a solution that is ‘right in these circumstances’ it is also non-theoretical”?1 The activity of architecture is inescapably contingent on the particular, but at the same time the result is frequently required to represent an ideal: how should architects position themselves in relation to that dilemma? Following on from that question, how is it proper to behave as a designer in relation to the user, the client, one’s fellow designers or one’s employees? Do architects deserve a privileged position, as artists of some kind, or are they servants of society? Have the needs and aspirations of society in the twentyfirst century changed in such a way as to invalidate previously held notions of the architect’s role? Indeed, does the ‘professional’ architect–client relationship have a place in the twenty-first century? Then, if the artefacts they create are to be enjoyed by more than the privileged few, what are the responsibilities of architects to the public at

•

large? This question would entail measurable issues such as the responsibility that architects would bear towards issues of sustainability (“now the central moral imperative for architects”, in the words of Jane Collier in Chapter 9), and less easily measurable issues as to the manner, or style, of the buildings. As Richard Hill points out (Chapter 12), the question of ‘propriety’ or decor was one of the Roman author Vitruvius’ five crucial terms for the understanding of architecture, so the concern is hardly new. The mention of style raises the question of aesthetics, which is more frequently the locus for the theoretical discussion of architecture. But can aesthetics be disassociated from ethics? Some of the historical confusions between the two are disentangled by Andrew Saint in Chapter 2, but Neil Leach (Chapter 13) argues that aesthetic attitudes often mask or act as a substitute for ethical judgements.

The contributors to this book are not exclusively architects and architectural theorists, but include philosophers with broader interests. Most were participants in a conference with the same title as this book, which I organised at New Hall, Cambridge, on 22 and 23 March 2004. This was arranged jointly through the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities and the Continuing Professional Development Unit of the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Eastern Region. The conjunction of academic and professional sponsors mirrored the ambition of the conference, and indeed of this book: to bring together academics and practitioners to analyse questions of theory and practice, which are too often considered quite separately. It is debatable how far theoretical discussion affects matters of practice, and the contribution of empirical evidence to the most fundamental philosophical issues is also problematic. In an article in the London Review of Books many years ago, Thomas Nagel, the American philosopher, to whose Mortal Questions I refer in Chapter 3, put this rather cogently: If I had to give a general characterisation of philosophy I should say that it was the examination of whatever is so basic that we must simply take it for granted in almost every aspect of life in order to function at all – whether we are merely living, talking, perceiving and acting, or are engaged in sophisticated scientific enquiry. An ordinary citizen or a research scientist can’t constantly be asking himself: “What is a number?” “What is thought?” “What makes my words mean anything?” “How do I know that my experiences provide any evidence whatsoever about the world outside my own mind?” “Does anything have any value at all?” It is, in fact, a mark of the philosophical nature of these questions that you can go through life without thinking about them: it shows how fundamental they are. What is examined and called into question by philosophy is simply used in ordinary life. This makes philosophy a peculiar activity: when you try to subject to critical examination your most basic forms of thought and grounds of action, there is very little left that you can use in conducting the investigation. All your accustomed tools and methods are under the microscope, and you may have to use some of them anyway. It is usually fruitless to try to answer the most basic philosophical questions by reference to the results of an empirical science – either because these results are 2

INTRODUCTION

based on methods and concepts and forms of evidence that are themselves the objects of those questions, or because the questions remain even if the results are accepted, as with sociobiology and ethics.2

Despite the final section of this book, which does examine some more general philosophical issues (namely the pervasive influence of the thinking of Heidegger and Kant), the kinds of dilemmas raised in the following pages are not ‘fundamental’, and mostly revolve around ‘everyday’ ethical issues – what is it right to do in these circumstances? It therefore aims to inform the practice of architecture, to encourage a more self-reflective professionalism, and to assist in a broader understanding of issues of practice by those who theorise.

2

Nagel 1987.

INTRODUCTION

3

Part 1

The historical perspective

The concept of professionalism as we understand it is relatively recent. In this section, Andrew Saint examines British architects’ engagement with ethical issues over recent centuries, and I contribute an analysis of a problematic building of the last quarter of the twentieth century. Up until the 1970s architects were expected to act as impartial professional arbiters, to be the “intermediate agents”, in Soane’s words, between employers and contractors. That role, with its attendant ethical complexities, has all but disappeared, but Saint believes that “architecture is the only liberal profession whose welfare – possibly its very survival – depends on its ability to enunciate and rally around a set of moral principles”. In Britain, he argues, architecture is a weak or even marginal profession, because realistically architects are “bit-part players” in the process of meeting society’s needs, and always have been. In the past they have claimed authority for their activity as transcending mundane requirements to create art, and the argument for art has involved ethical justifications. The propaganda of A. W. N. Pugin, with its famous insistence on “truth” to materials, was no less sincere for being congruent with the social and economic opportunities of the time: minimal explicit construction was valued as both an architectural and an economic good. The mission of architects can be expressed personally and collectively: on a personal level it can tend to arrogance – the architect as arbiter of taste and values. But architects in public employment from the 1870s onwards, and later the members of the Modern Movement, proclaimed a wider social mission, which reached its fulfilment in the post-war schools and housing programmes. The most obvious collective cause which architects today would espouse is that of sustainability: not surprisingly this is mentioned in the text of several of the contributors here. Andrew Saint predicts in conclusion that, in Britain, which has always suspected arguments about architecture as art, ethical justifications for an ecologically responsible architecture constitute the most compelling arguments for the importance of the profession. I use the case study of James Stirling’s History Faculty building at Cambridge, a notorious building of the 1960s, to examine architects’ ethical

dilemmas in the twentieth century. The Cambridge History Faculty building was highly regarded by architects on its completion, and continues to be admired for its formal inventiveness, but has never won the affection of its users or the public. In undertaking a review of Stirling’s monograph in 1985, I had recourse to an essay by Thomas Nagel in which he identified five conflicting values that might be present in any social enterprise. In artistic productions there are issues of perfectionist ends, and philosophically these pose a quandary, since it seems ‘immoral’ behaviour might be retrospectively justifiable if it leads to a masterpiece – the architect might benefit from ‘moral luck’. This was a problem which engaged Nagel and his fellow philosopher Bernard Williams. The fact that the History Faculty building was constructed within the normal contractual framework of the time, which tended towards adversarial relationships between designers, clients and contractors, compounded the issue. In common with many buildings of the period, it was innovative not only formally but also in its use of technology, and it is easy to conclude with hindsight that this was bound to be problematic. A less confrontational framework places architects in a different role, one where they may well not have the opportunity to gamble on their moral luck. I conclude that architects need therefore to be articulate about the professional frameworks within which it is possible to produce buildings that both are responsible to society at large and have the potential to be enduring masterpieces.

6

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Chapter 2

Practical wisdom for architects The uses of ethics Andrew Saint

One tradition of defining professionalism which gives comfort to architects is as the place where the savage gods of commerce parley with their counterparts of civilisation and order. The vision is an empowering one, if possibly obsolescent. The curtains part to reveal the professional sitting on high, arbitrating between great interests. Beside him are books of laws and codes to give him standing and offer him ethical guidance. Since in every calling the fine print of the negotiation is endlessly disputed and revised, many commentators on professional ethics choose to focus on the content and interpretation of that guidance.

The architect as quasi-arbitrator In so far as practising architects have to deal with ethics on a day-to-day basis, they will probably be grappling with such laws and codes. Sometimes, as a matter of course, they have to know what they must or mustn’t do. What mention there is of ethical issues in the common literature of the profession, aimed at guiding the architect in this respect, has tended to take its stance somewhere between the concept of duty and the practical definition of tasks. Turning, for instance, to Arthur J. Willis and W. N. B. George’s The Architect in Practice, a textbook in print between the 1950s and the 1970s, one finds a few short entries under “duties of an architect”. Here is the most pertinent passage: The architect’s duties, briefly, consist of the design of the building, the preparation of the working drawings and contract documents, the arranging of the contract, the supervision of the work whilst in progress, the certifying of 1

Willis and George 1974, p. 10.

interim payments and the examination of final accounts (including their checking if no quantity surveyor is appointed).1

Waxing more ‘ethical’, the authors go on to say that although the architect is appointed by the client, he has a very real responsibility towards the building contractor, and must act quite impartially between the building owner and the contractor … To maintain this impartiality will require tact and strength of character and will provide the greatest test of the architect’s integrity. It is only by such integrity that he can do his duty to both client and builder – and at the same time retain the respect of both.2

The second of these passages has a recognisable history. It can be traced back to a famous definition of the professional architect’s duties given so long ago as 1788 by Soane: The business of the architect is to make the designs and estimates, to direct the works, and to measure and value the different parts; he is the intermediate agent between the employer, whose honour and interest he is to study, and the mechanic, whose rights he is to defend.3

Here, then, is the time-hallowed ethical foundation for architectural activity, at least in Britain.

Higher ideals Today that approach has begun to look not so much wrong as innocent. Over the past generation, the ideal of the architect as impartial arbitrator between client and builder has lost much of such practical force as it ever had. With the professional ideal in full retreat, architects must look elsewhere for their ethical underpinning. Not that they have to look far. For better or worse, architecture is a subject that has never lacked value-systems. To all but the drudging practitioner, it is perhaps a relief to be rid of one which proceeds from the lowest common denominator. In that excerpt from The Architect in Practice, the authors from the outset lock an architect’s duties in together with money matters: contracts, interim payments and final accounts, not forgetting the ogre that is the quantity surveyor. Traditionally, the language of the codes is silent about ulterior aims, about social or aesthetic responsibilities.4 But for students and lovers of architecture, and among a fair proportion of architects in practice, a separate undertow of issues affects their thoughts and actions. What is architecture for? Why am I doing it? (Almost certainly not to make money.) Why is it important? What should it be like and look like? These are the big questions. Such answers as architects can give to them amount to a belief-system, a quasi-religion in which architecture becomes an obsession, an encompassing attitude to life. Typically their answers have an aesthetic dimension. But ethics is inevitably bound up with them. Other professions or trades too have their parallel tracks of ethical debate: one about rules and codes, the other about the basis of the subject. Law and medicine, for instance, both possess their own established philosophical and academic agenda, separate from codes of practice. But though they are often about fundamental values, they seldom seem to be about a creed, as in architecture. Soldiering may offer a more promising comparison, as a career which is equally obsessive and all-engaging, and one in which rules for the conduct 8

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

2

Ibid.

3

Soane 1788, p. 7. This passage has been quoted by many historians of the profession.

4

See Chapter 10.

of war can be distinguished from debate about its underlying purposes and morality. The priesthood may also be to the point. Further speculation on the relationship between the belief-systems of the various professions and the way in which they respond to different human needs and frailties might be thought-provoking. But I will cut it short with a proposition which the rest of this paper will explore: that architecture is the only liberal profession whose welfare – possibly its very survival – depends on its ability to enunciate and rally around a set of moral principles. The fact that these principles shift and evolve only makes the topic more intriguing and worthy of study.

Survival Let us start with survival. Architecture is a fairly weak and even a marginal profession. There are not many architects. Even so, there are more than are needed, because the subject attracts clever and lively young people. That has been so since the early days of architectural schools in eighteenth-century Paris, when more young men sought jobs designing things than the market could supply. The truth is hidden away, because most history and most thinking about past architecture focus on the few stars. Certainly, there are more architects than there are quantity surveyors or actuaries, to cite two uniquely British professions. But in proportion to their numbers, to the publicity which they nowadays seem able and indeed obliged to generate, and to the high cultural respect in which the best of them, past or present, are held, architects enjoy little clout. The underlying reason for this must be that neither the state nor the public thinks architecture awfully important. It is good to see fetching images and smart buildings from time to time. It can even be argued that the smartest ones, along with the architects who conceive them, command increasing public attention, as culture becomes commodified and the links between art, leisure and economic growth are better apprehended and more aggressively exploited. Yet in the governance, prosperity and welfare of the country, even in the procurement and maintenance of its built estate, architects remain bitpart players. Few buildings are put up without their help along the way, because even a modest hut has at some stage, after all, to be ‘designed’. But most are procured in a manner remote from the Soanean ideal, whereby the architect holds the scales impartially between client and builder. Whether, in the turbulence of the past twenty years over improving procurement, architects have objectively gained or lost is as yet hard to say. But an impartial observer would surely conclude that the way in which architects like to configure their subject is at odds with the grosser reality of the market for construction. Few are the jobs which concur with their hopes, their desires, their interests and their scale of values.

Architecture as art Not that there is anything new about that. Architecture has always had to come up with reasons why it should be supplied and demanded in the shape which its practitioners and theorists have devised for it. Among the answers given, the simplest, most instinctive and most recurrent is that architecture is art. To the old conundrum, architecture is building + x, the PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR ARCHITECTS

9

commonest answer supplied for the missing term is art. An alternative formulation, popular with the art-shy (among them, many architects today), is that architecture is building plus design. The difference is a subtle one, and for the purposes of this paper can perhaps be ignored. For it would not be hard to show that the history of the idea of design has evolved on all fours with that of art. What is more, design has the implication of incompleteness and therefore can generate only weak value-systems. Art is a complete idea, and therefore far more potent in terms of the values it generates. What can we agree upon about art? Not much. That it’s not an economic term, not a basic necessity for everyday existence. That it’s something subtler, something a few human beings feel compelled to pursue to their utmost ability, something perhaps beautiful (not a fashionable term in current architecture), something necessary in a deeper sense. Something, in other words, which those who believe in it regard as a good. The true, the beautiful and the good go together in the Platonic tradition: and architecture has always been attracted to Platonism and transcendence. Attempts to separate morals from aesthetics have seldom availed in the field of architecture. It may be possible in principle to distinguish along Kantian lines between judgements that prompt decision and action and those conducive only to reflection and contemplation. But as a corrective to how architecture can be and has been advocated or interpreted, the division has proved only reductive, exclusive, isolating. Upon one cloud sit those English aesthetes who have insisted on it, Geoffrey Scott, David Watkin and Roger Scruton, relishing the niceties in Sanmicheli’s or Schinkel’s uses of the orders with a handful of cognoscenti. Upon another, addressing another elite, sit those like William Curtis and Kenneth Frampton who have striven to distill a plausible aesthetic out of the impure morass of modernist practice. Neither group can touch many people. Meanwhile down on earth the misguided romantics, Pugin, Ruskin, Pevsner, Gropius, Le Corbusier and almost every architect with a gut feeling for the broad sweep of the subject, have been blending art with morality and personal passion with politics, strewing around Hegelian error to tremendous effect. For how can any architect enter maturely into designing something out there, in the public realm, without imagining or hoping that in some way it will make a difference to the lives of others, soothe them, impress them, teach them, inspire them, terrify them? It hardly matters whether we can measure or define that difference, or qualify it as aesthetic or moral. The point is that in order to operate, most architects have to believe that that difference is needed as a beneficial part of human activity, and that only design of a specific nature – it may come down to the mere refinement of a detail – can achieve it. That constitutes not only the underlying ethical ‘code’ of architecture, but also its survival kit. Without it, a marginal discipline would become more marginal still.

Puginian truthfulness It is time to move on now and to set out a few examples of particular ethical attitudes among architects. My purpose in turning over ground most of which has been well tilled before is to show in each case not so much how

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THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

2.1 A. W. N. Pugin: self-portrait from the frontispiece of The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841).

5

Scott 1980.

sincerely or logically maintained the ethical posture has been, as how useful each has proved to the architectural profession at a given time. Pugin is a good starting point (Fig. 2.1). A textbook instance of what Geoffrey Scott in The Architecture of Humanism denounced as the ethical fallacy,5 Pugin managed to combine several ethical propositions about architecture, to great practical effect. He thought, for instance, that architects ought to adopt only one style, and that should be Gothic, which he contrived to equate with ‘Christian’. He thought also that architectural construction ought in some sense to be truthful. These ideas were not original to him, nor were they developed with subtlety. Like most architecttheorists, Pugin was a propagandist, not a logician. But they were set out with the force of the thundering Protestant preachers whom he had endured as a boy. Take the style point first. Pugin was born in 1812. During his youth there had been powerful fluctuations in the London building cycle: a depression, followed by a boom and then a dramatic collapse, which bottomed out into a prolonged stagnation lasting for much of the 1830s. We know there were many unemployed architects in London at that time – men who had hoped to have a hand in the extension of the public realm, following Napoleon’s defeat and the inauguration of Britain’s world supremacy. They were disappointed. Pugin knew all about these changes, because his father was PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR ARCHITECTS

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one of those on the fringes of architecture, running a drawing studio (Fig. 2.2) and producing books to make ends meet. The son needed to be told nothing about the precariousness of architecture; and indeed he started out not as an architect but as a miscellaneous designer and expert on Gothic styling. Until the 1840s, when things improved, he built little. Nevertheless one of the sectors of the market that held steady was church-building. The Church of England was stirring after long stagnancy. Uniquely, parliamentary acts guaranteed subsidies for new churches in suburbs and industrial towns. These came on stream in growing numbers after 1825. Those outside city centres and in the Midlands and North were more commonly designed in Gothic, evocative of the old mediaeval parish churches. Though it had been in vogue for about half a century, it had not yet been carefully enough studied by architects to be done convincingly, at least in churches. Everyone was aware that modern Gothic needed to be improved. Pugin’s historic and catalytic contribution to the Gothic Revival came about not just because he was a supremely talented designer, but because he was articulate and in the right place at the right time. His crucial skill was his ability to persuade not just architects but a wide body of public opinion – politicians, clergy and bien pensants – that something already available as a stylistic option was a moral necessity. That was achieved through words, not buildings: Pugin had built nothing when he published Contrasts, and little when he published The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture. These short books (their shortness is of their essence) tapped one of those occasional, irrational moments in the procurement of British buildings, when that same body of opinion could convince itself that erecting

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2.2 The Store Street studio of A. C. Pugin (1821).

6

Pugin 1841, p. 1.

7

Forty 2000, pp. 289–303.

churches, especially in the right style, would make the kind of ‘difference’ alluded to above. And so the next generation of architects cleaned up. A rash of young men, keener on dalmatics than damp courses, found work building churches and restoring them, mouthing those Puginisms about the truth, uniqueness and Christianity of Gothic which gave ethical authority and continuity to their work. It took about forty years before the engine of Gothic morality lost steam and the wheels slowed, and even longer for the ecclesiological gravy train to grind to a halt. Not that Pugin was involved in a confidence trick, saw an opening in the market and went for it, employing some Victorian art of spin. That is not how ideologies arise. Pugin’s sincerity is proved by the fact that he embraced Catholicism at the outset of his architectural career, despite the fact that English Catholics were poorer and less drawn to the morality of Gothic than Anglicans. The preacher cannot convince unless he believes what he says in the terms that he says it. But what a glance at Pugin’s context shows is that a moral proposition about architecture can deliver the jobs and the status that architects seek only if it is harnessed to social programmes and creeds that transcend the internal discourse of the profession. That Pugin did not distinguish between architecture, religion and the conduct of his own life gave his views the force which made others believe them. Pugin also wrote about truth in a more specifically architectural sense. This topic takes us into deeper, more international waters. The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture unfolds from the immortal opening statement “that there should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety”.6 Here is a neat summary of one of the oldest propositions in the architectural armoury, to the effect that architecture ought in some sense to be truthful. The precise terms of Pugin’s formulation we must leave aside, though it may be noted in passing that the tricky word ‘propriety’ is ethical to the core, and recurs all through classical architectural theory. Truth too is a tricky word. It slithers between epistemology (what we know to be true), metaphysics (higher truths) and ethics (truth-telling and falsehood). In that brilliant book, Words and Buildings, Adrian Forty has explained how in older architectural theory truth was a docile, domesticated animal, tethered to the rather loose doctrine that architects ought to be offering a representation of nature in its broadest sense. But by Pugin’s time it had turned into a ferocious beast, chained to modern ideas about making the means of construction explicit and barking out universal judgements about right and wrong, honesty and deception. It fitted in well with the new building technologies and. specifically, the renaissance of framed construction. By the time it had attached itself to twentieth-century modernism, truth had become hyper-moralistic.7 Just now, architectural theorists seem to be bored with the idea that truthful construction constitutes the core of architectural value. But it has not vanished, nor is it likely to do so, because it chimes in with the notion of an irreducible minimum. Structure is the one thing no building can do without; and in upholding truthfulness the architectural advocates of puritanism and minimalism ally themselves, consciously or otherwise, with building owners who want economy and efficiency of means. That seems to have been the case ever since the modern idea of explicit construction first made headway in the mid-eighteenth century. The locus classicus for its origins is the debate over the structure of Ste Geneviève in Paris, where Soufflot hoped to carry not only the nave but also the dome of PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR ARCHITECTS

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2.3 Jean-Rodolphe Perronet (1708–94), chief engineer of the Corps des Ponts et Chaussées and founder of its famous school. Perronet linked structural efficiency with financial economy as means towards the pursuit of the social good in architecture.

the church on minimal point-supports in the form of columns, as opposed to heavy, pilastraded piers. Had he managed that successfully, not only would the church have looked neater and more neo-classical, it might also have saved money. Party to that debate was Perronet, greatest of French bridge-builders and founding father of the École des Ponts et Chaussées (Fig. 2.3). The Corps des Ponts et Chaussées had a continuous programme of bridges to build and a grant from the finance ministry to justify and defend. For that reason, Perronet thought about issues of money and economy in a way that architects of one-off projects seldom do. He valued minimal, explicit construction as both an architectural and an economic good (Fig. 2.4), and educated his pupils to think in those terms for the sake of their careers as well as the good of the common weal. One can find something like that convergence in architectural writers right back to Vitruvius. But its full development belongs to a time when patterns of procurement were starting to change along with building technology. That is a point 14

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2.4 Idealised perspective of the new bridge over the Oise at Pont-SainteMaxence by Jean-Rodolphe Perronet (1772–3, now demolished). The level roadway, stretched arches and slimmed-down piers exemplify the thinking of the Corps des Ponts et Chaussées under Perronet, whereby economics and advanced structure coincide.

8

E.g. Arup 1985, pp. 19–21.

often missed by those who study the architectural ideology of truth only in the abstract. Whether architectural structures can be made to look ‘truthful’ – whether they reveal their means of construction or their function – must depend on many factors. Often they cannot. The traditional trick in such cases is to give hints of, draw attention to or ‘express’ things that cannot be directly seen or understood; or, in cases where the means and connections of construction can indeed be seen but might not have much notice taken of them, to exaggerate or wilfully display them. This sleight of hand is as old as architecture. But it came to be seen by architects as a moral duty for well over a century after 1850. Expression of this kind is often a deception in the strict terms of truthfulness, as sterner or more cynical critics like to point out. But making construction look dramatic or pretty has its own puritanical pleasures. In addition, the ability to tell a client, “I am giving you what you need and no more, but here I am showing you how it is put together or what is going on inside,” is a resource for selling and publicity, as the high-tech architects appreciated. It is striking that engineers have seldom experienced the need to express their instinct for efficient, economic construction in parallel terms of truth. Ove Arup in particular often chid his much-loved fellow professionals, the architects, for supposing that they had a moral obligation to expose or express a structure which they did not fully understand.8 Much better, he thought, for them to spend their time producing useful or beautiful ideas, and let him and his team get on in respectful collaboration, developing the structure those ideas deserved. PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR ARCHITECTS

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Usefulness, and the architect’s mission The nature of the architect’s claim to be useful is my last ethical topic. It sounds like a simple enough subject. It is in the unstated terms of architects being modest technicians, useful spokes in the social wheel, that Willis and George and others of their ilk address the profession. Most buildings, and perhaps most architects, are a waste of space if they are not useful. Nevertheless some architects believe that utility is what they must rise above. In those terms, useful building is just the necessary part, and only some extra ingredient can supply the part that leads to sufficiency – the ‘architecture’. Here we are back with the idea, already touched upon, that architecture is building + x. Alternatively – or in parallel – some architects have maintained that architecture, and by implication they themselves, have a mission to serve, or maybe lead, society. How old is this latter idea of architecture as a socioaesthetic crusade? Not perhaps specially old. It is nascent in Pugin. It seems broadly to have emerged with the modern democracies, come to one climax in the age of social engineering, and taken a fresh turn now in our own age of contractual service provision. The idea of a moral hegemony in architecture has two sides to the coin: the personal and the collective. The personal side is currently the more persuasive. It depends on an old idea, that the talent of the artist, in this case the artist-architect, endows him or her with priestly, ethical and predictive powers which set architects apart from society and indeed may exempt them from social norms. As a description and post hoc justification of how many artists and architects behave, that moral individualism can be traced back at least to Vasari. Perhaps it can become a generalised principle for architectural conduct only when there is no dominant model of patronage or procurement. Thus, though we might recognise that the architectural and sculptural genius of Michelangelo was similar in kind to the talent of Frank Lloyd Wright, and that both were concerned with evoking certain kinds of emotional effect – ‘making a difference’ in the sense mentioned earlier – Michelangelo did not claim to change lives through the force of his own personality, as Wright certainly did (Fig. 2.5). That drive of Wright’s was a moral or political imperative which he shared with his reforming times. But he was no collectivist. He saw it as for him as an individual to propose such a change, based on his own instincts, abilities and experience, whereas the framework of patronage within which Michelangelo laboured could never have permitted so explicit a philosophy, despite the priestliness of his instincts. When social hierarchies and norms slumber, the architect and his client meet on potentially equal terms. They are distinguished only by the fact that the client has the money and the architect wants the job. In that situation, the architect must be articulate and deploy every possible argument. “I, and only I, can change your life for the better” is a clincher; and Wright was not slow to use it. Naturally, the strategy works better in some circumstances than others, best of all in house-building by individuals for individuals, which is where Wright’s reputation began. There is a record (by Wright, and therefore suspect) of a little exchange on the point between himself and Raymond Hood, whose own high talents lay in the more collective sphere of office-building:

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2.5 Frank Lloyd Wright (with back to camera) at the Architectural Association, July 1950.

Hood: All right, then, how do you get your houses built? By telling the owner what he’s got to do? Or do you hypnotise them? Wright: Yes, I hypnotise him. There is nothing as hypnotic as the truth [note “truth”]. I show him the truth about the thing he wants to do as I have prepared myself to show it to him. And he will see it. If you know, yourself, what should be done, and get a scheme founded on sensible fact, the client will see it and take it, I have found. Hood: But suppose he wouldn’t take it? Wright: But, by God, Ray, he would take it.9

The “truth”, shown by the ways in which Wright’s work was received by his clients, is that some take it with joy and gratitude, others don’t. No doubt the argument from moral individualism is most happily deployed when a strong architect encounters a client whose life is ripe for change, and who welcomes the adventure of building as a step in that process.

The idea of the avant-garde

9

Wright 1932, p. 342.

Our present-day version of art as religion and of the artist as priest connects with the idea of the avant-garde. It is an idea that can hardly arise until old hierarchies of patronage have broken down, and artists and architects (too many of them as always) are out there in the dangerous street, clustering together for safety in vociferous groups, drawing vehement attention to their particular merits. How does the avant-garde idea reach architecture? Third-hand, I suggest. The term, taken from military operations, appears to go back to Saint-Simon, the first to have had the effrontery to propose that artists as a PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR ARCHITECTS

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group might be to the fore in changing the world.10 The direct inheritance for architecture is from the fine artists, who during the last twenty-five years of the nineteenth century and the first twenty-five years of its successor gang up in groupuscules and produce reams of manifestos. It costs less to be a free artist than a free architect; you can make paintings in your garret but not buildings. Therefore the groups and the manifestos start with painting and then move into architecture. Forming cliques and writing polemics is an ageold habit among artists. But the special aggressiveness of early twentiethcentury art-groups and of their chosen language (‘avant-garde’, ‘manifestos’) itself comes second-hand from radical and revolutionary politics, with its rhetoric of moral urgency. Though that rhetoric continues in the arts today, it has become unhooked from the politico-religious sense of mission to or representation of wider interests which imbued the thinking of most of those revolutionary tracts, derivative as they were. Nowadays, the notion of the avant-garde and of art’s priesthood is geared to the market. The consolation is that art movements and manifestos have always been fairly innocuous. Vers une architecture is not Mein Kampf, though it would not be unreasonable to say that both were calls to moral action, or to compare the instincts and circumstances that produced them. Political movements call for moral reform through social and collective action. As the practical art with the highest intellectual status, architecture was better equipped than the fine arts to answer or mimic that call. Correspondingly, it was able to develop the notion of an avant-garde in terms of a collective, technical elite which was to dedicate itself to reform in the shape of the democratic enlightenment of body and soul. We have become so inured again today to interpreting architecture purely as art that we forget that for many architects the Modern Movement in its widest sense meant a moral, egalitarian crusade: extending to the many the material and emotional benefits of an art which had previously been reserved for the few. Here is the collective side to the coin of moral hegemony. We have come far enough now to look back upon the first three-quarters of the twentieth century, when architecture and social policy in Europe seemed wedded to one another, with some objectivity. Instead of idealising the architectural high-mindedness of those times or condemning their arrogant social engineering, according to taste, it may be more illuminating to note how that movement for a collective architectural avant-garde developed alongside an awareness of the opportunities for work which it afforded. To illustrate the point, I shall refer to the unique model of public architectural practice which flourished in Britain between about 1870 and 1970. That model originated in London, with the employment of growing numbers of full-time, in-house architects to build, firstly, fire stations, then schools, and finally housing. In the first instance, the status and pretensions of the young men who worked for the Metropolitan Board of Works, the London School Board and London County Council were low. But from the 1890s, when the LCC started building housing, its in-house architects began to nurture definite social ideas in their designs. Confidence built up that architecture had something special to contribute to social reform, on the strength of building programmes inaugurated outside its own realm. Here, as with Pugin and the churches, was a chance to reinforce and cash in on an existing movement for reform. 18

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10

Egbert 1967.

2.6 Raymond Unwin in about 1895. 2.7 Middlesex County Council architects at work, 1939.

The key figure for the British model of a social avant-garde in architecture was Raymond Unwin (Fig. 2.6). Unwin was the first architect of significance to abandon a well-established private practice in favour of government employment. An enthusiast for Arts and Crafts ideals, he inherited the moralistic baggage of Ruskin, Morris and indeed Pugin. Like many reformers of his generation, Unwin wanted people to lead a respectable family life in small, improved suburban houses. He wanted, for instance, their gardens to be big so that the men would grow vegetables in them to feed their families, rather than going to the pub. These were undisguised aims of social engineering. In Unwin’s mind, it was right that a small technical elite should tell ordinary folk how to live. That was something which the Victorians and Edwardians were never ashamed of doing. But it was not enough to preach; only the possession of a thorough body of knowledge, he felt, gave him and his fellow architect-technicians the moral right to pronounce and plan. Unwin also saw that in order to pursue these aims effectively, architects needed to control housing procurement. As they seldom have much to do with ordinary houses, that was an extraordinarily audacious aim. But, like Pugin, he was persistent in this quite different form of propaganda, and lucky in that the First World War begat a housing crisis and demand which were to continue in one form or another for the next fifty years. The Housing Act of 1919, coupled with the technical philosophy that went with it, was almost wholly Unwin’s in inspiration. It unleashed unparalleled opportunity for British architects. In particular, the local-authority system of procurement mushroomed dramatically from that point on. Unwinian interwar housing was rapidly imitated by private builders and their architects, so that it can be difficult to distinguish local-authority estates from the free-market response. Naturally, the architects of the 1930s disputed that. But such arguments need not concern us. The point here is that the moral authority mustered by Unwin had been practically useful to the whole profession. The high point in the moral force of British architectural collectivity came in the wake of another war. Some sixty years after it ended, we can appreciate that the pattern of architectural procurement it reinforced owed almost everything to the ethical and economic peculiarities of the times. It certainly outdid the pre-war model in confidence and intensity of ideology. H. S. Goodhart-Rendel in the late 1930s could still condemn the so-called ‘departmental architecture’ produced in the public offices (Fig. 2.7) as being

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like chocolate from a machine, “repetitive and slightly stale”.11 But for the first decade after 1945 most of the interesting socio-architectural ideas in Britain were deriving from public architectural practices; private architecture carried on in these years with difficulty, almost by stealth. The motivation of many of the leading lights in that unique, post-war episode in the history of British architecture responds better to moral, social and political analysis than to the language of aesthetics. But that does not make the period or its products un-architectural, unless you subscribe to the belief that architecture is present only in buildings where art is ruthlessly prioritised. That belief will never generate many jobs. Perhaps indeed the lesson to be learnt from the rapid rise and equally precipitous collapse of the ideal of architecture as social engineering is not that architects cannot successfully deliver social reform and improvement, but that they can deliver certain kinds of improvement in particular building-types only under special circumstances. To be useful in any enlarged sense, they must follow the march of events, keep track of the temper of their times, and be alert to the occasional puffs in the wind of procurement. In that way they can hope to be not only ethical but also employed.

A moral agenda for today As a result of changes during the last generation in public understanding (and, more particularly, in official attitudes), British architects are now seen less as independent professionals than as ‘service providers’, with a thin skim of stars peddling novelty or art on the top. A merely contractual conception of architects’ duties doubtless diminishes their opportunities to be virtuous as well as clever. The sense of moral drift palpable in architecture since the 1970s is probably more the effect than the cause of this shift. Nevertheless it is not without cause, nor just because of art, that architecture today is still regarded as a liberal profession. A progressive cause or two is always lying about somewhere at its edges, to attract those architects who need to find their justification in some sort of wider usefulness. The most obvious such cause at present is the ecology movement. If the present eagerness of architects to plunge into this field seems to take as its point of departure the premise that ecological responsibility entails changes to the form and look of buildings, some such incentive may always be necessary to draw them – and others – into moral-political issues. The garden city movement, for instance, only took wing after Ebenezer Howard’s concept had been translated into an alluring version of reality by Parker and Unwin. Altogether, the way in which the architectural vogue for ecology teeters between morality and technique echoes the Unwinian reading of professional responsibility. As so often in architecture, both connect how we might live with how we should live. We do not yet know whether the ecological reform of building construction will lead to programmes of the kind which Unwin helped to generate taking off on a scale big enough to affect employment for architects. But if that does happen, an ethical stance will once more have proved both honourable and useful to architects – a source of true practical wisdom. One might ask whether the arguments of this essay, based in the main on home-grown examples, could travel. Were there specifically national traditions of architectural morality? Was there maybe a peculiarly British 20

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

11

Quoted in Powers 1979, p. 51.

way of thinking about architecture and ethics which might be incomprehensible or inapplicable elsewhere? If so, might that be for a reason often advanced anecdotally, that British culture has manifested a recurrent unease with visual values, and fallen back time and again on literary or moral means and associations? I suspect the answer to all these questions is yes. But in the essay’s terms, it may be more constructive to suggest that ethical and associational values have carried special weight in British architecture because seldom has much employment been gained from advancing the claims of pure aesthetics. While the building programmes of French kings and governments, for instance, have consistently taken for granted the belief that fine architecture in itself advances the magnificence and prestige of the state, that idea has struggled to take hold on the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ side of the Channel. Where utility, or the sufficiency of mere building, is the normative value, the architect must find imaginative reasons for his employment; and morality, so I have argued, is not the least effective arrow in his quiver. Of course state attitudes towards building may just reflect wider national and cultural sensibilities. If that is so, my argument is circular. But those who can still contemplate the gravity of the idea that “it is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness”12 may find food for thought here.

12

Marx 1859.

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Chapter 3

The Cambridge History Faculty Building A case study in ethical dilemmas in the twentieth century Nicholas Ray

1

The other architects were Architects’ Co-partnership (ACP) and David Roberts.

2

Martin was the master-planner at Leicester University, where Stirling and Gowan had built the Engineering Building (1959–63), which employed the same vocabulary as was to be used at Cambridge, and later at the Florey Building, Oxford, of red engineering brick and aluminium patent glazing. He had recommended him for earlier buildings at Leicester, and also at the .

In 1985 I was asked to review James Stirling’s recently published Buildings and Projects, where the Cambridge History Faculty building was illustrated in all its pristine splendour. The building was widely admired by architects but not generally by its users: just at the same time the university was debating whether to demolish the twenty-year-old building because of its technical failings. Every architect in Cambridge was particularly aware of its problems, because it was a favourite topic of conversation at collegiate high tables and looked set to remain so for many years to come, if the retentive memory of dons was to continue to the same degree as I had already experienced, as a young university assistant lecturer. At a dinner at Corpus Christi my neighbour turned to me and asked, as if it had been the most recent topic of debate at the Governing Body: “Should we have allowed Wilkins to go neo-Gothic?” He was referring to the college’s New Court, which William Wilkins, the architect of the neo-classical Downing College from 1804, had constructed in neo-Gothic style between 1823 and 1827. It was clear that issues of architectural judgement and patronage were as alive in Cambridge in the twentieth century as they ever had been in the past. Stirling had been appointed for the project after a limited competition in 1964 between three architectural practices.1 His name was suggested by Sir Leslie Martin, professor of architecture at the university and a tireless advocate of Stirling’s cause.2 His project brilliantly integrated the department’s teaching offices and the library, which forms its core, by wrapping them in an L-shape around the top-lit library (Figs 3.1 and 3.2); his two competitors had proposed more conventional arrangements, with libraries articulated as distinct components. The quadrant of the library is entered at its corner, and has two different conditions for readers: beneath the glazed roof and around the perimeter. This arrangement itself derives from a pattern that Martin had exploited for university libraries, providing excellent control for the librarians

3.1 The Cambridge History Faculty building, seen from the Sidgwick Avenue site. 3.2 The radiating top-lit reading room.

as well as the differing reading conditions for its users. Stirling made the diagram more powerful and dramatic firstly by radiating the stacks, which ensured maximum visibility from the access desk, and secondly by glazing the roof entirely. When the building was opened it attracted glowing reviews. My own first venture into print, in 1969 as an undergraduate architectural student, was in fact a letter to the editor of Architectural Design,3 who had published a particularly complimentary piece by Alvin Boyarsky.4 It was clear, even in 1968, that there was a major disparity between the aesthetic interest in the building, its aesthetic worth even, and a responsible judgement of it in a more complete sense, as a work of architecture. In 1975 Stirling published his first monograph, Buildings and Projects 1950–74.5 This provoked an article by Gavin Stamp in The Cambridge Review of January 1976, which summarised the building’s problems.6 Quite properly, Stamp does not want to blame the architect exclusively for technical shortcomings, since some may have been due to shoddy construction. Those he itemised included insufficient adhesion of the tiling to the lifts and staircase towers; leaks in the patent glazing; flooding of the basements; excessive heat gains in the summer months; lack of thermal insulation and hence not only discomfort but exorbitant costs of heating in the winter; inadequate sound insulation between lecture theatres, seminar rooms and offices; mechanical failure in the lifts; and insufficient circulation areas in staircases and lobbies. But Stamp was not only concerned with functional and technical issues. There is an argument about propriety: the entrance is hard to find and the smallness of the lobby is at root a stylistic fault. Stirling’s attitude, treating it merely as a circulation space and ignoring the traditional function of noble entrance spaces, is “redolent of a bias against anything that could be mistaken for grandeur”.7 And whereas red engineering brick and aluminium patent glazing might be appropriate for a faculty of engineering, they could hardly constitute a suitable palette of materials for a faculty of history. Stirling had listed the train shed at Lime Street, Liverpool, as one of his inspirations, but Stamp commented that “the 24

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3

Architectural Design, March 1969, p. 3.

4

Boyarsky 1968.

5

Stirling and Krier 1975.

6

Stamp 1976. An abridged version of the article appeared in Building Design (March 16, 1976, pp.14–17). The 27 February 1976 edition of the Cambridge Review contained a letter in response to Stamp’s article from Professor G. R. Elton (pp. 112–13), to which Stamp replied in the 7 May edition (p. 149). There was further private correspondence between Stamp and Elton that May. Stamp returned to the topic in the Fall 1997 edition of Harvard Design Magazine (pp. 55–7), in an article entitled “The durability of reputation”.

7

Stamp 1976, p. 79.

layman may be surprised that the ideal architectural expression of the needs of the Victorian railway traveller and those of the modern student of history should be so similar”.8 Stirling’s building was compared unfavourably with the former university library by C. R. Cockerell (which the historians had most recently occupied and from which they had moved into their new Stirling building), not only for environmental reasons, but also stylistically. Cockerell’s 1842 library, by being built in the Classical style, … forms part of a comprehensible and recognizable tradition and, by the subtle use of the stylistic vocabulary and by historical references, affords aesthetic appreciation at a high intellectual level.9 8

Ibid., p. 78

9

Ibid., p. 78. Stamp also says that in Cockerell’s building “the solid walls provide good insulation”, and this of course is not strictly true. What they do provide is a high thermal mass, which makes for a slower thermal cycle compared with lighter-weight materials like patent glazing, so long as there is sufficient heating in winter and cooling in summer (achieved by crossventilation, preferably at night).

10

Ibid., p. 80.

11

This was Dr K. J. R. Edwards. He went on to become ViceChancellor of the University of Leicester, inheriting the Stirling and Gowan Engineering building there, and subsequently Chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals.

12

The analysis was carried out by the university’s estates management department, principally by the late Richard Rhodes, whom I encountered some years afterwards.

13

If he had been consulted, it is not certain that he would have cared to offer advice in any case; at Leicester, where the patent glazing was replaced, the buildings officer of the time, Richard Float, told me that Stirling had suggested he simply get on with it.

14

Ray 1985.

Stirling’s building, in contrast, gains its effect purely as sculpture, and is dependent on its aesthetic shock. “In short, the Cambridge building is a composition of clichés. Ideas which at Leicester were carried out with some panache are here put together without real logic or artistry.”10 In 1976, Gavin Stamp claimed that within a year of occupying their new faculty building the History Faculty Board had debated whether to move out again because of its many deficiencies. By 1985, the university was considering whether to demolish the building. Everyone knew about this, but I was particularly aware of the discussions; I was just then extending the house of the then Secretary General, and he asked my opinion.11 At the same time, a number of distinguished European architects were invited to speak at the department of architecture, including Oriol Bohigas from Barcelona, Josef Kleihus from Berlin and the Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti. Each began their seminar with a statement to the effect that demolishing such a building, acknowledged throughout the architectural community as a masterpiece of its time, would constitute an act of vandalism that would blight the reputation of the university in perpetuity. I do not think these pronouncements had any effect on the university’s decision to retain and repair the building, which was taken on economic grounds. The University Funding Council (successor to the University Grants Commission, which had funded the building in the 1960s) indicated that they would not contribute to a new building of the same space standards as the existing one; so the faculty would end up with a smaller building. The costs were considerable, but it was still reckoned to be worth repairing the Stirling building.12 That work was undertaken by a firm of London architects, Bickerdike Allen, who re-clad the tiled stair and lift towers with brick (thereby damaging their proportions irreparably) and replaced red engineering coping bricks with heavy pink pre-cast concrete copings (Figs 3.3 and 3.4). There is no doubt that these, and other alterations, constitute technical improvements, but there seems also to have been a desire to demonstrate the alterations that were necessary rather than to attempt to make repairs within the language of the existing building. I do not know whether Stirling was consulted, but it is unlikely, since litigation had been considered over the previous fifteen years or so and relations were not cordial.13 Much more could be said about the troubled history of this building, but perhaps that is sufficient to indicate the difficulty I faced in reviewing Stirling’s second monograph of 1985 for the Architects’ Journal.14 I described my problem to a sociologist colleague in Jesus College, and to a neighbour, a member of the department of the history and philosophy of science. The former was shocked by the way that Stirling selectively quoted his critics, without comment. This, THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY FACULTY BUILDING

25

from the Connoisseur of June 1974, for example: “The Cambridge History Faculty building and Queen’s College, Oxford, show a crude disregard of the architectural ethics of the two cities: they are offensive in scale, conception and environment.” And, in the text to accompany his contribution to the 1977 Roma Interrotta exhibition, Stirling had claimed his place alongside Boullée, Vanbrugh, Soane, Sant’Elia, Le Corbusier and others as a “megalomaniac frustrated architect”. What were non-architects to make of this scornfulness of the views of others and this jokey egoism? My philosopher friend directed me towards an essay by Thomas Nagel entitled “The Fragmentation of Value”, and I borrowed its framework in order to identify some of the conflicts that all architects were faced with, but which were especially evident in the example of Stirling’s work.15 Nagel had listed five of these (obligations, rights, utility, perfectionist ends and private commitments), which necessarily entailed the exercise of not only professional but also ethical judgements. I ended my review by suggesting that there were ethical issues for my readers: that architects who recognised that they themselves were not as formally skilful as Stirling was had a duty not to take the same position in relation to conflicting values as he had. I was concerned to be treading on the ground of other disciplines, and sent a draft of my review to Bernard Williams, who was at that time Provost of King’s College. He replied on a reassuring postcard: insofar as he understood the position of Tom Nagel, he wrote, he did not think I had misrepresented it. Armed with that endorsement, I published my review – which provoked no reactions. Only subsequently have I begun to understand something of the nuance of that brief note, since some of Nagel’s own essays (“Moral Luck”, for example16) were replies to papers by Williams, and Williams frequently refers to Nagel’s ideas. I am intending now to eavesdrop on parts of those conversations in order to investigate the ethical dilemmas of the architect a little further. The first of Nagel’s five fundamental types of value that give rise to practical conflicts would embrace the specific obligations that architects owe to their clients, who pay their fees and use their buildings. These are not necessarily the same people, of course, and any architect who has built for an institutional client is familiar with the dilemma of how to reconcile the demands of the user group, who usually rate immediate comfort and 26

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

3.3 New terracotta copings. 3.4 Glazing on the north elevation under repair.

15

First published in Engelhardt and Callahan 1977 and re-published in Nagel 1979.

16

Chapter 3 of Nagel 1979, originally published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary volume 1 (1976). Williams and Nagel had contributed to the same symposium, out of which his and Nagel’s essays arose.

17

Banham 1968.

convenience highest, with those of the commissioning client, for whom cost certainty from the inception of the project and low maintenance charges during its lifetime are likely to be paramount. But these are professional obligations, and as such are not unique to architects. In terms of both these groups, Stirling’s building is not very successful, for the reasons summarised by Stamp in 1976. This is not to say that he did not intend to meet his client’s needs, however. Stirling undoubtedly believed that he was exercising his architectural skill at the service of his clients, and some of the qualities admired by his critics do derive directly from a consideration of the needs of the users: the remarkably even quality of natural light in the main reading room, for example. It is the case, however, that when there is a conflict between aesthetic effect and usefulness, usually Stirling goes for the dramatic form or elegant profile. The tight staircase, of which Stamp complained, made a slender tower (at least, until the tiles were replaced by bricks) but prohibited conversation between students who were going between floors. Nagel’s second category, that of general rights, often acts as a constraint to the meeting of the specific obligations of one’s client. This is frequently an issue at the stage of making a planning application, when the local authority may seek to limit the ambitions of developers and their agents who are seeking to maximise profits, in order to maintain acceptable standards of amenity. Architects will have a duty both to their clients and to the wider environment. But less quantifiable questions may be raised – the issue of whether a building that one proposed was ‘polite’ or ‘rude’ to its neighbours. The History Faculty building was both criticised and praised for its bold treatment of its context: we might compare the “crude disregard” complained of by the Connoisseur critic already mentioned with the view of Reyner Banham, writing for the Architectural Review, for whom the fact that the History Faculty broke the conventions of what was normally to be expected in its context was precisely its strength.17 Of course the idea that the artist would operate in opposition to conventional codes of aesthetic behaviour is sanctioned by Nietzsche, and continues to carry an undeniable power. Stamp refers to Banham’s 1968 lament (which seemed ironic even by 1976) that Cambridge would eventually accept the building as part of the Cambridge tradition and then “no will have the guts to pull it down when the useful life for which it was built has come to an end”. That statement, aimed at an architectural subculture, nevertheless reminds us of the context within which the building was constructed, an era of cheap energy when the idea of disposability was fashionable. This brings us to Nagel’s third category: “that which is technically called ‘utility’”. Utility concerns issues that bring general benefit or harm to all individuals, not just to the clients and users, or to passers-by. An example of such issues is the environmental effect of one’s design decisions – whether they minimise the use of non-renewable resources, for example. As I have suggested, attitudes generally have changed since the 1960s, and it is easy with hindsight to be critical of the way that technology was exploited then. Only a few years later, campaigns began for an architecture of “long life, loose fit and low technology”, and now it would be hard to find an architect of any persuasion who does not place issues of sustainability very high on the agenda. THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY FACULTY BUILDING

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Fourthly, Nagel suggests that there are perfectionist ends or values. “Examples are provided”, he writes, “by the intrinsic value of scientific discovery, of artistic creation, of space exploration, perhaps.”18 Like most architects, Stirling probably regarded himself as an artist, and if he was engaged in the production of a masterpiece, this might justify behaviour that in other respects could be judged irresponsible. In his essay “Moral Luck”, to which I referred, Bernard Williams introduced the case of the creative artist who turns away from definite and pressing human claims on him in order to live a life in which, as he supposes, he can pursue his art. Without feeling that we are limited by any historical facts, let us call him Gauguin.19

What counts most for Gauguin is that he succeeds in his enterprise of being a great artist. If he does succeed, history may retrospectively forgive him for his ‘immoral’ behaviour. But it is deeply troubling that morality should be subject to luck, and that the outcome should justify the means. Williams distinguished between luck that is intrinsic to the project (whether Gauguin turns out to be sufficiently talented for his work to be judged by history as yielding “a good for the world”20) and luck that is extrinsic (Gauguin might drown en route to Tahiti, and the possibility of his producing masterpieces would thereby be forfeited). It is the problem of intrinsic luck that is critical: it contradicts the Kantian imperative to exercise will in order to behave rightly whatever one’s personal talents or character might be.21 In fact, the question of the personality of the agent, and whether that can affect the morality of one’s actions, is particularly fraught. As Williams summarises it in another essay, Kant argued that: To make moral worth, the supreme value achievable by human beings, dependent on … features of character, psychologically determined as they are, would be to make the capacity for moral worth a species of natural advantage, and this is both logically incompatible with the notion of the moral, and also in some ultimate sense hideously unfair.22

Yet, Williams argues, there are genuine differences between individuals, and Kant’s pursuit of his position to its logical conclusion was a “shattering failure”: No human characteristic which is relevant to degrees of moral esteem can escape being an empirical characteristic, subject to empirical conditions, psychological history and individual variation, whether it be sensitivity, persistence, imaginativeness, intelligence, good sense; or sympathetic feeling; or strength of will.23

There is more to say about “moral luck”, to which I will return, and indeed about the individual character of James Stirling, but I should first mention Nagel’s final category, which bears on the earlier discussion, that of the commitment to one’s own projects. This is not to be confused with mere self-interest: Nagel suggests that certain projects (works of art or music) make their own autonomous demands on their creators. The argument here, unlike in the category of “perfectionist ends”, does not depend on the 28

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18

Nagel 1979, pp. 129–30.

19

Williams 1981, p. 22.

20

Ibid., p. 37.

21

“The fragmentation of value” in Nagel 1979, pp. 32–3.

22

“Morality and the emotions”, in Williams 1973, p. 228.

23

Ibid., p. 228.

24

The late E. F. (“John”) Mills was the Director of the Estates Management Department at the time. My descriptions of the circumstances surrounding the commission and contract result from conversations with him over several years.

25

Tom Wolfe explained that he could not forgive the International Style architects for developing a manner that entailed the destruction of craftsmanship, that then became too expensive to employ (Wolfe 1981). The matter is oversimplified, of course.

26

This position has been argued by Leon Krier.

quality of the result as it is retrospectively judged by history. It represents a value in itself for people engaged in living their own lives as creative individuals. Architects will certainly recognise that imperative: of the project that demands their time – of and for itself, not merely because the client requires it – just when other duties call most pressingly. How to reconcile these differing values is obviously the problem Nagel seeks to address. How can individuals reconcile the conflicts of obligations, rights, utility, perfectionist ends and private commitments? I will hold over further discussion on this issue until the context of architectural design, and in particular how it has altered since the 1960s, has been described in more detail. So far, the activity of architectural design has been described by analogy mostly with that of artistic creation, as if it were a private activity engaged in by individuals with free will and a troubled moral conscience. But, except in very small commissions, that is not the case: a building is the result of the work of many different individuals and organisations and, although architects might regard themselves as artists, they are perhaps more like playwrights who also try to take a part in the direction of their plays. The play itself requires the participation of actors, stage technicians, lighting and set designers. It would not be staged at all if some person or organisation had not been found to fund it. In purchasing a Stirling building, after the competition, the university was aware it was taking certain risks; the Engineering Building at Leicester was known to be problematically adventurous and the UGC warned Cambridge of this.24 The UGC announced that they were not prepared to increase their grant to cover innovative design, and any extras would have to be borne by the university. The judgement was that the risk was worth it; maybe Martin persuaded the university that it would be commissioning a master work. Stirling was faced with a budget that probably would not pay for the kind of building he envisaged. Nor, incidentally, would it have paid for the noble entrance halls that Stamp felt were necessary: it is a virtue (or a vice, depending on how you look upon it) of the modernist manner which Stirling adopted that it can economise on certain areas of traditional expense in order to pay for other things.25 There is an ethical position that states that, faced with unacceptable conditions within which to conduct one’s practice, responsible architects will refuse to build, but will confine themselves to producing paper architecture.26 Stirling did not take this position; he had accepted the conditions of the competition; he had an office to maintain and a reputation to establish, particularly since the dissolution of his practice with James Gowan (from 1956 to 1963) with whom all his built work to date had been designed. The building was constructed within the contractual framework common at the time. The design team were responsible for all of the detailed design decisions, and contractors tendered to a set of drawings and a bill of quantities under a Joint Contracts Tribunal (JCT) contract. Particularly important to the design was the contribution of the structural engineer, Frank Newby, of Felix Samuely and Partners. The contractor tendering the lowest figure was appointed. Any variations during the process of the contract were instructed on a standard form, and the results were assessed according to whether they were budgetary additions, or omissions, in finalising the account at the end of the job. In ideal circumstances this process can result in excellent buildings, with the concepts of the design team realised faithfully, THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY FACULTY BUILDING

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and the builder, who has proved his efficiency in the market by his competitive tender, further enhancing his reputation by completing the project to time and budget. But circumstances are seldom ideal, and if too little time is allowed to fully describe the building design, or if the design itself involves unprecedented uses of materials and details, there is every incentive for adversarial behaviour. At the History Faculty, the contractors had not anticipated the difficulties they would encounter during its construction, and relations with the architects were bad; this may have been due partly to the character of Stirling himself and partly to the nature of the contractual arrangement within which the building was to be constructed.27 The manifest inefficiency of this way of working led to the report commissioned from Sir Michael Latham which sought to redefine the position of architects in relation to other members of the building team. The appointment of project managers to manage the contract has become more common in ‘design-led’ projects, and for many buildings architects have been appointed as part of the builder’s team. Here, the judgement has been taken that certainty of delivery on cost and time is more important than the achievement of the designers’ uncompromised conception. Two-stage tendering has been introduced, where the contractor is expected to contribute to the detailed development of the design, and alternative forms of contract have been employed which balance costs, time and design integrity in different ways. In a separate piece of legislation (stimulated by European Union legislation) the task of ensuring compliance with health and safety standards has been hived off from the role of the architect. In any but domestic projects a ‘planning supervisor’ must be appointed whose task it is to remind the design team of their responsibility to ensure that the building is constructable in a safe manner and that its routine operation and maintenance has been considered carefully in relation to those criteria. The delivery of records of the building as constructed, always a task within the architect’s remit, is now a matter to be checked and countersigned by others. It is part of the story of Stirling’s building both that he worked within the then ‘traditional’ framework, which tended to adversarial relationships, and that he himself seems to have been resistant to an easy dialogue with his contractors. Nevertheless, one of the major contributions of the building is in the way in which it pushed the boundaries of the available technologies to achieve its ends. At Leicester, Stirling had used industrial patent glazing technology to clad not only the ground floor workshops but also the office tower; this was a bold leap but not unprecedented. Transferring this technology to a library, as Stamp observed, involved a shocking breach of propriety. Suddenly a technology that had been used for greenhouses, railway sheds and factory northlights was employed as a drape to the seminar rooms, circulation spaces and also, as a double skin, over the reading room of the library itself (Fig. 3.5). Stirling had to persuade the manufacturers (Pillar Patent Glazing, PPG) to stretch their technology to accommodate itself to his design. It involved them in a degree of design development, but as a reward they could be assured of the work. The only way that this could be achieved within the contractual arrangement under which he was working was to ‘nominate’ the subcontractor. Effectively this meant that he was forcing the main contractor to accept his chosen subcontractor for a crucial part of the construction of his building. When the contract begins to run late, in this arrangement, the main contractor becomes liable unless he can shift the blame elsewhere – either on 30

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3.5 Standard aluminium louvre windows as ventilators to the void between the two glass skins.

27

Mills reported to me that Stirling refused to supply supplementary information. I myself worked on one occasion with the site agent from William Sindall, the contractors, who described some of the difficulties encountered; but the agent was himself also, as I recall, an awkward personality and an unskilled builder.

28

It is a well-known problem of building design that every construction is a prototype because it involves unique conjunctions of materials in particular locations. That is, of course, why the building industry is not like the car industry, where prototypes can be tested before a product is released on the market.

29

Stamp 1976, p. 80.

to the design team or on to someone else with whom he has been forced to work: the nominated subcontractor. The conventional wisdom in JCT contracts became to avoid nominations, but this meant that subcontractors, who were unwilling to spend time and money developing their designs at risk, did not participate in the refinement of their product that they could achieve by working with architects in the early stages of their designs. How to allow such joint work, and yet to maintain the degree of competition that building committees and boards of governors, charged with the prudent expenditure of their funds, might reasonably demand, became one of the most pressing problems in the design of reformed contractual arrangements.28 The result of PPG’s investment in adapting their glazing to serve Stirling’s purposes was visually dramatic, especially when seen through the lens of Richard Einzig, the favourite photographer of architectural journals at the time. It was his images, of the Leicester Engineering Building and of the Cambridge History Faculty, that travelled the world and helped to fashion Stirling’s international reputation. Many foreign architects pilgrimaged to the Sidgwick site to see the building, photographed it themselves and returned to Germany, Chile or Japan in order to imitate its crystalline qualities in their own designs. The patent glazing industry, and glazing manufacturers, found themselves with an expanding market for glass walls and roofs that could be draped over buildings of every type. Ways had to be found to counteract the deficiencies encountered in Stirling’s library, so solar shading films, insulating glasses and new types of neoprene gasket were invented. It soon became possible to design buildings like the History Faculty and be reasonably certain that they would perform satisfactorily. Stirling could not have been sure of that. By taking irresponsible risks with his client’s money, he arguably behaved responsibly towards the future of glazed building technologies. Was this a ‘moral risk’ in the terms described earlier? Does the future performance of a technology, for other people often in other lands, justify by hindsight a judgement in the 1960s? Could that risk – that aspects of the building would act as a prototype of benefit to future building designers and occupants, but possibly to the detriment of the occupants of the History Faculty building – be described and assessed in advance to the client, so that the university could choose whether to participate in the element of risk? Certainly there does not seem to have been a discussion along those lines, and it may well have been (as is frequently the case) that different interest groups in the client body had different agendas. The historian Geoffrey Elton, who remained an admirer of the building to the end of his life, was keen to commission an iconic work; others on the university’s Building Committee were no doubt concerned about the short-term cost overruns and the longterm maintenance issues; while others, such as the Professor of Classical Archaeology Hugh Plomer (who is quoted by Stirling in his monograph), objected to it, in terms to be closely echoed by Stamp, on stylistic grounds. There was no time for such a debate in any case – as so frequently the UGC grant had to be expended within a limited period – but it is unlikely that the architects would have welcomed it even if such an occasion presented itself. As the jokey tone of Stirling’s comments in the monograph makes clear, the subculture of architects took little notice of public opinion, and in the 1960s it could afford not to. As Stamp noted in 1976, “the patronage of these expensive virtuoso performances” soon came to an end.29 In the intervening decades, architectural THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY FACULTY BUILDING

31

practice has split into a majority activity undertaken within the contractual constraints outlined above and a very few ‘signature buildings’, funded perhaps by the lottery or by organisations concerned above all to promote their image and less concerned about the long-term durability of their buildings. In both cases the professional activity of architectural design is devalued. In the most usual arrangement, architects are no longer trusted to exercise full and dispassionate professional judgement in the pursuit of their activity, since constraints have been imposed upon them which are designed to ensure their accountability. As Onora O’Neill has suggested, subtler means need to be devised to ensure professional accountability, which would be tuned to the particular professions concerned.30 In the case of the purchase of ‘signature architecture’ or ‘trophy buildings’, the architect is expected to deliver an art work, whose most important aspect is that it comes from his or her studio, and that creates another kind of problem.31 There is a parallel, I believe, in this splitting of the activity of architecture into two rather different kinds of task (significantly enough, the polarity that I identified in my letter to Architectural Design in 1969 – somehow architecture gets lost somewhere in the middle), with the twin temptations that Nagel identifies in reconciling the five conflicting values that he had listed. How, Nagel asks, can individuals reconcile the conflicts of obligations, rights, utility, perfectionist ends and private commitments? He points to two dangers. One is a kind of romantic defeatism, which acknowledges the incommensurability of the conflicts and argues that one might as well do whatever one pleases. The opposite is the attempt to create a kind of universally agreed checklist which accords a system of points to each of the different types of value and judges the correct course of action accordingly. Such a procedure, if it is to be at all useful, implies that there is some kind of general foundation for ethics, about which one might be sceptical. Alternatively, the ‘checklist’ becomes so anodyne as to be meaningless (as Tom Spector has suggested is the case in architectural codes of conduct32). On the other hand, it is illogical to say that, because there is no universally agreed scale of values, the debate about which values should hold sway in particular instances is futile. In a characteristically Aristotelian vein, Nagel concludes that they “need to be considered in a systematic way, but in most cases a reasonable decision can be reached only by sound judgement, informed as well as possible by the best arguments that any available discipline has to offer”.33 But are architects going to be given the opportunity to make this “sound judgement”? In retrospect, it’s hard not to envy the position of Stirling, and other architects of his time, who were trusted sufficiently by their clients to make decisions about the degree of aesthetic and technical risk they would take in their buildings. They were placed in a position where they could gamble on their ‘moral luck’. In the light of their buildings’ subsequent performance, that generation of architects has been blamed not only for irresponsibility towards their immediate clients but also for contributing to a change in the contractual framework so that the engagement in that kind of gamble has become impossible in most cases. Of course, as we have seen, it is not quite as simple as that. There was a naïve optimism about technology not only on behalf of architects but also amongst the public. Stirling’s office genuinely believed that if it was possible to launch rockets to the moon from Cape Canaveral then draping glass over a library should be unproblematic.34 In our more cautious era, in the best of 32

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30

See Chapter 8 in this volume.

31

Frank Gehry’s cancer care centre in Dundee might be a case in point. Gehry was employed to “do a Bilbao”, but the brief was for a single-storey counselling centre for terminally ill cancer patients, where “exciting” architecture might have been the least appropriate response. The expensive bespoke building was nevertheless successful in attracting international publicity, for the architect as well as for the worthy charity which was Gehry’s client. The problem for the signature architect, where the work becomes a commodity for capitalist consumption, has been studied by many, including Marx and Adorno.

32

See Chapter 10 of this volume.

33

Nagel 1979, p. 141.

34

Personal communication with Brian Frost, an architect who worked on the History Faculty, who confirmed that the office promoted the widely published comparison between the section of the History Faculty reading room and the profile of the American rocket. The American Space Centre Headquarters was opened in May 1965, and Apollo 11 was launched on 16 July 1969.

3.6 Alvar Aalto’s library at Viipuri (1927–35), the prototype for numerous top-lit library spaces by the Finnish architect.

35

Tom Spector has suggested to me that one of the ethical failings of the building is that something like a synthetic or provisional (much less a final) judgement about the building’s merit is just impossible. This tension may actually enhance its worth as a work of art, however, in Adorno’s sense of the best art always promising resolution but always deferring it as well. So, perversely, its value as a “work of art” may actually undermine its utility.

adventurous current design practice there is an awareness that time and budgets have to be allowed for a degree of research that was not afforded to the architects of the 1960s. The careful homework and prototyping required for these innovative new structures (or, ironically, in some cases to establish the appropriate techniques to try to rectify the faults of those same buildings of forty or fifty years ago) needs to be undertaken by a team that includes contractors and specialist subcontractors as well as architects and all the other members of the design team. That there are still technical failures, some of a spectacular kind, whose origins can be laid at the doors of designers indicates that when the possibility arises of taking risks, some are unable to resist it. But even taking into account the prevailing technological optimism of the 1960s, Stirling’s judgement does appear to have been unusually irresponsible. Ultimately this can be seen as a moral failure in the terms which Nagel and Williams employ, when the character of the designer as an individual (his strength of will, or let us say obstinacy) affects decisions which affect us all, and his judgement between the various incommensurable values proves to be incorrect. But part of the reason we see it as such is because we make a judgement ourselves as to the worth of the building. My view remains the same as in my letter in 1969: the building may be formally elegant, and have some genuine architectural qualities (it is certainly more than Stamp’s “composition of clichés”), but ultimately as a library it is not very persuasive – not as thoughtful about what a library would be as Louis Kahn’s library at Exeter, New Hampshire, nor as comfortable and enjoyable as the series of libraries that Aalto had made in the decade before.35 As it happens, the Aaltoesque precedent that Stirling refers to is not his top-lit libraries (Fig. 3.6) but the dramatic double rooflights over the hallway of the National Pensions THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY FACULTY BUILDING

33

Institute, which collide with the galleries surrounding the space in a similar manner to Stirling’s (Figs 3.7 and 3.8). It was correct to list the structure, in 2000, and it will be worth the effort to preserve the building and to try to make it more effective technically, but it will never be judged the masterpiece that would truly justify in retrospect the decisions that Stirling took. What are the lessons that can be drawn from this case study of nearly forty years ago? We have to accept the changed context within which we work. In the complex world of the twenty-first century, we surely cannot eschew the time-consuming and frequently annoying demands for transparency of operation. We must acknowledge that the only proper way of both meeting clients’ needs and creating artefacts that have the potential to be seen as great works of art, within the subculture of architects and in the longer framework of history’s judgement, is to adopt mode of practice which takes one’s client along with one, as it were, in an activity where ‘sound judgement’ and inspiration should walk hand-in-hand. But architects surely also have a duty to articulate the conditions within which practice is expected to take place, not just as a grumble about their low social status and pitiful levels of remuneration (though these are, of course, genuine issues) but also to re-establish a context within which they may be expected to make ‘sound judgements’. Responsible practitioners must therefore try to gather back to the profession some of the trust which has been eroded. To initiate a debate on the terms within which that might be possible is surely an aim of a book such as the present one. 34

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

3.7 Double-skin glass roof of Aalto’s National Pensions Institute, Helsinki (1948–57). 3.8 Junction of the rooflights and galleries at Aalto’s National Pensions Institute.

Part 2

The professional context in the twenty-first century

Sir Michael Latham was responsible for initiating a process of reform in the procurement of buildings which has profoundly influenced the way that architects exercise their craft. As he notes in his paper, many architects may not be aware of the role that his, and later Lord Egan’s, reports have played, though they may grumble in a general way about their loss of status and of control. He points out that members of the building industry, like those in all businesses, encounter dilemmas of many kinds daily, but he concentrates on the issues he sought to address in relation to the position of the architect. Through his reports he wished to empower the client at the expense of professionals, and to disengage architects from their role as quasi-arbitrators in contracts between their clients and contractors. Disputes, Latham argued, should be resolved by adjudication, not by putting architects in this anomalous position. Furthermore, the role of designer and contract administrator should be separated: the latter task is more efficiently carried out by a project manager, who should be a different individual and may well be from a different discipline. Architects therefore have to work as part of a team, in which they can no longer expect to be the most important member. Using the example of a family firm which wishes to build a new factory, he compares the inefficiency and adversarial nature of a ‘traditional’ procurement route with the early appointment of specialist subcontractors that could be arranged with effective teamwork. Such a process should not only minimise disputes, but also lead to more cost-effective buildings and the reduction of defects. Latham has some sympathy with architects who feel that their role has been marginalised, but believes that, except in very small jobs, it is clear that clients will seek an efficient team which can deliver best value. Architects’ ‘professional’ status, he reminds us, was in any case only achieved in the nineteenth century, and its re-fashioning in the twenty-first was overdue and inevitable – indeed it will continue to be redefined in the future as the needs of society change.

The second essay, by Sir Richard MacCormac, indicates an architect’s reaction which may be taken as typical, though it is seldom as clearly articulated as here. He believes the fundamental problem to be that our society generally is “dominated by accountability and cost and not imagination and value”, an attitude that was reflected in Lord Egan’s report. He relates that split between aesthetic and rational values to the Industrial Revolution, and to the earlier distinctions made in the Enlightenment between imagination and reason. As guardians of the incommensurable (‘art’), architects are disadvantaged, in private finance initiative (PFI) projects, for instance, when economies are made in anything that cannot give evidence of a quantifiable value. In the 1960s architectural education had embraced a spurious pseudoscience in order to gain respectability in a society that was fixated on the measurable. But this was a mistake: the incommensurable quality of architecture does in fact add value in measurable ways: it is part of the ‘cultural economy’ of the country. The difficulty for architects is to ensure that such an attitude obtains in the bulk of private and publicly funded projects, not just in the case of a few enlightened clients. Architects should not be “merely used as pliant subcontractors”. The question that is raised in these two essays is whether the disengagement of architects from the administration of contracts, with the ensuing loss of control, is compatible with the creation of enduring work: Latham believes that the manifest inefficiency of the ‘traditional’ procurement route means that it is unjustifiable; MacCormac fears that a diminished role for design, as decoration applied to projects whose major decisions are taken on exclusively measurable grounds, militates against excellence. Giles Oliver takes the middle ground, writing from the position of a practising architect who has also taught architects and engineers. His contribution reflects the recent penetrating analysis by David Marquand of the decline of the public domain, and recent efforts to reconstruct it in a completely changed landscape.1 He describes the benefits, and perils, of government policies which aim to build and manage public facilities with private funds, and in particular examines the effect on designing for health care. Architects work within consortia, which compete for appointments over a considerable period of time in order to deliver healthcare buildings. The continuity which can ensue and the necessary teamwork are welcome, and architects may have a central role in a new way of working. It is not just their expertise in planning room arrangements that is valued, but their ability to balance managerial values (technical competence, for example) with ethical decision-making on issues that are less easily quantifiable. Better environments do promote better well-being, in ways that are beginning to be measured, but the requirement is for members of the design team to exercise empathetic judgements which “anticipate scientific enquiry and measurement”. If architects are to be key participants in this activity, they need ‘ethical house-training’. Echoing Richard MacCormac, Giles Oliver says that architectural education has either pretended to be a science or has retreated into aesthetic speculation – a concentration on the stylistic at the expense of the socially grounded – and has provided training in the skills of persuasion rather than relationship-building. Architects have to learn to “discover in dialogue the appropriate terms and direction of the demand for form”. The purpose of developing measurable design standards 36

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1

Marquand 2004.

(‘Design Quality Indicators’) is therefore not so much to establish universally valid benchmarks as to engage in a process which relies less on peer approval and itself helps direct design towards ideals that can be shared by all. Out of such practice, ‘art’ may emerge. Sjoerd Soeters describes the architectural arrogance that was evident in the work of the avant-garde and their many imitators in the twentieth century. As Robert Venturi, in the matter of popular style and taste, and Leon Krier and others, in the area of town planning, have argued, the starting point should be the ‘ordinary’ context of the pre-twentieth-century city and rural environment. To judge by the continuing fashion for ‘exciting’ architecture – “low-tech and high-tech, super-modernism and hyper-modernism, deconstructivism and the ‘blob’” – this lesson is yet to be absorbed, in Holland just as much as in Britain. Architects have a moral duty to refuse to accept commissions where the buildings cannot make coherent external spaces, and generally should eschew peer-group approval in favour of the affection their work will inspire in its users – and that should not preclude inventive design. Soeters is less concerned about the role of architects in a changing society; he is optimistic of their continuing ability to work “within the constraints of a budget that has to be respected, with planners and developers with whom one can engage in open debate, and maybe over an extended period of time in repetitive projects”.

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Chapter 4

Architecture and its ethical dilemmas Michael Latham

1

Latham 1994.

2

Egan 1998.

3

Egan 2002.

When I was first invited to contribute to the conference on “Architecture and its Ethical Dilemmas” in early 2003, I had considerable hesitation about accepting. Ironically, one of the reasons for such hesitation was that I am proud to be an Honorary Fellow both of the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland. So far as I know, the only essential qualification for being an Honorary Fellow of both these great architectural institutions is that one must not be an architect! I am not an architect. Indeed my degree from the University of Cambridge, 40 years ago this summer, is in history. So I thought to myself: what will I have to contribute to a learned discussion, much of it philosophical, amongst professional architects, both academic and practising, on ethical dilemmas? I was also affected (though much later) by a splendid cautionary tale told to me quite recently by a distinguished and very well-known architect, who was formerly with a large practice but now works in his own very small one. He was describing, with concern and regret, I would stress, that the architectural profession had not really bought in at all to the new agendas since Constructing the Team in 1994,1 let alone Rethinking Construction in 19982 and Accelerating Change in 2002.3 He then told a sad story – well, sad for me at any rate. He said how a very wellknown and substantial client, recently retired, had addressed a considerable audience of young architects in the large and very well-known practice to which my architect friend then belonged. He asked them, “Hands up who has ever heard of Michael Latham?” Not one hand was raised. He then asked, “Who has heard of John Egan?” About six hands were raised in a group of dozens. On ethical dilemmas, I also thought of another incident, when I was a Visiting Professor at the School of the Built Environment of the University of Northumbria a few years ago. The Construction Industry Council, of which the RIBA is a member, had just arranged that many of its professional institutions, including the RIBA and the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), should jointly sign up to a memorandum of understanding about some

common learning requirements in their professional courses. One of them was that the students should at some stage have to lead or chair a discussion on an ethical issue related to the construction industry. I was discussing this whole theme with the academic staff of the university. One worried lecturer said to me that it would be very hard to get his students, especially those studying for a higher national diploma, to tackle this ethical requirement, as they might not be too good on their feet or know how to chair a meeting. I replied that they should save this task until the students returned from their ‘year out’, at the beginning of the fourth year. They would have had twelve months’ experience of construction sites or professional offices and it would not all have been happy, to put it mildly. “Then,” I said, “let them imagine that they are a 22-year-old assistant site manager on their first job, working for a major PLC contractor.” The firm is approaching its annual report to shareholders. The figures won’t look good. The directors know that the Stock Exchange will not be pleased, and the share price will fall sharply. So the order goes out from head office to regional offices that costs are to be cut by 5 per cent over the next three months. Eventually it finds its way to the site office, and the site manager hands it to the young graduate, saying, “More bull from HQ. You sort it out, son.” What does he do? Actually, he will go round the site chucking set-offs at the subcontractors, in the hope that by the time they do get paid properly, the heat will be off and everyone will have forgotten all about the 5 per cent cuts. “Now,” I said, “that is an ethical dilemma, and a real one. Get them to discuss that.” The academic staff, most of whom had previously been site based themselves, nodded. They understood that this is what actually happens in the real construction world. Now of course that is not a dilemma for the architect, or not directly. I want now to address two which are real dilemmas for architects, one of them general and overriding, the other more specific. Both were tackled in Constructing the Team ten years ago, and both have moved on since then. They are the role of the architect in an integrated team, and the role of the architect as contract administrator, when faced with impartial decisions under the Joint Contracts Tribunal (JCT) forms of contract. May I say that these also apply to engineers under the ICE forms, though not the New Engineering Contract, but I shall concentrate here on architects. I begin with the basic theme which permeates both Constructing the Team and the whole Egan process. It is that the client should be at the core of the construction process. When I first recommended that ten years ago, it was, surprisingly, seen as a controversial proposal. One consulting engineer said to me that the client was “a nuisance”. Surely, it was argued, the client knew nothing. He was there to agree to the grand design of the architect and leave all the contract administration to the consultant team, under whatever leadership. He would come onto the site to dig the first bit of turf, and reappear twelve months later to cut the opening ribbon. His role in between was to pay. Client empowerment remains a difficult concept for some architects. They naturally see themselves, and very honourably so, as creative people whose inspiration devises and designs the project. One very senior architect wrote an article only a couple of years ago in a prominent construction magazine saying that the architect should not be regarded as part of the supply-side team at all. He was an extension of the client. Indeed he effectively was the client, in that he turned the client’s dream into aesthetic and 40

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4

Latham 1993.

practical reality. The client quite often did not know what he wanted, or could not articulate it clearly in a brief. But an increasing number of professional clients were seeing it differently ten years ago. They were installing project managers as supply-side team leaders, who might be contractors, engineers, quantity surveyors or indeed from external disciplines, but who were rarely architects. When I began my review work in 1993, it could fairly be said that the attitude of the RIBA was that project management did not exist, or, if it did, architects did it. However, by 1995/6, the RIBA Council had set up a task force to report to the President on how the profession could reclaim supply-side leadership, and how architects could receive special training for such a role. They came to see me to ask, amongst other things, if the RIBA should set up its own project management course. I suggested that they accredit some existing university courses instead. However, they did set up their own course. I now turn to my second – and more specific – ethical dilemma: the role of the architect in dealing with disputes between client and contractor. I never had any doubt that the vast majority of professionals, whether architects or engineers, would properly and impartially fulfil their duty to decide such contractual issues, even if they reflected upon the timeliness or adequacy of the production of drawings or instructions from the architect having to make the decision. The problem was that many clients – particularly professional developers – did not see it that way at all. They were increasingly saying: “You work for me, Mr or Ms Architect. What are you doing giving my money to the contractor, especially if it was your fault in the first place? I’ll knock that money off your fee.” Such clients were also increasingly hiring (either in-house or as consultants) those very people whom the RIBA did not think ought to exist – project managers. When I first looked at adjudication in my interim report Trust and Money in December 1993,4 I found growing support for the wider introduction of a system of speedy dispute resolution which was already included in some contracts. For example, some contractual arrangements existed for an adjudicator between contractor and specialist subcontractor under NSC/C, the subcontract for nominated subcontractors, and DOM/1, the domestic subcontract, but they were limited to disputes over ‘set off’ and often amended or deleted in any case. There was some provision in the government’s own contract, known then as GC/Works 1 Edition 3, but it was limited and unsatisfactory. There was also adjudication in the supplementary provisions to JCT 81 (with Contractors Design), based on the British Property Federation formula, and in the Association of Consultant Architects’ form of contract. The ICE 6th Conditions had provision for conciliation (Clause 66(5)), as did the Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors (FCEC) Blue Form Subcontract (Clause 18(3)). The New Engineering Contract (1993) and the BPF System (1983) made independent adjudication a separate function from that of Client’s Representative (Project Manager), design and supervision. There was considerable support for such a provision to be written more generally into the JCT family of documents. The architectural profession, however, took the view in 1993 that JCT 80, the most used building contract, was specifically drafted in terms which laid the professional duty of impartial contract administration upon the architect, and that a separate adjudicator under JCT 80 would be inconsistent with the architect’s professional and contractual duty. Other ARCHITECTURE AND ITS ETHICAL DILEMMAS

41

professional disciplines were more favourably inclined to adjudication provisions, though some engineers, in their consideration of the New Engineering Contract, shared the concerns of their colleagues in the architectural profession. It followed from my examination of these issues in 1993 that there was widespread, though not unanimous, support for a more direct and speedy system of dispute resolution, and there was already some contractual provision for adjudication as a discipline separate from the long-standing arrangements for impartial contract administration by the architect or engineer. That is why I recommended adjudication, which is now well established and widely used. I do not believe that it presents real ethical dilemmas for the architect any more, and it has relieved some architects of a burden which they did not relish and which caused them a considerable amount of grief. This movement towards more clearly defined roles for the designer and the adjudicator – which is clearly represented in the New Engineering Contract – has been assisted by the emergence of the project manager, no longer claiming to be an impartial arbiter of disputes as between client and contractor, but seen specifically as the representative of the client. For specialist procurement routes, the construction manager also emerged, a feebased operation where the client employs trade contractors directly. The role of impartial arbiters, sustained to the best of their abilities by architects and engineers, has been increasingly replaced by the external adjudicator. But if I had to give the main reason why I believe the new system has been beneficial to the profession, though contrary to their original concerns and fears, it is because it enables the designer to concentrate on what he or she does best and enjoys most: design. I turn now to the more basic and central dilemma: the changing role of the architect in modern procurement, especially when working for a wellinformed or serial client. And I make no apology in returning to the basic proposition of my report ten years ago – that the client should be at the core of the process. And if that is to be so, what are the client’s wishes, and how are they to be met by the supply side? I also have one other associated proposition: that an effective construction process is necessary. Again, not everyone accepts this. One distinguished designer – an engineer, as it happens – said a couple of years ago that the Egan report was too much about process. What mattered, he said, was the project, and the project was about design. Get the design right, which was vital, and the rest followed naturally. I cannot agree. Of course design is vital. But it is the process that allows the design to be delivered. It is an orderly method of delivering the wishes of the client. If those wishes are to be delivered, the process must be effective. Indeed, a modern process must increasingly require the progressive reintegration of design and construction, and must do so within the overall approach of flexible responses to the client’s wishes. Procurement routes and project and contract strategy are best determined by the client’s informed choice of risk acceptance or transfer. But whether the client has chosen a risk-transfer route of design build, a sharing of risk through more traditional approaches, or significant risk acceptance through construction management which also allows for effective sequential design, the client will still be expecting, and be entitled to receive: 42

THE PROFESSIONAL CONTEXT IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

• • • •

a clear, direct and single channel of responsibility – whether through a project or construction manager or a design-build contractor – throughout the progress of the work; a supply-side team which has no ‘fuzzy edges’ of liability, which is closely integrated, and with the same goals of client-focused delivery; design flair and cost consciousness, jointly achieved by a team assembled at the earliest possible stage, and which accommodates bestpractice buildability; and a proper and early involvement of specialist detailed design by the subcontractors or trade contractors who will actually deliver it on site, a matter to which I will return below.

Partnering This over-arching pattern suggests that the best results will be achieved by partnering. It is not a procurement route of itself. It is almost an attitude of mind, a cultural approach which sees the team as a seamless robe of client and the whole of the supply side. It must, by definition, include the consultants and the specialist contractors and suppliers. A partnering relationship between client and main contractor is useful, but is not complete. Best practice demands a supply side assembled together on a best-value basis, initially involving competitive interview that is based on quality, but not price, followed by building up the design and the price on an open-book basis which allows the most effective value management. Repeat clients will then wish to keep such teams together for future work, while periodically ensuring that best value remains best value by interviewing other potential team members. Such an approach will ensure that:

• • •

•

the client has a team which is specifically signed up to the client’s own goals; proper attention is given to quality, by involving the designer at the earliest stage; equally, the buildability of the scheme proceeds concurrently with the design, and allows for the maximum amount of value management, directed towards stripping out all non-value-added costs without at the same time simply attacking quality or appropriate specification; and the client’s financial advisers become part of the team as well, not there to provide person-on-person marking but to build up the costs on an open-book basis with the whole of the supply side.

The team will then work in an integrated fashion. There will be no hierarchies, in that everyone has skills which are essential to the project. The conceptual design is crucial to quality and to the client’s satisfaction, as well as to the wider environment and posterity as a whole. But so is the specialist design of the ductwork, or the installation of mechanical and electrical services generally. An ugly and inconvenient building is unwelcome and undesirable. But a beautiful and harmonious structure which does not work internally will enrage the client and all the occupants. The team will, hopefully, work in physical proximity in many cases, or, if not, in cyberspace proximity with immediate access to information at the click of a mouse. The use of the most modern IT techniques, coupled with ARCHITECTURE AND ITS ETHICAL DILEMMAS

43

virtual reality in design, gives the client, as part of the project team, a full and early insight into the options before irrevocable decisions have been taken. We are still a long way from adopting the most high-tech methods of communication in the industry, and their absence results in delay, confusion and subsequent waste. I wonder how many projects still involve a sequence of architect printing out some CAD drawings, faxing them to some project manager, who in turn photostats the fax, scribbles on a message and then faxes it on to a site manager who in his or her turn photostats the fax and distributes copies to subcontractors’ operatives on the site as working drawings. With proper use of IT by all involved, and compatible systems, the original drawings could have gone straight from the architect’s computer to the laptops of those on site, for real-time action without any intervening delays, or, even worse, misunderstandings through poor-quality reproduction of scribbled faxes by photocopiers. To those who say that such gizmos add to overheads and that there is no room for them in tender preliminaries or the consultant fee bids, we can only reply that the same must have been said about telephones in the 1890s, faxes in the 1970s and mobile phones in the early 1980s, and which was actually said to me about virtual reality models in 1994. No one loses a competitive edge by investing in value-adding, state-of-the-art technology. They are much more likely to lose it by failing to make such investment when their competitors are doing so. So, the integration of the team and its very early selection without stultifying hierarchies or lack of effective interfaces must be the theme for these opening years of the twenty-first century. It can be called partnering or alliancing, and there are a number of excellent reports which plan the route map and many real experts to build up proficiency and commitment amongst the partners, both of the supply and demand sides. There is still a long way to go to move generally towards what the Reading Construction Forum saw as ‘third-generation partnering’, with the effective delivery of supply-chain management throughout the process. Partnering must be here to stay, since it makes so much more commercial sense for everyone than adversarial approaches, particularly for the client. But there is still a long way to go before the message is really spread throughout the supply-side process and understood by clients themselves. I am frequently asked at seminars on partnering what can be done to get the message to more clients that they should move away from the lowest tender approaches. I reply that the industry and the government need to take every possible step to put that message forward as widely as possible and support it with examples of successful partnering which has benefited clients. Real partnering, entered into willingly by all participants and enthusiastically led by the client, delivers real benefits in time, cost and quality. It is not a panacea. Things will go wrong. The difference that real partnering makes is that it enables all in the process to share the problems and engage collectively in their resolution.

Specialist contractors Let me develop a little the issue of the involvement of specialist contractors. I devoted a whole chapter of my report in 1994 to detailed specialist design. The practical reality on site is that most projects in the building sector are 44

THE PROFESSIONAL CONTEXT IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

still procured on a traditional basis. The client is ‘lay’, ‘amateur’, in that construction is not its core business. Let’s imagine a medium-sized, familyowned and privately run manufacturing company. They are doing well. Trade is brisk and their old-fashioned, nineteenth-century factory is too small. They have a choice either to expand on the existing site in the centre of the city or move to an industrial estate and a new, purpose-built factory on the edge of town. The directors meet together as a board. They decide to go for a new building. They choose an architect. The architect will do a conceptual design and will choose a consulting engineer who will advise on the structure and perhaps also the mechanical and electrical (M & E) systems, and do conceptual designs. Some other consultants such as landscape architects may also be involved. After the design and the brief have been agreed, at least initially, between client and architect, tenders are sought from main contractors. They in their turn seek tenders from specialist contractors, and both sets of tenders are usually sought too quickly. Only after the team has been put together, frequently on an adversarial basis with prices which are too low, will the successful specialist M & E contractor be able to see the full picture of how the conceptual design and practical buildability will fit together. Often they do not fit, and then the M & E has to be reworked. Sometimes that rework will take place before going onto the site, but all too often it will only happen when the project is already under way. The result is added cost, claims, delays and possible litigation. It is certainly frustrating for the client. All that could and should have been avoided. Effective partnering would have involved the M & E specialist, and others involved with design, such as in cladding or piling, would have been chosen on a quality-first basis at the first stage. If a competitive route had to be followed, it would be best if it was a two-stage tender system, with price only coming in at the second stage, preferably with the contractor being the only bid under consideration by that stage. It is then possible for the conceptual designers, the main contractor, the cost consultants and any other team members to work with the specialists to get the design right the first time. This is the essential stage for effective value management when the whole team uses its collective expertise to design out wasteful or non-value-adding elements. That does not mean just substituting cheaper M & E kit, though sometimes savings may be made in purchasing policy. What it does mean is producing a design which can be implemented effectively and professionally, with all parties to the project valuing the whole project and not just their part of it. This decade must also see more progress on the Egan targets. In my report in 1994, I called for a 30 per cent reduction in real construction costs by the year 2000, a five- or six-year period, depending on when one began to set the clock. I produced that specific recommendation for a very clear reason. Anyone could see that there was a great deal of waste in the construction industry, much of which was incurred before the team went onto site at all. About two-thirds of such waste arose through the inefficient divorce between design and construction. If the team could be assembled early enough and the proper integration of specialists and main contractors achieved, much of this waste could be avoided. Then there was all the waste on site itself, with poor integration of specialist trades, late delivery of materials, unnecessary changes and all the other hassles which every contractor and architect the world over regrets and fears. I could just have said that ARCHITECTURE AND ITS ETHICAL DILEMMAS

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there was a lot of waste in the construction sector and that we should seek to reduce it by better project management. If I had said this in my report, everyone would have nodded wisely, said, “Yes, quite right”, and absolutely nothing would have happened at all. I realised that any call to cut nonvalue-adding costs – and I stress costs, not margins – must be specific and contain clear targets. When I produced my target, there were shouts of horror. “Impossible” and “unrealistic” were some of the more polite expressions. But that was not the reaction of clients. One of the client organisations which provided an assessor for my report had first suggested such a target. It immediately caught the attention of the government and the whole construction process, and indeed it became the central focus of the newly formed Construction Industry Board in 1995. A number of clients achieved the target. Some exceeded it. Some, including Sir John Egan’s BAA, thought it too low anyway, and looked for 50 per cent by 2000. The target soon ceased to be controversial, and discussion shifted to detailed mechanisms of achieving it. The 1998 Egan report set seven targets, all quantified. They were to reduce capital costs by 10 per cent a year, construction time by 10 per cent a year, defects on handover by 20 per cent a year and reportable accidents by 20 per cent a year, and to improve predictability (on time and within budget) and productivity by 20 per cent a year and turnover and profits by 10 per cent a year. In some ways I regard the most important Egan target as that which seeks to reduce defects on handover by 20 per cent a year, leading to a defects-free environment over a five-year period. The immediate response of many in the industry to this target was that it was impossible. Some even thought it was undesirable. One architect said to me that a defects-free culture would lead to a safety-first environment and be fatal for new, innovative and risk-taking design. I can understand that argument, though I do not agree with it. The industry in the UK regards defects as normal. There are even clauses in the standard forms of contract for both building and civil engineering which prescribe defects liability and rectification periods. ‘Snagging lists’ are expected, and with them goes the system of retention, itself a source of significant cash withholding and abuse for both main and specialist contractors. To those who say we must expect defects, I have one simple response. I understand your scepticism. We all know the structure of the industry makes it very likely that defects will occur. But there is a basic question. Hands up who wants to fly in an aeroplane which does not have zero defects. Who wants to go to a hospital operating theatre or a dentist’s chair without a zero-defects culture? We certainly expect a zero culture there. There are now some major clients who are writing into their contracts that the project is to have zero defects, and, as a result, they are removing any requirements for retentions throughout the supply chain. This is an Egan target which will not go away. Just think of cars or TV sets 30 years ago – how often they used to break down, sometimes within days of coming out of the factory. Then think of them now. Next, think of construction. We have to have the same consumer-focused approach. And it will not do to say that manufacturing, with its repetitive processes, is totally different from construction, where every site is different, where it may be raining, there is no standard 46

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design, the work is mostly subcontracted, manufacture and installation of components are undertaken by different companies –and a dozen other excuses. Think instead of the similarities; and it does not matter whether we talk about the top footballer or pop star with a Ferrari or you or me with our small family hatchback car. At the end of the day, the process for assembling the Ferrari and the family Ford is the same: a series of outsourced components manufactured by subcontractors and assembled together in one or more sites to complete the product. Construction is not dissimilar.

Design quality Lastly, but with some trepidation, I turn to the issue of design quality itself. Over the last twenty years, clients, sometimes in exasperation, have increasingly concentrated upon the process and buildability of a scheme, and demanded single-point responsibility for delivery. Architects have felt marginalised by this and have complained that the status of architecture has suffered, particularly with the growth of design-build procurement. I understand that, and have some sympathy with it, though more and more well-known architects act on a novated basis to design-build contractors nowadays. But leaving that aside, there is, I sense, a real swing of the pendulum back towards design. It is not against design build as such, which remains an efficient and productive procurement method, and one which in any case has many varieties and different degrees of risk transfer to the contractor. Rather, it is to emphasise that design should not be minimised, whatever the procurement route, and that the creative instinct of the architect or engineer should be harnessed jointly with the skills of the constructor. In short, it is that buildings and engineering projects should look nice as well as work. To coin a Gertrude Stein-type phrase, a shed is a shed is a shed, and no one wins any design awards for it. But we do not want a land full of sheds, though they have their place. Design should be creative, bold and striking. It should be practical, and it need not be expensive. Clients can insist upon it and treat designers properly. The full integration of the designer within the team will allow for the flow of his or her talents without the client’s requirements and buildability being lost sight of, and on a properly remunerated basis. The first decade of the twenty-first century, symbolised so dramatically by the London Eye and a number of other grand projects, will hopefully be a period when designers recover their morale and are allowed wide expression of their free spirits, but as part of a disciplined team working closely with the client to deliver his or her objectives in a best-value-for-money way. I believe this is increasingly happening, and I welcome it. Old barriers against creative teamwork have broken down – not that they were all that old. Most of them only emerged, almost by accident, in the nineteenth century. This decade must also be the era of the client. There will still be thousands upon thousands of small jobs, many of them repair and maintenance, for domestic customers who will be uninstructed, price-driven lay clients. But for the larger and medium-sized jobs, the priority over the next few years is to ripple down to prospective clients that there is a new culture in the industry which is based on teamwork and which aims to deliver best value. But it makes demands on clients as well as giving them commercial ARCHITECTURE AND ITS ETHICAL DILEMMAS

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advantages. They need to choose their building or engineering team in the way they would choose a new car, a holiday or their own home. They would not simply buy the cheapest holiday resort, car or house which they could find. They would look instead for the one which was best for them, and which suited their preferences and their ability to pay. So, finally, what about those ethical dilemmas? As to the main issue, the role of the architect, there will always be differences of opinion. Architects are not what the politicians call ‘lobby fodder’ – obediently doing what they are told by some higher authority, in the case of MPs their whips. They are creative, highly educated people with an instinctive belief in their profession being a branch of art. When I was an undergraduate here, my next-door neighbour in my college was reading architecture, in what then called itself very emphatically the School of Architecture and Fine Arts, with the emphasis on the last two words. It was an education, not a vocational training course. Many architects who graduate will never actually practise their discipline. Others – many others – will work in one-person practices, fiercely independent and trusting to their own creative skills to translate fine buildings for private clients from their minds to reality. I doubt if the dilemmas which I have discussed today will influence or trouble them. Whether they will earn a comfortable living from their inspirations is another matter. I hope they do, and wish them well. But the facts of business have moved against such independent free spirits. But there are other architects, equally creative, equally believing in their artistic skills, to whom best practice and teamwork come naturally. Sometimes they will lead the team, for other projects they will not. They may be designing exemplar schools for the ‘Building Schools for the Future’ initiative, or they may be working in a novated role, doing the detailed design of someone else’s conceptual work. To them, the projects and the client’s wishes are always paramount. They know that their role is essential. They hope that the client will see the project as contributing to the wider environment as well as being cost sensitive and buildable. They understand that the process of design and construction is best realised as a seamless role, where all involved value the whole project, not just their individual part of it. This is not marginalisation of design. It is its effective realisation without conflict in the twenty-first century. Does it work? Yes. Is it always working? No, because many are not signed up, and that applies to all parts of the demand and the supply sides. Will it ever finish? No, best practice never finishes. Are there any aphorisms which capture this process? Yes, I believe there are two. The first comes from an American business guru, and it matters equally to the finest design practices as to any other form of commercial activity. “When you think your business is through changing, you’re through.” And the second is one which I regularly use, and it is this: “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.” Clients in 2004 demand more than that.

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Chapter 5

Architecture, art and accountability Richard MacCormac

1

Egan 1998.

I want first to reflect upon where architecture stands and has stood in the past in the cultural territory of our society, dominated by accountability and cost and not imagination and value, particularly in relation to the public sector. Then I want to consider how that territory may be changing and how the polarity, which I define in my opening argument, may be being subverted by the way in which the UK’s culture and economy are developing, and where architecture fits into this changing situation. This is, of course, an area of concern with which CABE (the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) is deeply involved. The history of architecture tells us about buildings as great cultural artefacts, deeply linked to the other visual arts of the day. The architect William Chambers was a founder member of the Royal Academy with Joshua Reynolds. Architecture schools and architectural historians continue to promote architecture in this way. Yet the Egan report, perhaps the most important policy document for the building industry in this Government’s term of office so far, does not refer to architecture and refers to design only in relation to constructional efficiency.1 This is because it considers building as part of the means of production in the economy. This is not a new challenge for architects. Two hundred years ago, at the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the symbolic role of architecture began to be challenged by the quantifiable, factual world of science, engineering and commerce. St Pancras Station has been seen to represent the division between the aesthetics of nineteenth-century architecture and the pragmatics of engineering. I want to suggest it represents a deeper distinction between construction as cultural product and construction as part of the means of production. It represents the distinction between the art-historical perception of architecture and the Egan report’s perception of building. So we can see the St Pancras Hotel as cultural artefact, the station shed as part of the commercial infrastructure of the railway. The Modern Movement itself and British ‘high tech’ in particular aimed to overcome this duality by an elision of product and production in the

aesthetics of construction. This continues to be a brilliant proposition but, arguably, it limits the significance of architecture – but that is another debate. Historically, a consequence of the Industrial Revolution was a fundamental shift in the balance of sponsorship of construction away from the institutions of the state and the landed establishment towards the vastly expanding requirements of commerce and industry. Aesthetic values, which had been bound up with the symbolism and propriety of the old order, were challenged by this new materialism. Pugin and Ruskin set out to redefine and defend these values by an alliance of art and truth – aesthetics and ethics – an attempt to create a moral resistance to materialism, capitalism and machine manufacture. Though architecture has continually transformed itself since the early nineteenth century, I think that, broadly, it continues to be subject to this tension between its cultural role and its obligation to commerce. This divide, which may also be seen as a consequence of the Enlightenment’s distinction between imagination and reason, can be expressed with two clusters of words: humanism imagination personal experience value idea art feeling inventiveness quality recreation

science reason objectivity cost fact commerce knowledge accountability quantity work

and so on. This is not a question about choice. It is an attempt to define the territory of the modern world with which architecture is bound up. The schools of architecture and faculties of the history of art are preoccupied with the terms on the left-hand side, whereas the prevailing climate of our society makes us accountable to the right-hand side, which is seen as administratively and politically manageable. We must think very carefully about this, particularly in relation to architectural education, which I believe needs to be rooted in the real accountable world. This is because our privilege and capability for standing for what lies to the left must be grounded in our engagement with what lies on the right. Colin St John Wilson has written of the act of design as “the achievement of such a mastery over necessity that a position of freedom is won, which will allow the transforming powers of art to act upon the exigencies and importunities of use”.2 However, we must justifiably ask which other professionals in the industry represent the intangible values on the left side, particularly on those occasions when it seems that armies of project managers and value engineers have been trained specifically to erase anything immeasurable. This has been my experience of the private finance initiative (PFI), in which cost-cutting processes drive out architectural quality in even the smallest details. The apparent precision with which construction can be costed of course makes this easy and tends towards a meanness of outcome in projects driven only by cost and specification. 50

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2

Wilson 2000.

3

RAE 1998.

4

Thompson 1963.

One of the ironies of PFI is how utterly insignificant construction cost reductions can appear in relation to the whole bid. Construction cost should not be considered in isolation but be considered in the context of lifecycle costs. Egan’s arguments should be seen in this context as well. In a paper published by the Royal Academy of Engineers, The Long Term Costs of Owning and Using Buildings, it was proposed that the relationship between construction cost and the maintenance of buildings and their systems and ‘people’ costs for office buildings is in the order of 1:5:200 over a thirty-year period.3 An increase in envelope cost of say 10 per cent would have an almost infinitesimal effect in the long term when looked at in this perspective. Yet such an increase in envelope cost might achieve substantial energy savings yearly, or it might be the difference between banality and an immeasurably special experience of aesthetic quality. Another way of reflecting on where as a profession we have come from and where we are going is to look right back to the 1958 RIBA Oxford Conference. As a consequence of that conference, architecture was taken out of the art schools and into the universities, to become ‘scientific’ or ‘sociological’, with requirements for A-level maths and physics. Many university schools of architecture are still incorporated into faculties of social science. I think this was part of a crisis of confidence in the place of the humanities in education; and the continuing tension between the values of the arts and sciences in higher education parallels the tension I have been describing in our own industry. Education is constantly challenged to redefine its relative commitments to growing the economy or developing sensibility and intelligence. Richard Llewelyn Davies, socialist peer and Professor of Architecture at the Bartlett, University College London, in the 1960s, saw architecture as entirely utilitarian. He wanted architecture to apply science and what was referred to as “a body of knowledge” for the greatest social good (appropriately perhaps, for the founder of Utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, was also founder of University College). I remember in this milieu of rather spurious objectivity an extraordinary episode. A student had conceived the design of a primary school as a series of classrooms cantilevered, like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, over the Grand Union Canal, and he talked eloquently of reflections of water on the ceilings, and their vibrancy. But present at this project review was a psychologist and member of staff who stated that there was no evidence that children enjoyed water. In this intellectual environment there had to be a piece of objective research – a PhD to ensure a factual basis to underpin such a proposition – rather than a resort to human experience, to what architecture and the arts are about. A consequence of this was that students at the Bartlett at the time were loath to express opinions or make personal judgements. There was a kind of tyranny, a closure of the aim of liberal education to awaken individual sensibility and the confidence to make personal judgements about what can be experienced and shared, but cannot be known in any objective sense. There was even, at the time, a Young Fabian pamphlet entitled Architecture: Art or Social Service, as though ‘Art’ would drive out social responsibility.4 I recently looked up the Architects’ Journal leader accompanying the obituary of Frank Lloyd Wright, which expressed the same political position, a disbelief in the power and authenticity of individual insight: ARCHITECTURE, ART AND ACCOUNTABILITY

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Wright was a genius, but a genius of the past. He was a master, but not a master of architecture as a social art and science as it has now become. He and his school at Taliesin were dedicated to an essentially individual interpretation of an art, to the production of sculptural works in which mankind, or the wealthier sections of it, were permitted to live.5

Maybe what I am now going to say is obvious, but the creativity of the culture of Britain today is largely made up of activities outside conventional measurement. On any night of the week, innumerable music venues and concert halls are packed with audiences enjoying experiences which have no logical explanation and about which there can be no meaningful argument. The same can be said about the visual arts, with an extraordinary range of exhibitions attracting a greater number of visitors than ever before. Visitors to the London Tate Galleries have grown from about one million to over 4.5 million a year since the opening of Tate Modern. Now we may take all this for granted, but I think we should regard it as a remarkable characteristic of our time that such large numbers of people seek these kinds of shared experience. Maybe ‘art’ has superseded ‘belief’, as we seek to be reassured by the constant redefinition of what we subjectively experience and by the sense that other people at a concert, at an exhibition of paintings or experiencing architecture have similar feelings and a sense of intellectual exhilaration. Whatever is happening is not confined to a ‘highbrow’ metropolitan elite. It involves a more widely educated, articulate and intellectually engaged society than ever before. More people go to art exhibitions than to football matches. Architecture should be the most manifest part of all this. But how can its subjective value be seen as equal to the measurable and utilitarian issues that politicians and administrators can more readily grasp? It is difficult to see how qualitative matters can be seen to have political consequence, unless they can be seen to have real economic and social implications. And this brings me to draw on a remarkable paper given as the New Statesman Arts Lecture in 2001 by Lord Evans, who currently chairs the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries. His paper has the kind of title one wishes one had thought of oneself, “The Economy of the Imagination”. This, he argues, is the part of the UK economy which includes the music business, broadcasting, film, art, craft, architecture and design. Unlike industries which deal with physical resources, including the building industry, its activities are in the mind and so do not readily represent themselves in a world in which productivity is conventionally thought of in terms of physical output, not the value of ideas. But the facts are very surprising; these activities – art, architecture, design, music, broadcasting, film – now employ more than the traditional industries of shipbuilding, steel, car manufacture and textiles put together. But the significance of this is very difficult to convey, because, as we know, there is a mind-set out there, our puritan inheritance perhaps, which sees these activities, of which architecture is one, as ‘add-ons’, not real or tangible. Yet the fact is that this cultural economy now constitutes about 6 per cent of the UK’s gross domestic product and is growing very fast at a rate of 16 per cent a year – far higher, obviously than the economy as a whole. The design business of which architects are part is now a world leader, with business worth over £17 billion a year, of which architecture revenues account for nearly 10 per cent. 52

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5

Atkinson 1959.

Here, then, is evidence of a growing function of imagination in our society, which suggests that the polarities with which I opened my argument are being subverted. The intangibles – creativity, imagination, aesthetics – now underlie a fast-growing sector of twenty-first-century economic production, in which culture and production have become interdependent. Perhaps a new economic engine of the twenty-first century is being forged between imagination and information technology, just as the nineteenth-century engine was forged between science, engineering and industry. There is a growing awareness that the frames of mind engendered by creativity are important not just to the arts but also to the ways in which we need to respond to innovation and change in business, science, research and many other areas of economic activity. These frames of mind are essentially positive, optimistic and intellectually ambitious; they convert old problems into new opportunities, and seek outcomes which amount to more than the sum of the parts. The disciplines of lateral thought, and the resolution of highly disparate issues characteristic of creative thinking, seem to me to be as relevant to the political and administrative world as the more common disciplines of law and accountancy. There is a direct relationship between architecture and a culture and economy which values and depends upon creativity, innovation and intelligence, because real architecture declares these very qualities. Good design is intellectually exhilarating. Highly creative businesses, such as the BBC, need no convincing about this. They have witnessed the negative effect of low-quality ‘design and build projects’, conceived as low-cost commodities, not inspirational assets, and their staff know when their buildings are not equal to their own aspirations and intelligence. So the BBC is now committed to a series of ambitious projects with the conviction that there is synergy between creative environments and the creative potential of their people. They want buildings which attract high-quality staff and recharge and amplify the worldwide image of the BBC projected by Broadcasting House in 1932. The regenerative power of art and architecture so spectacularly inaugurated at Gateshead with Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North is now evident in an unprecedented post-industrial regional renaissance, which has changed images and local economies from Salford and Manchester to Walsall, Liverpool and Glasgow. All this signals an enormous cultural watershed in Britain, with architecture and the other visual arts asserting an importance in the public consciousness that would have been inconceivable a generation ago. We are in a new cultural territory. Yet we really need to wake up to the idea that, in this new economy of the imagination, public sector buildings could be conceived as inspirational assets rather than cheap necessities. Is there a connection between the low morale of parts of the public sector which should be especially valued, education and health for instance, and an attitude to the provision of buildings which is deeply uninspired and managerial? Why, for example, should not UK schools be regarded as regenerative icons for local communities in the same way as the Baltic Mill or Walsall Art Gallery are icons for their larger constituencies? They need cost no more, and to deny this possibility may be inadvertently a form of social exclusion. Construction in the public sector is, astonishingly, running at £25 billion a year! Yet architects are, on the whole, merely used as pliant ARCHITECTURE, ART AND ACCOUNTABILITY

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5.1 The Jubilee Line station at Southwark, designed by MacCormac Jamieson Prichard: detail of the blue glass “cone wall”, designed with artist Alex Beleschenko.

subcontractors in procurement processes which result in depressing schools and hospitals where the potentiality to enhance life through design should be paramount. With the Prime Minister’s Award there is now a sense that the commitment to quality has been inaugurated. To raise the ambitions of the public sector architecturally would be a declaration about humanism and excellence, a heightening of public expectation, and a projection of Britain as a twenty-first-century society of imaginative production. I am going to conclude with an anecdote which illustrates, in an unexpected way, something of what I have been trying to say. I had been asked by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to show Baroness Blackstone the Jubilee Line station we designed at Southwark. We were taken on a tour by the station manager. Ascending the escalator from the lower concourse he remarked that the blue glass ‘cone wall’, designed with artist Alex Beleschenko, reminded him of a theatre backdrop. I was interested in this comment, because I had always had in mind Schinkel’s setting for the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute, which is not something you tell the average project manager. But the station manager went on to say that the London Sinfonietta now performs in the concourse and plays an especially composed piece entitled “Up the Line”!

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THE PROFESSIONAL CONTEXT IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Chapter 6

Responsive practice Giles Oliver

What I am going to say here is written from the point of view of architectural practice. There is a substantial fracture between thinking about architecture and engaging in the professional activity, and this has arisen from the way architecture has come to be taught and practised. Some healing work is sorely needed. To begin a dialogue, raise several irritating and persistent questions and share some experience is a valuable opportunity, too rare in the hurly-burly of project work. Exploring some of the ethical dilemmas that generally remain tacit, silent or bottled up is a welcome challenge.

The context of practice Most of my experience as an architect has been in the UK, where I have worked in both private and public architectural practices as well as teaching architecture part-time at degree level and full-time at post-graduate level. I started work at age 16 as an assistant to a one-man practice, holding the other end of the tape, correcting drawings and generally helping out. Then I studied for three years at the school of architecture in Cambridge, where Leslie Martin was head of department, completing my professional qualifications much later on a part-time basis at South Bank University and then the University of North London. The private architectural practice where I now work has a background in designing medium-scale social housing, arts projects, offices and primary care centres, including surgeries. We also engage in community-based master planning. The practice has a fine record of awards and employs some sixty people. Recently we have plunged deeply into a complex process where larger-scale public and private interests have been deliberately brought into play, the intention being to get the best out of both of them. Public sector goals and values have been married to private sector skills and risk taking. The process is called the Local Improvement Finance Trust (LIFT). It is the offspring of the more widely known and feared public finance initiative (PFI) method of procurement. My colleagues are working in that area too, designing schools. Some context may be helpful for the non-specialist. LIFT was invented by central government some two years ago as a generic way of devolving power

and responsibility to local agencies. This has begun with NHS Primary Care Trusts, area health authorities and local authorities, but the model is capable of being extended to local education and all forms of public services, including schools. The central idea of the NHS LIFT programme nationally is for primary care trusts and local authorities to share in the risks and rewards of redeveloping their estate (surgeries, clinics, outreach services, care homes for those with disabilities) by partnering with private consortia who bring in finance as well as planning, development, construction and management skills hitherto provided by separate in-house public departments. The model is intended to release local initiative while removing the capital burden of public investment in new-built facilities from the Treasury (central taxation) to a local level where public agencies enter into lease agreements for their buildings over a period of typically twenty-five years. To get started the local agencies combine to form a group to cover a reasonable population across their historical boundaries. They develop a service plan, establish a budget and advertise for partners through the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU). Private consortia then compete with each other, unfortunately at break-neck speed, to offer a combination of value for money (rent levels), imaginative design and capacity to become longterm reliable partners over a period of twenty-five years. Once through a protracted selection process – a nerve-wracking business for everyone – the two sides plan to settle down together to form a company for the area, and this is called a LIFTCo. Only a handful have got thus far to date, but the number is growing. The service-led consortium we are part of is called Building Better Health, and we are involved in three of these schemes in London, covering a total of twelve boroughs. The private consortium then holds 60 per cent of the LIFTCo shares and the public bodies the remaining 40 per cent. There are a host of checks and balances that I won’t go into now, which allow mediation or even divorce should the marriage go wrong. The bright prospect is that, once in place, LIFT companies can do more than just ease central government’s debt, of course. The inspiring purpose is to establish holistic health provision, which is so sorely needed, as anyone who has had to traipse between GP, specialist clinic and hospital outpatient departments can attest. What this model also allows, for example, is much needed housing for public key workers to be built alongside a clinic on spare land previously confined to health uses, or for a library to be integrated into the health centre, or for a residential development on one site to directly help fund a health facility at another in the neighbourhood. There is considerable capacity for civic creativity that previously was forbidden by central government. Above all it encourages all local agencies to share resources and see each other as potential partners rather than competing operators. This implies, as one can appreciate, a tremendous change in the culture of an organisation such as the NHS, which was established on military lines, top down, and run in a manner that would have gained grudging respect from Joseph Stalin. How could we as architects resist this opportunity, particularly when the prospect of settling down to really getting to know an area well, establish long-term relationships (well, five years at least for us) and begin to reconcile quality and efficiency of design? In current parlance this is called becoming ‘part of the supply chain’. In more old-fashioned terms it offers an opportunity to become something like ‘surveyor to the fabric’. For an architectural practice it offers the promise of sustained work and some income stability. 56

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So much for the good news. What about the ethical dilemmas? They are abundant. We know that leasing transfers the cost of building new facilities to the revenue sheet, while easing levels of public capital borrowing. Hence the Treasury’s enthusiasm. A persistent critique (and PFI has attracted a great deal of this criticism, much of it well merited) is that public service values cannot be delivered on open market terms. But is queueing for scarce services an equitable regulator for public services free at the point of demand? Is it good enough that the more articulate and able can demand a better service? These questions of social justice are nationally debated, but how does this impact on us, as wellintentioned architects? Projects begin with a process of establishing values, needs and constraints: brief-taking. We know, for example, that brief-taking can be cut short when we are working for constructors who have the costs of borrowing uppermost in their minds. It can also be limited if political targets (election periods) impose a head-spinning timetable on the whole process. And brief-taking when new cultures of provision in education and health care are emerging can be a time-consuming process, calling for iteration. This is a precious process poorly defended, especially when a dominant command culture is giving way to one based on negotiation. People need time to think about change and to find their positive expression for it. For example, GPs who have for fifty years been independent agents are asked to consider the competing needs of other healthcare providers in the same building, such as mental health, social services and specialist clinics. The encounter brings up a long history of separation and diminished trust. I won’t talk about consultants here, but the same issue arises in acute hospital development in spades. Suddenly everyone is in the same boat and being asked to co-operate with each other and to put the patient’s experience first. Can there be one reception desk for all departments? What happens if patients’ records are shared? How can they be shared? Can everyone share a staff clubroom and mingle, or does each department want its own tea and rest room? How do you share a library where books have been privately purchased up to now? Can consulting rooms be shared during the week without affecting the care offered? Can the newly gathered team share a car park or, worse still, car parking spaces? Sorting this out takes time and imagination, dialogue and empathy, and requires a safe environment for the issues to be explored. I must reassure you that, overwhelmingly, we find that nearly everyone – doctors, staff, managers – wishes to move to a holistic approach and to climb out of their ‘silos’ or else retire from the scene. The reality of limited resources, expressed in the leasing arrangements, also comes to the surface, and dreams conflict with each other. Facing up to the practical implications, while still working in the same old way, also calls for stamina and goodwill from everyone – in short, establishing trust. Nothing unique is going on here, we can agree, but it’s all the more interesting and worthwhile for that. As architects we are at the nexus of this work, and are called in to exercise discrimination and practical judgement. Whether we facilitate or foreshorten this process is a pervasive ethical issue for us.

An ethical role If this all seems terribly obvious, indeed banal, I would ask you to bear with me. What I want to explore is not the more familiar challenges of making hard choices and moving on to establishing an appropriate formal architectural design. The ‘pre-architectural’ briefing powerfully shapes and directs the RESPONSIVE PRACTICE

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project, and I would call our work at this point one of ethical crystallisation. In project management jargon we are encouraged to move swiftly on to architectural ‘outcomes’, in case the poetics, and the ethics, get in the way. But it is the activity that precedes and underlies this work that exposes the ethical climate of the project and its dilemmas. And this deserves attention and sustenance. Later, I will briefly look at some of the tools that have been recently invented to attempt to keep the ship on its ethical course, but first let us look at the role of being an ‘expert’ in this process. When we are invited to design an up-to-date replacement for a local clinic, for example, there is a justifiable assumption that we are already expert enough to understand what is required by interpreting a list of rooms provided by the current users. There is massive accumulation of data and standards, based on the past decades of NHS clinics, surgeries and so on. And there are health planners who can bolt these ‘rooms’ together into approximations of plans. It’s not surprising that there is a strange jargon that goes with this, such as ‘optimising adjacencies’. But let us remember that what was going on up to now has also proved in many ways inadequate, especially in terms of the patient’s experience. The specialist model of health care is reflected in the departments, each with its part of the body and its peculiar forms of distress: feet, limbs, blood, heart, ears, eyes and throats, let alone problems of mental health. In acute hospitals with beds there are dozens of such departments. In primary care, which includes ‘general practice’, and where the patient remains ambulant, all illnesses and minor traumas are encountered, often in combination, as any GP will attest. Some call this landscape the ‘National Illness Service’, for that is its defining character. Doctors in general practice have increasingly combined their skills into group practices to provide better cover for each other, to benefit from economies in administration, and to widen the range of care the patient can receive in one location. That’s what the new NHS contracts encourage and reward. When treatment requires special care beyond the GP’s range, active patients are offered appointments at clinics, and these have often been in different locations, available at particular times of the week, to say nothing of waiting periods. This fragmented delivery takes its toll, especially when the distress is multiple or chronic. Hence the convincing and welcome policy of gathering the dispersed services into integrated primary care centres. Our ethical enthusiasm for this approach is heightened by the growing emphasis on maintaining wellbeing through patients’ self-responsibility, with dietary advice, counselling support, health information, fitness clinics, t’ai chi and social services support. This begins to feel more like a National Health Service. It becomes immediately obvious that something relatively novel is occurring with the recombination of health care provided by the NHS and associated care services provided by local authorities and voluntary groups often run by patients for themselves. So the historical knowledge of how to bolt rooms together into departments and then build a wall around them reveals serious inadequacies. All of us, I would guess, have experienced the uninspired environments that arise from this narrowly utilitarian approach. Much reliance was placed on corridors to do the connecting up. Older hospitals are vivid demonstrations of accumulated improvisation on this theme, with cabins in back yards, extended journeys to remote departments and a plethora of signs. Staff walk miles, while patients and their visitors long for the intimacy of small cottage hospitals. In primary care this is reproduced at a citywide scale, with clinics bus rides apart, if you are lucky enough to get a bus. 58

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Despite the weaknesses in the 1948 NHS settlement, no one did this from bad motives. There is profound dedication to be found in each of the specialist departments that we encounter, and an extraordinary spirit of improvisation in the face of inadequate resources: staff personally decorating rooms for children so they are more welcoming, managers staying late to keep a clinic open for community uses, the sharing of resources and inadequate spaces. This is not unlike the situation at all levels of publicly funded education, a similarly under-resourced and overstretched sector of our lives.

Managerial or ethical values The policy to integrate these hitherto dispersed services is viewed through two distinct lenses. The first is the managerial lens, which seeks economies in cost, such as lease plus agreements, lower heating bills, fewer ambulance transfers, efficiencies in administrative staff numbers. The second is the lens of health care, which seeks a holistic response to the citizen’s healthcare needs, both preventative and allopathic, and meeting these on demand, equitably. Such incommensurable values twine together into the fabric of ‘public sector values’. As architects, engaged to frame the practical environment within which these purposes can be accomplished, we are immediately faced with ethical tensions and conflicts. We can take a managerial approach and stand back, as it were. This involves designing buildings that achieve the minimum competence technically – and there is plenty to accomplish here (build quality). This approach justifies itself by saying that “we are just carrying out policy”. At best this kind of obedient professional competence is ethically neutral and is the minimum justifiably expected of us. This level of service is basically ‘knowwhat’ stuff, knowledge based on existing convention and ‘best practice’. But more is now being demanded and expected than this, especially when the conventions (previous design habits) are in question. To enter into the relational transformation of the clinical services called for in primary care reform is to participate in social dialogue as one of many players. The apparently simple model of ‘being briefed’, for example, by another (‘the client’) and offering a solution opens out into a complex process of listening, mirroring and effectively adjudicating. Which of four services should enjoy the ground floor of a health centre, which is so much more convenient for patient access? If the site is constrained, as they usually are in inner cities, how can equally valid claims for easy access from reception be met on different floor levels? Since virtually all projects are site-based and ‘situated’, one of our particular responsibilities is to reflect the constraints this entails – literally, how to cope with the physical restrictions and opportunities. This includes an assessment of contextual influences, including planning, conservation values and community views. Such influences cannot be simply added up as factors, but require ‘know-how’ based on experience and judgement. Essentially this is the ethical ‘know-how’ that we need. We participate by offering a succession of options and, we hope, skilled arrangements that result in the distinct services achieving a measure of contented agreement, cohabitation if you like. More challenging is to then establish a degree of common purpose regarding the feel and operation of the family of services. This is new territory without an existing model. However, in ‘brainstorming’ sessions (also appropriately called ‘thinking outside the box’) supportive themes or goods RESPONSIVE PRACTICE

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emerge: good natural lighting, natural ventilation wherever possible, views into gardens and courtyards, unimpeded movement for all kinds of users however disabled or encumbered, ease of way-finding with the minimum of signs, adequate storage, and so on. Such qualities are in reaction to existing conditions: fluorescent lights, poor ventilation, barren yards, corridors with pinch points and without views, signs everywhere, rooms full of inappropriate clutter. The list goes on, as you can imagine. These are the commonly experienced symptoms of environmental disease. There is emerging evidence not only that these supportive qualities are more agreeable in a commonsense sort of way, but also that they assist the healing process. Perhaps too easily gathered under the umbrella of ‘good design’, it is vitally important that the dialogue between users and providers can articulate these qualities and thereby hang on to them through the rough ride of cost cutting and operational indifference common to public institutions. Examples drawn from recent evidence-based design research have identified that surgical patients recover more quickly if offered a view of greenery and trees rather than a blank wall. Staff remain in post longer if the working environment is pleasant and well planned. Visitors attend patients longer and with greater frequency in a well-designed setting, leading to lower workloads on the staff and improved recovery among patients. Efforts are being made to assemble the therapeutic contribution of good-quality surroundings, just as improved diet has been identified as a key contributor to improved behaviour in other institutions such as schools and prisons. In the NHS an evaluation checklist called AEDET (the Achieving Excellence in Design Evaluation Tool) is the first resilient framework to receive these humane and practical insights.1 The biggest problem is whether people have the time and energy and commitment to champion these values. If common sense and good design still remain at the margins of public economics and healing statistics, it is encouraging that they are gathering strength. Low expectations restrict public imagination and hence demand. As architects we are often acting as proxy for this public imagination, yet to find expression. This is a core ethical challenge for the designer: to responsibly represent the pre-conscious in public experience. While we immediately know, as human beings, that care and compassion enhance healing and well-being, this has been subsumed to demands of utility and a narrow definition of cost. Does this mean that we cannot act until the benefits have found their way into a managerial tick-box? Of course not. We are free to engage our empathy and skill on behalf of everyone who cares for or is cared for by others. The designer on Wednesday is also a potential patient on Thursday, and certainly shares a common predicament. We have all received care as infants and children and for this very reason remain citizens in need throughout our life spans. Ethics, especially the ethics of everyday existence, anticipate scientific enquiry and measurement. The demand for ‘good design’, and with it ‘good designers’, socially has co-emerged with the return of investment in the public realm. That demand is beginning to find its empirical ‘justification’ amongst the economically minded through research into public responses to successful environments. This is very welcome and challenges architects, among others, to demonstrate their responsiveness. So the call for ‘good design’ arises within a wider debate on the essentially social issues of justice and the appropriate allocation of resources to healthcare ‘needs’, the relative value devoted to sustaining the life spans of 60

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1

Francis 2004.

the community, the quality of life of its members and each person’s degree of self-responsibility for their well-being. We all participate in this ethical process as citizens whether or not we are directly engaged as professionals.

The design team

2

Varela 2001.

Acting as an architect, however, I do not act alone. I necessarily join a wide circle of other skilled professionals to provide a service leading to the construction and operation of a suitable environment fit for its purpose. I like to call my product architecture. Others privilege their particular contribution likewise: building services, structure, landscape, interior design, maintenance, facility management. Each contributes to the successful whole, not just at ‘handover’ but through time. The process is essentially a team effort whose members include the clients, the users who advise, the cost consultants, the financiers, statutory authorities and community groups. The recent rubric of ‘stakeholders’ is supposed to manage this array of contributors, but it must be obvious that the character of public provision of healthcare services, as in education and other social institutions, means this list cannot be exhausted. The facts of team-working demand appropriate leadership and vision. Other contributors to this volume show how this role was historically centred on the architect and underpinned the professional charter; however, the apportionment of the role is in dispute with a myriad of alternative contenders. Why is this? If imagination and vision are key to the tasks described then the architect has a vital contribution to make to the direction and morale of design teams and the development stakeholders. The central leadership challenge is to understand the diverse ethics of the distinct team members, tolerating diverse values as ingredients within a whole project and resolving conflicts where they break out. This calls for ethics in action, “a wise person who knows what is good and spontaneously does it”,2 rather than schemas or rigid protocols. This ethical scope is highly prized in all fields. Are architects, charged with looking ahead and synthesising complex problems, particularly well equipped to fulfil the role or should they delegate this to others? A brief excursion into the discipline’s peculiar character is necessary to identify the obstacles to providing an unqualified yes to this question. I have had the privilege of co-ordinating a master’s programme here at the University of Cambridge, designed to introduce the separate professionals to teamworking. Awkwardly titled Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment (IDBE), it flourishes. Young built-environment professionals pause from their job to reflect on and review how they work together. I recall one services engineer concluding the two-year course with a special insight, namely that whereas at the start he could not see what architects were up to and had been scathing about their inability to clearly manage five key factors in a project (let alone climb out of a paper bag), he now understood that the difficulty lay in the fact that architects faced something more like twenty-five ‘factors’ at a time and often resorted to sweeping visionary statements rather than shared analysis. This was interpreted as arrogance. No wonder architects can be hard to understand! The engineer had developed a real degree of respect for the tensions shouldered by someone in the role of architect, and was amazed at the absence of any management training from architects’ education. He had effectively come to understand another discipline’s strength and weakness and coincidentally readied himself to lead a team with architects in it. RESPONSIVE PRACTICE

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Architects are not trained as managers. Few possess an appetite for managerialism. Indeed we are sometimes proud to say we are not trained at all, but rather educated. This bounces back as you can imagine and smacks of the long-standing wish to distance the role from ‘trade’. But there is a core issue here. Architecture is a term that historically denotes an embracing and embodied synthesis of function, technical competence and sensuous appropriateness. You can see I am skating around the difficult area of ‘delight’, ‘beauty’ and its most recent manifestation, ‘impact’. More of that later. Each of these elements has wholly distinct value systems at work, and as architects we are supposed to master them if the activity is properly to emerge as architecture from the subordinate activities of planning, building or dreaming. And the synthesis itself is further contextualised socially – that is, it is assessed, loved, disliked, abandoned or cherished by society. Of course there are some very private expressions of the art (luxuries), but overwhelmingly architecture manifests publicly, if merely on the citizen as passer-by. Civic buildings, open to all, in sickness or in health as it were, invite the most searching appraisal, and quite rightly so. Finally the emergence of the global interdependency of human activity and our precious environment calls on architects to answer to the over-arching ethical criteria of sustainability, the impact on our children’s children of the work we engage in and pass on. This is what I mean by saying that there is a lot going on and that that is nothing new. We know that enduring works of architecture hold a special charge of meaning, enabling the present generation to visit their ancestors, whether to worship or give thanks that they have now moved on. The soaring membership of the National Trust attests to this, even if it now includes the teenaged John Lennon’s bedroom. Not all built form becomes symbolic capital, of course. The UK population lives in a densely layered historical fabric, for well or ill. So the accretion of meaning also reveals a wealth of transferred symbolism as well as function. At a professional level it is our job to be familiar with this inheritance, sort it out and draw appropriately on the treasure chest.

Appropriate architectural education This is intended neither as special pleading nor as a request for sympathy. Rather it indicates the stuff out of which ethically mature responses emerge. Are we ethically house-trained? Is it simply a matter of throwing people into the deep end of the mixed economy and seeing who struggles to the surface? Architectural education has been preoccupied in this country with its attempt to raise itself to an academic discipline and take its seat at the high table. In its seeking such status, I would argue that the peculiar gifts of architectural imagination and practice have been treated with a degree of self-contempt. In doing so (and I necessarily simplify here) architectural education distanced itself from architectural practice and ‘commerce’. Ever upwardly mobile, some architectural schools have sought the mantle of art while others pretended to science. This yearning has centred on creating a distinct disciplinary validity and obscured the multi-disciplinary character of architecture’s production and thought. It need not have done, and I believe it has been poorly served by the models of academic validity that it pursued. Architecture’s multi-disciplinary character may indeed be something to do with why people choose to become architects in the first place. Overwhelmingly, young people do so for non-academic reasons such as: an aptitude for form-making 62

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rather than writing coherently; the wish to make the world a better place to live in; the attraction of an activity which appears to resolve the absurdly early choice they made between science and art insisted on (in the UK) at the age of 12; even the status that remains attached to the title of architect despite the realities of practice. Put this way, my heart goes out to the students of architecture. Of all built environment courses, architecture is the only one that is persistently oversubscribed; it holds promise. I don’t believe they set out to exercise dominion, to rule the world or impose arrogant form on the passive population. There are plenty of other disciplines that encourage that! These distortions begin in the schools and mature in practice. Architectural education in its more recent pursuit of respectability – to rise as it were from the Brixton School of Building – rode the wave of respect and promise unleashed after the Second World War when nearly everything that was built was state funded. Social and moral consensus deeply validated the tasks of ‘reconstruction’ and with it the tenets of utilitarian modernism. Practical utopianism saturated the schools for decades and formed its teachers and their students. Of course there were dissenting and cultivated minorities, as there always are, and these (individualists, mostly) achieved pioneering status when the current of consensus gave way to the relative individualism of the 1960s. A different set of values erupted and these have persisted in unhappy tension with the former values of collective orthodoxy. What is noteworthy here is that the morally superior but anonymous architectural servant of the post-war ideal, disciplined by war-time experience, was displaced by a potentially infinite number of rebellious and creative stars each with their name, and their name on the building. One can immediately recognise the signs of consumer culture and relatively abundant private capital impacting on a professional milieu. The academic corollary of this was postmodernism, deconstruction and, at its best, a deeper enquiry into the experience of architecture and of being an architect. What I am emphasising is that the tacit ethics of the moral consensus in the post-war period dissolved in the face of the newer generation’s energetic individualism. The resulting state of moral groundlessness faithfully mirrored the consumer culture’s release from moral conformity and scarcity. As in other knowledge fields that have experienced the anti-coagulant effects of relativism, the notion of a unifying or stable ethic embracing the discipline collapsed. The opportunity that now arises is to resituate these experiences within a wider social framework and thereby recover both responsibility and ethical presence. Our generation witnessed how in the 1980s the block on investment in public sector services, health, education and social housing drained the profession’s remaining post-war knowledge base and ethics. Fee competition became the norm, the advertising of services was permitted, building research centres were disestablished, and the professional press fell into the hands of the advertisers and became uncritical. Above all we saw the collapse of the public sector employee. As we know, this was egged on by a campaign against the chartered professions, so that architects took a tremendous knocking. Incidentally, there is currently a missing generation of architects who gave up practice following the late 1980s recession, people who would have filled a key leadership role in the present period. The mixed-economy instruments that emerged (PFIs, public–private partnerships, etc.), initiated by the Tories and embraced by New Labour, obey the geography of neither right-wing nor left-wing ethics. RESPONSIVE PRACTICE

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Throughout this disruptive journey few schools of architecture have attempted to explicitly share an ethical map with their students. Indeed such moves were mocked as either old hat or dangerously ‘prescriptive’. Ethics became the domain of fogeys. Internal competition between students works against the values of team-working; nor is responsible leadership investigated. Little contemporary social or economic history is taught, so that architectural production is seen as a succession of parallel designs or styles, or indeed theories. Nonetheless architecture as a global subject or meta-narrative demands some matching global conceptual framework, and versions have been tacitly provided by a range of ‘lite-philosophy’ options. However, students are deemed too immature to plunge into the real meaning of these philosophic cogitations and must remain in thrall to their punchlines. As for moral philosophy, it does not appear on the radar. I do not stand outside these difficulties, having done my time exploring French philosophers, structuralism and so on. Such attempts at making sense of artefact and symbol are entirely appropriate, I hasten to add. However, the preferred viewing instruments have been both kaleidoscopic and asocial. So architectural theory has suffered its fair share of deconstructionist relativism. The essential characteristic of this ethical numbness is its detachment from everyday practice and the intimately associated terrors and rewards. The structural detachment of schools from architectural practice, clumsily called the ‘real world’, is a parodic imitation of pure and applied science. In the absence of a systematic grounding in evidence-based enquiry, the student and her tutors are free to roam in the tasty realm of subjective freedom. Here the artistic paradigm has been emotionally dominant, with sufficient discretionary ingredients drawn from ‘the real world’ to retain titular respectability as architectural education. At interviews of prospective employees in our practice, we find able young graduate architects, with fantastic portfolios of visionary studio work and an esoteric thesis on some aspect of Walter Benjamin’s reflections on Paris – but no working details, no measurement of existing buildings and a complete ignorance of the construction industry and their possible relation to it. The isolation and competitiveness of the seven-year course privileges egoism over co-operation, monologue over dialogue. And, besides, these characteristics are apparently more fun. The observable impact is considerable difficulty in communication outside the peer group. That is where the ethical shortfall in architectural education seems most acute to me. In life there is considerable satisfaction in bringing a personally developed skill into play with others, in dialogue and through enquiry which involves close listening. Rather than welcoming the way that the ‘other’ affects and changes our choices and actions, the ‘other’ becomes a threat. Architects are trained in the skills of persuasion rather than relationship building, through what are called ‘crits’, and those that fail to achieve such visibility are marked down. Potentially studio work, with one-to-one tutoring, was historically an immensely rich ground for learning this outlook, but this is in decline and underfunded. There are also important gender issues here that lead to a loss of women to the profession, despite high entry numbers as undergraduates. And that is a special loss to a balanced appreciation of the world that surrounds us and nurtures us. I am not nostalgic for the collectivist moral consensus of the 1940s and 1950s, but I believe that it has precious lessons that can still be learnt. Equally, while I am a product of the excitement and eruptions of the individualist 1960s, I can see that a restricted and consumerised sense of self 64

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devalues society as a worthy subject of practice. Conventionally polarised, both positions prove to be ethical dead ends. Young architects, once released into practice, too often find themselves swiftly disappointed. Aroused to dream without financial or social constraints (except student debt), they are drawn into practice where all too often they revert to a protracted period of drafting powerlessly in extended teams, way down the food chain. As Tom Spector reminds us in Chapter 10, this exploitation is often sprinkled with stardust. The ambition to become someone special, assiduously cultivated by the schools and the glamourised architectural press, is mocked by the actualities of practice. When there are exhibitions of the work of young architects, conventionally that means they are pushing 40! We know that great architects often only get going by the time they are in their 60’s. This, of course, genuinely reflects the complex and burdensome process that leads eventually to significant built projects. A tremendous implied trust is made between a large capital project and its designated design team, hence the furore when this is disappointed or ill served. Meanwhile a whole subculture of graphic architectural fantasies sustains the disembodied desires of the younger members of the profession. These are sustained by competitions, on which an immense amount of unpaid energy is expended. Occasionally submitted designs heroically get through and miraculously get built, such as Pompidou, reviled when it was under construction and now embraced by le tout Paris. (That project, although designed by a very young team, had powerful elder sponsors.) This attrition of young professionals through practice need not lead us to tears of sympathy. It is simply how things are. What seems to get further damaged is the ethical vitality of the practitioners. Recent graduates remain detached in their subservient roles from the fruitful and rewarding process of encounter between client and user, which is conventionally sequestered for reasons of power and commissions to the most experienced members of the practice. In practice we face tremendous issues concerning developing younger architects’ skills in listening, understanding complex issues, observing acutely, reflecting back accurately and tolerating a seeming multiplicity of viewpoints. Ethically this cannot be asked for without their being given responsibility. Historically this was taught through assisting more experienced practitioners, at meetings, on site, in the studio – and much of this still goes on. This is the transmission of ‘know-how’ skills and with it the tacit ethics of the particular professional enterprise. But what if the seniors are also deficient in these skills? What if the programme sent down by managerial project managers (or the government) foreshortens briefing to a nominal encounter? What if the preconstruction periods promised are unrealistic and allow only one option to be developed? What if the cost constraints mean that inferior materials are selected? What if the procurement route prevents knowledge from the constructors entering into the design? What happens if responsibility for overseeing construction of the building is removed from the architect? Where then are the opportunities to learn in practice, to learn through doing and seeing? Finally, when the building is handed over, just when you would expect a flow of important knowledge to arise, technically and operationally, what happens if the architect’s appointment effectively ceases? What chance is there for the precious circularity that enables knowledge to engage with experience and evolve? These are the daily professional obstacles in our practice, and all of them can drain ethical energy from the practitioner. RESPONSIVE PRACTICE

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Hence there is a retreat into what I would call compensatory rewards: publication in the architectural press, peer awards, corporate comfort positions, the typical cultural enclosures that serve group interests rather than the public interest and are mirrored in the privileging of aesthetics (or, more properly, appearances) over ethics. A review of the profession’s trade press reveals a succession of illustrated news releases, usually of uninhabited buildings, wholly rinsed free of the conflicts and extended struggles that lie within each project. The effective impact is to reinforce an abstracted, almost mausoleumlike celebration of ‘architecture’ as merely built form. There have been sterling efforts recently to break this mould, from within the profession and others from without, including the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). A recent publication by Building Futures (RIBA/CABE), The Professionals’ Choice: the future of the built environment professions, stands out for its deliberate exploration of what society may need from its built environment professionals over the next twenty years.3 Ethics is a persistent theme of the different contributors and critical commentaries. So how do these reflections bear upon the work we began by exploring? Above all I would say that architecture is a long game, even though we are being encouraged to play it faster than ever before. There are quick games to play: film sets, interior remodelling of shops, erecting prefabricated hamburger chains, motorway hotels and petrol stations, and their life spans are correspondingly short. Quite rightly. Politicians, who experience similar half-lives, love this rapid and spectacular turnover of results. However, typical architectural projects take three to four years from inception to full occupation, and many take longer. This is especially true of civic buildings with multiple agencies as clients. The stamina of the team members becomes important as the projects extend over years, and the visionary impetus of the players correspondingly vital. I have begun projects where, as architects, we are the only people still around who were in at the beginning. This is true of health services, housing associations and education, where turnover (or ‘churn’ as it is now elegantly called) affects all members of staff. And stamina draws its strength from a feeling of being engaged in a worthwhile project. The ethical climate of the project is critical in my experience. It is what keeps you going in the dark periods after the early achievement of planning permission, and there can be very dark periods before that! In my experience, cynicism is the most corrosive atmosphere that can affect a long-term project, worse than budget shortages or technical crises, which can even be peculiarly stimulating. Here I refer to Michael Latham, who in his pioneering report Constructing the Team4 and its blunter, earlier draft, Trust and Money,5 called for much greater respect between all players in the tough process of constructing projects. This quality has been virtually absent from the culture of the construction industry, if not from the many remarkable individuals who work in it. Respect for the client, the users, fellow professionals and the constructors is gained through understanding their predicament and their special contribution to the projects we engage in. And it is worth noting how predominantly the architect’s work framework is indeed project based. Teams gather and disperse, things constantly change, loyalties form and evaporate. There is no stability. Living with this provokes two contradictory responses, not surprisingly. The first is essentially defensive, where each player clings to their respective peer group, and the security of one’s immediate co-workers or professional identity acts as a refuge against the comings and goings of the project teams. 66

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3

Foxell 2003.

4

Latham 1994.

5

Latham 1993.

This is the group ethic overlaid on the professional ethic and can be seen as both humanly unexceptional and often prudent. The other, more lively response is to accept that flexible and changeable conditions are not only tolerable but also welcome. Such an acceptance requires a capacity for rapid empathy and a sense that somehow one is co-creating excellence under difficult circumstances. To access this second response on a reliable basis is a personal challenge. Clinging to idealism proves an inadequate ground. Experientially it calls for sustained inner conviction and a certain directness and gathering ethical ‘know-how’. This reservoir of experience is an effective antidote to cynicism. Each new encounter becomes an opportunity to learn, to test one’s responses (ethical, professional, technical) and to witness the unfolding (for better or worse) of group intentions. This itself is deeply rewarding. I hope that I have made it clear that the locus of architects’ contribution should not be limited to the ability to impose a form from their repertoire of professionally gathered ingredients, but rather to discover in dialogue the appropriate terms and direction of the demand for form. This calls on the selfsame treasure chest but is treated as a privileged resource activated by the dialogue between the many parties. We can then acknowledge how rich the contributions can be from all the team members that are engaged, and thereby establish respect and appropriate leadership. In another context, by way of illustration, when we were presenting master-planning options for new town-centre houses and flats in Gravesend at a public walk-in session, we were initially given a very hard time by people who did not trust that they would be listened to. Such public encounters are rare opportunities in a disempowered landscape, and commonly release both tremendous energy and frustration. By staying with them, literally, the diatribes were transformed into positive suggestions and finally some brilliant insights that we willingly incorporated. In this micro-example we were being tested for our trustworthiness, then for our capacity to listen and finally for our skill as architects. It was our job to make sure the suggestions (raising a landscaped courtyard, for example, to allow adequate car parking beneath it) were beautiful, buildable and functional. This made me realise that what appears as our (private) skill is also a social resource and that people are right to make high demands of it. That we retained our distinctive handwriting (design) in the process is not surprising: we are responsible for this. If it is rejected as unwelcome or inappropriate and we cannot find a response in our design skills to correct this, then someone else should be employed who can.

Measuring design quality The theme underlying these reflections is that an ethic of service calls for a high degree of presence, especially in situations requiring decisionmaking, conflict resolution and encouragement of others. If this is established then the issue of what aesthetic or style manifests itself becomes a choice of those engaged in the project. No one is obliged to follow a particular ‘style’ masquerading as the solution. It becomes a matter of ability. Others can elaborate on the shortfalls in knowledge, formal skills or managerial skills of our profession. My particular focus has been to highlight what obstructs and what enhances the human qualities and relationships that raise the spirits and social capacity of architects. Above all, experience across the full scope of architectural practice seems the best ground to RESPONSIVE PRACTICE

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o cultivate these qualities. But experience without reflection and social encouragement can result in bitter fruit. It is the quality of the dialogue that provokes beneficial results, bringing into shared awareness the ethics and values of those engaged. If good design is demanded as a civic right, then those who deliver it well stand a much better chance of being appropriately esteemed by the community. The reliance upon peer approval or retreat into cynicism is diminished and put into perspective. The recent development of Design Quality Indicators is a significant step towards providing a popular language for the shared experience of buildings.6 Such a method can be employed at any time during the inception, preparations, construction and operation of a building, preferably at regular intervals throughout. All stakeholders can fill in layered questions and assign relative importance to the qualities they seek. This is intended to help direct the design, monitor the process of detailed development and assess the level of satisfaction once the building is complete and in occupation. There are some deep problems in this approach, just as there is in AEDET and other evaluation tools.7 I am not going to examine these here except to say that their beneficial impact outweighs their limitations, once you step outside a narrow definition of ‘marking’ a building. Significantly there is a high degree of uncertainty in how to portray the results of the surveys that have so far been carried out. Spider’s webs, bar charts, doughnuts? Each one emphasises a different side of the story derived from the same ‘data’. What is happening here, as I have suggested in discussing the questions surrounding briefing, is that the interaction between the people involved is the most valuable outcome. It is culture-changing when caretakers and headteachers, construction teams and schoolchildren can comment on and discuss the complex issues and qualities of new and existing buildings using this method. Hitherto the architect has strained to bridge all parties, and the strain often showed up in arrogance or monologue. Assessing and evaluating each other’s responses extends the ethical range of each participant. When people regain a degree of understanding and power over a frightening and protracted process such as commissioning and occupying a new building there is tremendous net social benefit. The building is ‘owned’ more deeply; it is typically maintained with greater care and more fully used. The indicator method cannot protect us from a domineering or inappropriate concept put forward dogmatically by one or more stakeholders, but it can help publicise distortions and thereby make such approaches accessible for civic challenge. In this respect the movement to promote ‘good design’, providing that it is undertaken through encounter, meetings and dialogue, can only enhance understanding and responsibility. I suggest that this allows hitherto inaccessible pre-conscious layers of experience and perception to come forward, further enriching people’s sensitivity and the standards set for our shared surroundings. This virtuous cycle of expression, manifestation and awareness is self-reinforcing and ethically refreshing. When architects individually contribute to this process they validate their extensive education and training, bring their personal creative experience into play and re-enter as engaged and progressive members of society. 6

Cole 2003; Markus 2003 (both in Gann and Whyte 2003).

7

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Markus 2003.

Chapter 7

On being a humble architect Sjoerd Soeters

1

Unwin 1909.

My position is that the ethical imperative for the architect is to have the right attitude. I define this as ‘humility’ and I would like to illustrate it by means of illustrations from my own background, in Holland, and some of my own work. Though the image of an architect may appear to be that of an ‘artist’, who imposes his vision on ordinary mortals, my stance is the very reverse. Unlike Nietzsche, I do not stand on the Alps and survey the plains beneath – I come from the lowlands and professionally I try to stand in the midst of our society and combine in my work all its aspirations, rather than filtering them through the conventions of architectural taste. Paradoxically, my position as a ‘humble architect’ is exceptional in the landscape of today’s Dutch architecture and city planning, but I shall try to show you how it can contribute to the present debate on practice. If we look at history, we could say that the norm was for the poor man to help himself by forming his own dwelling, his village and his town, all the while praying to the gods, with an appropriate humility, that what he made would please them as well as himself (Fig. 7.1). But then, in the early twentieth century, architects took upon themselves not the role of people trying to make their own place in the best way that they could, but of being gods themselves. Whereas the gods of the past had sanctioned the creations of men, these new gods determined that nothing was properly ordered and set about rearranging it all for the better. By means of the tabula rasa, a completely new order could be created. This was a historical event, but it is true today that many architects still strive to build a new and better world on this pattern; only by the destruction of the old, they believe, can the new be erected. But you only have to look at illustrations of the kinds of environment in which we all feel comfortable to realise that it is not like this. In the best old towns and villages, there is a common typology of buildings that create their own inter-dependent order and naturally make good public spaces integrated with the buildings themselves. This creates the genius loci, the culture we admire (Fig. 7.2). As the British town planner Raymond Unwin wrote, “The variety of each is dominated by the harmony of the whole”.1 Maybe Adolf Loos referred to this, too, in his distinction between

everyday buildings and architecture with a capital A.2 Architecture was to be reserved for the tomb and the monument; houses in the city should look a bit like the house on the right, the house on the left and the house opposite, and that was all there was to it. Architects acting like gods have never been able to build cities of this type of integrated quality. Because I come from Amsterdam, I shall use the city as an illustration: it has exactly the kind of integrated and harmonious cityscape I am talking about. But in truth it is an exception in the history of the European Renaissance city. It was not constructed by kings or popes, but by the earliest democratic society of free ‘burghers’. It is made up from individual houses on well-ordered plots of land (Fig. 7.3). A cultivated lifestyle was developed amongst the patricians of the society: socially the wife became the master of the house; architecturally, the back garden developed, integrated with the private dwelling and offering the best combination of living indoors and outdoors in the city. But compare that world with the next image – also in the Netherlands (Fig. 7.4). I was educated in Holland in the 1960s, during precisely the period when these city extensions were under construction, or had only just been built. In Britain, as Dan Cruickshank describes in The Rape of Britain,3 modernists destroyed the inner cities; in Holland they were more likely to extend the city in an endless neutral grid, containing an even more neutral and abstract pattern of housing slabs and blocks. There was too much space around each building, and no sense of connection between the buildings: no genuine public space, no cohesion, no individuality to the houses themselves. In the university, we were indoctrinated with the mythology of modernism. We were taught about the heroes – J. J. P. Oud, and the Bauhaus and Rietveld, who asked his friend van der Groenekan to bring home a big saw so he could cut off all the curlicues on the piano nobile. We also learnt about van Doesburg and van Eesteren, and how the neutral patterns of the new ‘cities’ could be related to the later pictures of Mondrian, and how the ideals of the Athens Charter were so clearly and ideally realised in the new city extensions, liberally provided as they were with space and

Top: 7.1 The natural town: aerial view of a Swedish fishing village. Above: 7.2 The genius loci: aerial view of Amsterdam (Prinsengracht and Noordermarkt). Left: 7.3 Amsterdam – a burghers’ city: canal elevations, from Benevolo’s Storia dell’Architettura del Rinascimento.

2

Loos’s essay was written in 1910. See Schezen 1996.

3

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Amery and Cruickshank 1975.

7.4 The twentieth century’s idea of a town: a modern city extension in Holland.

4

Spalding 2003.

5

See Frampton 2002.

sunlight and fresh air. And thus we were educated, if not brainwashed, to the point where we were part of the atmosphere in which these new extensions had been thought out. Architectural education, then as so often now, was a long and intense initiation ritual in which we were taught to speak the professional language and appreciate the taste of a subculture, so that we could defend the austerity of modernism against the criticism of the public with their uneducated taste. We were certainly not encouraged to take up a critical position ourselves, or to consider how to breathe life into the arid theories of the modernists. For my generation, taking up such a critical position has not been without its difficulties. In his recently published The Eclipse of Art, Julian Spalding, a museum director from Glasgow, describes the 1937 exhibition organised by Adolf Hitler, in which modern art was ridiculed, by illustrating, for example, a Georges Braque Cubist painting next to a photograph of a heavyweight invalid.4 The result was a post-war reaction, in Europe and America, which declared every figurative painting or sculpture suspect, on the grounds that it could be associated with a Fascist position. In the void that was thus created, abstract art became very popular in museums, galleries and private collections, although the quality of much of this work can be seen, with hindsight, to be questionable. In the same way, the Nazi illustration of the famous modernist housing estate at Stuttgart, the Weissenhofsiedlung, the whitewashed mini-Casablanca decked out with Arabs and their camels, made it almost impossible for someone who detected the inadequacies of modernist housing to defend the more figurative possibility of individual houses with pitched roofs. When Kenneth Frampton introduced the desirability of a new kind of regionalism, more attuned to the climate and culture of its area, he could only do so under the title of ‘Critical Regionalism’, for fear of being lumped in with Schmitthenner and his chums.5 This fear of popular taste persists: there seems to most architects no way out of the cul-de-sac of modern architecture and planning. Most professionals seem to believe it will simply take some more time, some more tabula rasa opportunities and some ‘exciting’ architecture to fill the void – and then it will all be fine. And indeed there has been a lot of exciting architecture since: we have had low-tech and high-tech, super-modernism and hyper-

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modernism, de-constructivism and the ‘blob’ (still in fashion). All of architects’ energy seems to have been spent in the invention of ever newer structures, materials and images, but the pattern of free-standing buildings on a blank canvas has not changed – and the characteristic modernist problem remains: the lack of any coherent relationship between buildings, and with it the evaporation of any space that feels public. And all these machines that line the highway have generated an ever uglier cityscape. The tendency is for each building to compete with its neighbours for attention, and in this competition all possible shapes, colours and materials are engaged to draw attention, with the result that the city resembles nothing so much as a garbage heap. I believe this to be the case in Britain as much as in the Netherlands, to judge from the illustrations I have seen of the proposed extension to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the recent project for a group of towers on the sea front at Brighton. The central ethical dilemma for architects is therefore the following. If we conclude, as I do, that most of the twentieth-century architectural experiments have ended in failure, how can we in all honesty continue to support this kind of irresponsible adventurism? There will always be architects around to play with funny shapes or to design the highest tower ever, but the more interesting and important questions, of how to design environments that aspire to the qualities of the cities we admire in the past, are the ones that truly demand our attention. I will suggest three areas of ethical decision-making where the architect needs to take a moral stance, or where an ethical position may be evident. The first concerns the commissions an architect will accept. We should not work for people we do not respect: if you cannot identify with the aims of your client you should not accept the commission. My office turns down jobs where we find it will be impossible to relate new buildings to open spaces satisfactorily, where we cannot make a decent urban pattern or relationship of buildings to landscape. We are not content to design individual buildings that stand beside the highway calling attention to themselves. Furthermore, we are not prepared to design to suburban densities in urban locations, which was part of orthodox modernism and became the norm for the building industry. The city should not only be dense, but have mixed functions. Crucially, the design of the open space comes first, and the new buildings that are required should serve that space, not the other way round. Our project on Java Island, Amsterdam, illustrates this approach, providing a rich variety of public spaces and building types at high density (Figs 7.5 and 7.6). In the countryside, we are interested in designing settlements that coexist with the landscape, buildings and landscape being conceived at the same time. Often this means rethinking the relation between the individual dwelling and the landscape. In our project at Haverleij, inspired by the historic examples of Marly and Hardwick Hall, we inverted the normal expectation of dwellings in the countryside, by grouping the houses together into castle-like blocks in the landscape (Fig. 7.7). Cars are hidden underground and everyone has an undisturbed view. In this and other projects we are not afraid to challenge conventional good taste – the façades are decorated in ways that architects find shocking but the inhabitants enjoy (Fig. 7.8). Our second principle concerns the pursuit of fame. Architectural notoriety is linked to architecture with a capital A, as Adolf Loos described it. 72

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7.5 A small canal on Java Island, Amsterdam. 7.6 Rooftop view of Java Island. 7.7 Castle-like housing in Haverleij, Den Bosch (architect: Adolfo Natalini). 7.8 Modern estate of 56 houses, het Zwanenwoud in Heerenveen.

Architects should have no interest in such fame and should not seek it, especially since currently it is linked to the fashion for funny shapes and signature forms. My office is not interested in inventing a new shape for each building, a new expression or even a new language (Figs 7.9 and 7.10). The plethora of novelty is in fact the problem. As in writing, or in music, it makes sense to use a common language so that everyone can understand what you mean, and to employ instruments that go well together and create natural harmonies and contrasts: the disciplines of architecture and town planning should be no different. Finally, there is the proper reward for being an architect, which is the pleasure that working with the actual reality of a situation can give – within the constraints of a budget that has to be respected, with planners and developers with whom one can engage in open debate, and maybe over an extended period of time in repeated projects. Most privileging of all is to work with an individual client to make an object which pleases and a place where you can feel at home (Fig. 7.11). In the case of our house for the Luyt family, we ended as friends for life – that surely is a proper ambition for architects.

7.9 Model for a new shopping street and piazza, Mariënburg, Nijmegen. Innovative forms are an unnecessary contribution to a town. 7.10 Mariënburg: the project as realised. 7.11 House for the Luyt family in Bergen, Noord-Holland.

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Part 3

Accountability and the architectural imagination

The essays in this section move beyond an examination of contractual relationships to relate the discussion of architects’ roles to wider issues in society – firstly by acknowledging that the dilemmas they face are shared with other professions in the twenty-first century, and then by examining critically the stated aims of the bodies that represent the profession against wider social criteria. Onora O’Neill argues that professional accountability has been widely replaced by other, supposedly more effective, forms of accountability. Many are forms of managerial accountability, by which targets are set so that performance may be controlled, judged and sanctioned. Meanwhile professional accountability has come to be seen as a cloak for professional cosiness and inadequacy. Yet, the very phrase ‘managerial accountability’ suggests a conflation of tasks. Management is directed at those who are managed, but accountability is to others who are not managed (for example, shareholders, electors or clients). Holding professionals or institutions to account for their performance may not be best done by managing their performance. Governance and management are distinct activities. Could professional accountability provide a more intelligent way of holding professionals to account? Or do professions and professional bodies always mask ‘producer capture’ and self-interest, and hence frustrate, rather than ensure, accountability? Professions that take accountability seriously would need intelligent forms of professional accountability that secure informed and independent professional judgement, and they need to communicate these intelligibly to relevant audiences. It may be that the ecological crisis provides an agenda which can act as means for architects to communicate their wider social role. Jane Collier believes that the “central moral imperative” for anyone concerned with the built environment is the issue of sustainability in all its aspects. As a ‘practice’ architecture has always had to reconcile the artistic aims of individuals with the social processes which are necessary when groups endeavour to

achieve an end. Architects are required to be visionary, but also to work in collaboration with others: good practice reflects both individual excellence and “virtuous relationships within the practice community”. It was in the latter area that Sir Michael Latham’s report made its contribution. Good practice also draws upon interpretations of previous practice, where judgements of the past are made from the point of view of present criteria – such as sustainability. Within a design team there are both individual responsibilities and collective responsibilities, and they are measured not just against fulfilling present needs but also against a vision for the future. Collier suggests that the philosophical position of pragmatism gives a proper role to the kind of moral imagination that is required and is more appropriate than a rulebased ethics. Architects quintessentially are required to exercise ‘empathetic imagination’ – to put themselves in the position of others. All businesses are required to do this, but in an artistic activity like architecture “good moral judgement … can be seen as aesthetic”. In an era of intensely ecological responsibility, it is the exercise of moral imagination at a collective level that is most crucial. But Tom Spector does not find very much evidence of architects being articulate about their social and ecological role. He examines the codes of the British Architects Registration Board and Royal Institute of British Architects, as well as that of the American Institute of Architects, as evidence of architects’ moral position. He finds their prescriptions both anodyne and selfprotective. The ‘respect’ that architects are required to show is pre-eminently towards fellow architects rather than to the broader public. This is in contrast to the codes of doctors or engineers in the United States, which ask that their members hold the public good paramount. Architects can therefore be justly accused of subscribing to a definition of professionalism whose primary purpose is its own protection – the “professional cosiness and inadequacy” described by O’Neill. But, Spector argues, the activity of architectural design is held in some public regard, and the majority of architects are motivated by a desire to contribute to the public good, not just to increase their own ‘cultural capital’ and their chances of entering an established elite. This majority is poorly served by codes that seem specifically designed to protect an elite. Particularly obnoxious – and symptomatic of the codes’ silence on controversial issues – is the way that famous architects are allowed to hire newly qualified staff at minimal rates of pay. The elite, which is established through the highly selective process of publication, is paradoxically rewarded for “an outlook that diminishes an ethical regard for one’s professional obligations”. Spector suggests that proper codes of conduct would prohibit the exploitation of vulnerable members of the profession, emphasise public approval over peer-group regard and make explicit architects’ dreams of making the world a “more beautiful and humane place”. Since most practitioners hold these values, ethical codes should state them explicitly. The blandness of the currently formulated codes is therefore a symptom of the larger problem, whereby the interests of an elite are served at the expense of the majority of the profession and the public at large.

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Chapter 8

Accountability, trust and professional practice The end of professionalism? Onora O’Neill

1

Moran 2003. I am deeply indebted to this work, which offers a detailed and dispassionate account of these enormous transformations.

On one very popular view, professionalism and professional ethics are fading into the past, and with good reason. This is not because we have entered an era in which anything goes. If anything the reverse is true. It is because we have supposedly come to realise that professions and professionals tend to create ‘club’ cultures. While ostensibly serving their clients, they actually serve themselves. Professional cosiness and producer capture can corrupt professional practice, and the only way to eliminate them, it is said, is to impose legal and regulatory constraints that make professionals properly accountable. In the UK these remedies have been used in increasing doses to remedy these real or imagined deficiencies in professional cultures. We are living through the rise and rise of the regulatory state, and many professions and professional bodies have found themselves disciplined, disempowered and even derided in the name of better accountability. Proponents of the new forms of accountability are embarked on a distinctive, modernist project that seeks to impose more complete and more detailed state control and regulation of professional practice. They see this project as sweeping away the weak, and potentially corrupt, disciplines which professions and professional bodies favoured, and replacing them with more objective, uniform, rigorous and transparent standards of accountability.1 In the process, trust between professionals and the public may be reduced. But to modernisers this is welcome, since they see trust as obsolescent, risky and in need of replacement. Nearly all professionals in the UK – whether they work on their own, in partnership, for companies or for the public sector—have been subjected to new and detailed regimes that secure greater control, accountability and transparency. The new forms of accountability are probably most intense and evident in professions whose members are employed entirely or mostly in the public sector (many of them teachers, doctors, lecturers, social

workers or nurses). But they also bear on professions whose members work as individuals, in partnership or in firms (lawyers, architects, accountants). Only a few (quasi?) professions have escaped the accountability revolution: they include therapists (legislative attempts to define therapy have failed – so far), print journalists (who enjoy a minimal form of self regulation, devised by the Press Complaints Commission2), and those who work for campaigning organisations (who criticise others’ practice, but are often not themselves in practice). In general, the regulatory revolution has left professions and professionals with a limited role in certifying competence to practice and in judging quality of performance, but has restricted their freedom to set standards, to discipline their members, to sanction professional performance or to organise professional activity.3 Their members have been made accountable to external bodies that set detailed requirements, monitor performance and sanction failure. In consequence professionalism and professional bodies are diminished, and may seem redundant. This modernising agenda is still moving fast.4 New regulators are still being established: in 2003 the Office of Communications (Ofcom) was set up to systematise and extend the regulation of telecommunications; in 2004 the Office for Fair Access (Offa) was established to regulate universities’ recruitment of students; a Human Tissues Authority was created in 2005.

Is trust obsolete? Advocates of the regulatory revolution attach importance to the fact that it limits relations of trust between professionals and their clients. They point out that trusting attitudes can provide cover for deception and paternalism, and claim that trust should play no part in the public, commercial or professional life of a complex society. They often depict trust as obsolete (at least beyond personal relations), criticise it as immature, blind and deferential, and compare it to an infant’s (necessarily) blind trust in its mother. As I see it, this view of trust is limited and inaccurate. Trust can be misplaced and can be blind; it can be no more than a credulous or trusting attitude that ignores evidence. However, the aim of trust is not to place it badly or blindly, but to place it intelligently and well. Trust is a matter of judgement. Trust in others’ truth claims is well placed if they are true; trust in their commitments to action is well placed if they are reliable. Placing and refusing trust both make epistemic demands. In consequence well-placed trust is not blind, but intelligent and evidence based. Both lack of evidence and misleading evidence may make it hard to judge where to place or refuse trust; but even where evidence is patchy, it can be placed or refused more or less intelligently. For practical purposes what matters to us are not mere attitudes, whether trusting or suspicious, but judging well where to place and where to refuse trust. Judgement, unlike mere attitudes, is anchored in epistemic considerations. However, well-placed trust does not need complete evidence. Where we have proof that a claim is true, or can control others’ honouring of their commitments, judging whether to trust their claims or commitments is otiose. Placing and refusing trust come into play when we have some, but incomplete, reasons to think that claims are true and commitments reliable. 78

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2

The Code of Practice is available on the UK Press Council’s website at www.pcc.org.uk/cop/ cop.asp.

3

I would therefore dispute Moran’s claim that academics have succeeded in reestablishing a ‘club’ culture in the face of new regulation and legislation. It is only in making judgements of competence or excellence – in examining, and in setting professional standards. The funding and structure of universities, their relations with students and their internal processes are now highly regulated by non-academic bodies.

4

See the Communications Act (2003) and the Higher Education Act (2004).

In such cases we may look for clearer evidence of truth, or increased reassurance about, even control of, others’ action, but in the end we have to judge where to place trust. Neither epistemic responsibility nor practical precautions can eliminate all uncertainty about truth claims, or all risk of being let down. Since trust cannot be made risk free, it may seem prudent not to rely on it at all, and to concentrate on improving trustworthiness. The agenda of the regulatory revolution is to make institutions and professionals more trustworthy by holding them more strictly to account, and by insisting that they make what they do transparent to the wider public. This is the agenda of the regulatory revolution. However, success in implementing this agenda cannot eliminate the need to judge where to place and where to refuse trust. Regimes of accountability and transparency – however elaborate, however convoluted – will make a difference only if we trust them: introducing such regimes may therefore relocate, but will not eliminate, the need to place or refuse trust. Unless at some point trust is placed in some claims or some persons, institutions or processes, there will be no reason to place it in any procedures for securing accountability or transparency, however detailed and strenuous. Trust cannot be obsolete, since it is ineliminable.

Accountability and transparency

5

This use of the term transparency (or openness) can be traced back to the late 1980s. The international nongovernmental organisation Transparency International was launched in 1993 (www.transparency.org). In the UK, the first of the Nolan reports, which promulgated standards for conduct in public life that include openness, was published in 1995 (www.publicstandards.gov.uk/).

It follows that regulation, accountability and transparency cannot eliminate the need to judge where to place and where to refuse trust, despite incompleteness of evidence. The regulatory changes that have transformed professions and professional life cannot eliminate the need for trust. At best they can support the placing and refusal of trust. Do they achieve this aim? Those who seek to make professionals more accountable have had many more specific aims. They have hoped to prevent corruption and shoddy performance; to clarify expectations about the quality of professional work; to secure greater economy, efficiency and effectiveness for clients; to achieve value for money; to promote fair treatment. These very general objectives are not particularly controversial. But while these general aspirations may be acceptable, even admirable, the new forms of accountability may not achieve their goals. Since the 1980s, great reliance has been placed on a specific conception of managerial accountability; and since the early 1990s managerial accountability has been reinforced by stronger requirements for institutions and professionals to be transparent5 or open, with the thought that this enables the public at large to judge performance. Managerial accountability and transparency are now commonly seen as the obvious ways to secure proper professional and institutional performance. Yet neither increasing managerial accountability, nor requiring greater transparency, has resolved the difficulties that they were supposed to remedy. On the contrary, we often find a worsening climate of suspicion, a culture in which accusations against professionals have become routine, and in which many professionals often feel beleaguered and intimidated. It seems fair to ask why strenuous remedies have led to deteriorating rather than improving relations between professionals and the publics they aim to serve, and whether there are better remedies. ACCOUNTABILITY, TRUST AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: THE END OF PROFESSIONALISM?

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The problem is surely not that there is disagreement whether individual professionals and the institutions for and through which they work should be held accountable. Nor, I think is there much disagreement that the wider public should have evidence for judging whether to place or withhold trust. Nobody thinks that professionals or institutions should be unaccountable; nobody thinks that those whom they serve, or wider publics, should be kept in the dark or denied the evidence they need to decide whether to place or refuse trust. But we need to understand why the new regulatory culture has fuelled the distrust it was supposed to remedy, and whether there could be better forms of accountability.

‘Managerial accountability’ The new regulatory culture has, I believe, fuelled distrust because it has not taken sufficiently seriously the epistemic requirements for placing and refusing trust intelligently. It has often sought to impose a very specific, managerial conception of accountability that centres on establishing systems for controlling professional and institutional performance by setting targets for them, measuring their success (or lack of success) in meeting targets, publicising that success or failure, and sanctioning failure. This conception of accountability often defeats rather than supports attempts to place and refuse trust intelligently. The phrase ‘managerial accountability’ can be read in two ways. On one reading, the thought is only that those who manage professional practice must be held to account. A project architect should be accountable to clients for the progress of a building; a head teacher to governors and parents for the work of a school. On this broad reading there is much to be said for managerial accountability, and little to be said against it. However, the advocates of managerial accountability read the phrase managerial accountability more narrowly. They see it not only as requiring that those who manage some activity or process be held to account, but that they be held to account by managerial methods. This may not seem obvious. One might think that the adjective ‘managerial’ in the phrase managerial accountability has slipped sideways, as the adjective ‘disabled’ does in a standard reading of the phrase disabled toilets. Those who read the words ‘disabled toilets’ don’t assume that the toilets are disabled, but that they are for the disabled. When we read the phrase managerial accountability we may think that the same grammatical slide has happened, and that it just means accountability for managers. But this would be a mistake: the phrase is intended literally, and refers to accountability organised on managerial lines. When this happens the uncontentious claim that managers should be held to account is replaced by a specific and highly questionable claim that managers (and thereby others) should be held to account by managerial methods – in short by further managerial processes and controls, imposed from afar by government or regulatory bodies. The assumption that accountability should be modelled on management is revealed by the common use of managerial vocabulary in discussing accountability.6 What reasons are there for preferring managerial forms of accountability? It is certainly not the only option. For example, managers in the private sector are held to account by processes of corporate governance that 80

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For example, government, the opposition and the media all speak unembarrassedly of government not as holding public bodies to account for managing certain public services, but of them delivering services, meeting targets and failing to meet targets. The common accusations of overcentralisation and of ‘control freakery’ levied against government are a corollary of assuming that government should hold to account by managing, that accountability must be a matter of more management.

are not managerial in structure. Partners in professional firms are held to account by methods that are not managerial in structure. Accountability comes in many forms. Other possibilities include corporate governance, bureaucratic accountability, democratic accountability, collegiate accountability – and professional accountability. It is not self-evident that professionals are best held to account by managerial methods.

Merits and limits of managerial accountability

7

The task force’s efforts to reduce ‘regulatory creep’ have not reversed the tide. In the UK, government still introduces huge amounts of complex and often ill-drafted legislation and regulation that is wholly incompatible with the aspirations of the Better Regulation Task Force. See www.brtf.gov.uk/

Yet advocates of managerial accountability think that it has a number of merits. Supposedly it is objective, cheap, fair, easy to publicise and dovetails well with ‘transparency’ or ‘openness’. These merits often add up to less than one might hope. Professional work is usually complex, so any suitable definition of its objectives or targets has to be complex. This creates a dilemma for systems of managerial accountability. If many objectives or targets are set, clarity will be lost, and holding to account will be difficult and complex: that is why professionals have traditionally been held to account by professionals. Yet if selected targets or objectives are given priority, there will be incentives to short-change others. Simplification of objectives or targets comes at a price. Where priority is given to ‘the bottom line’, the quality of professional achievement of other objectives – for example, design quality and energy efficiency – will be put under pressure. Conversely, if design quality or energy efficiency are given priority over other objectives, the bottom line is likely to suffer. Where there are numerous objectives, little is added by treating them – or a set level of performance under each of them – as targets, and much can be lost by selecting some rather than others as the ‘real’ targets. The costs can be even higher if selected objectives are ‘measured’ by treating scores on performance indicators as proxies for the underlying objective or target: professionals and institutions will then face perverse incentives to obtain high scores, often at the expense of achieving some or many professional objectives. Since the real objectives of professional practice are nearly always complex, superimposing managerial on professional accountability may add little and risk distortion. Expertise and professionalism are generally a matter of keeping many objectives and many standards in play and of working towards solutions that do well by all of them. A building that is amazingly cheap will be of little value if it does not meet the client’s needs; an admired design will be worth little if it requires unavailable materials or funding. Prioritising selected objectives is therefore not likely to be a helpful way of holding professionals to account. Any serious form of accountability for professional work has to take its complexity and specificity seriously, so must be intelligently structured. Some of the costs of inappropriate regulation are now evident even to the keenest advocates of managerial accountability. Supporters of the regulatory revolution now claim to look for ‘smart’ ways of regulating that use a ‘lighter’ touch. One instance of this awareness has been the establishment of a Better Regulation Task Force to advise government on action to ensure that regulation and its enforcement accord with the “five Principles of Good Regulation”. These are identified as proportionality, accountability, consistency, transparency and targeting.7 As is ACCOUNTABILITY, TRUST AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: THE END OF PROFESSIONALISM?

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plain from the list, this reconsideration of managerial accountability is mildly revisionary rather than revolutionary. Still, it is nice to find consistency mentioned. A serious consideration of appropriate structures for professional accountability could go much further. It could aim explicitly for an account of intelligent accountability and set aside the distracting managerial inflexion. It could look for forms of accountability that are sufficiently intelligent to support, rather than stymie, the intelligent placing and refusal of trust.

An intelligent approach to accountability Intelligent structures of accountability should provide good – at least moderately good – evidence to allow those affected to judge whether others’ claims are true and their commitments reliable. They should provide reliable – at least moderately reliable – evidence whether others will fit their words to the world or the world to their commitments. Systems of accountability are intelligent if they support the intelligent placement – and refusal – of trust. An intelligent view of accountability must therefore begin from a view of the tasks for which agents are to be accountable, rather than focusing on targets that are imperfectly related to those tasks. Professional accountability correspondingly must be based on an articulated view of professional tasks. From the point of view of those doing professional work, and of the institutions in and for which they work, those tasks are obligations or duties. In some, but not in all, cases those on the receiving end of professional action will have entitlements or rights to have those duties properly discharged.8 Conceptions of accountability constitute a further, second-order range of duties or obligations. A professional may be accountable (or answerable) for performance or non-performance of a primary obligation when he or she (perhaps overseen or assisted by others) has a further obligation to render an account of (non-)performance of the primary obligation to some other agent or institution, with an obligation to hold to account for that (non-)performance. For example, a company will have a primary obligation to manage its finances, and is held to account for doing so when it also has a secondary obligation to render a proper account of its financial management to expert auditors and to public scrutiny. An architect will have a primary duty to a client for ensuring that work on a building meets required and agreed technical standards, and is held to account for doing so by regular reporting, backed by financial incentives and ultimately by legal sanctions. Professional accountability is fundamentally propositional. Professionals and institutions are accountable when they are required to render an account of the adequacy with which their primary obligations have been met, and are held to account for any discrepancies between the account rendered and the obligations that were to be discharged. If duties and rights are specified propositionally, accountability for their performance must build on those specifications. Accountability is unintelligent if it is undertaken in ways that suppress or omit an intelligible account of what ought to be done. Managerial accountability, with its focus on objectives that are 82

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8

Obligations and rights are asymmetric: a requirement to act may or may not be matched by a right to claim. A distinction between ‘perfect’ obligations with counterpart rights and ‘imperfect’ duties without counterpart rights has been a commonplace of most writing on ethics and politics through the centuries. It has often been obscured in recent rights-centred writing, which commonly neglects all but claimable obligations. Accountability for discharging ‘imperfect’ obligations is difficult to formalise. This does not mean that imperfect obligations are unimportant; they may be of great importance in professional life.

treated as targets, and often on proxy indicators for those targets, is an unintelligent form of accountability because it does exactly this.

The general structure of intelligent accountability Professionals and institutions are intelligently accountable only if they have second-order obligations that refer appropriately to their primary obligations. Any perspicuous view of accountability for multiple, complex tasks has to be task based rather than target based, hence focused on action. The relation of intelligent accountability to those primary tasks or duties can be set out with minimal formalism as follows. The most elementary feature of any normative claim is that some type of action is required, which we may render: 1) A ought to be done.

However, normativity is vestigial unless there are agents – for present purposes, professionals or institutions – who ought to do what ought to be done. Primary obligations must be held by obligation-bearers, which we may render: 2) A ought to be done by X.

Where obligations are claimable, they are owed to some right-holder – again either an individual or an institution – and this may be rendered: 3) A ought to be done by X, and Y has a right to A being done by X.

When obligation-bearers are accountable for performance of their primary obligations to do A, they also carry second-order obligations that refer to their primary obligations: 4) A ought to be done by X, Y has a right to A being done by X, and X is accountable to Z for doing A.9

Accountable obligation-bearers have second-order obligations to account for their performance of their primary or first-order obligations to others, who in turn have obligations to hold them to account, so: 5) A ought to be done by X, Y has a right to A being done by X, X is accountable to Z for doing A, and Z ought to hold X to account for doing A. 9

As a special case of 4, obligationbearers are sometimes specifically accountable to rightholders for their performance, in which case: 4*) A ought to be

More systematically and in simplified form, since there are many required types of act, many obligation-bearers, many right-holders and many agents and institutions to whom obligation-bearers are accountable, a system of obligations that includes structures that secure intelligent accountability has the formal structure:

done by X, Y has a right to A being done by X, and X is accountable to Y for doing A.

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5') A1…An ought to be done by the Xs; the Ys have rights to A1…An being done by the Xs; the Xs are accountable to the Zs for doing A1…An ; and the Zs ought to hold the Xs to account for doing A1…An.

Obligations (and rights) cannot be specified without setting out intelligible descriptions of types of action required. Both first-order obligations to act in certain ways and second-order obligations to render an account of that action to others must build on intelligible act descriptions. Professional and institutional accountability is best anchored in an intelligent account of professional and institutional obligations.

Adding transparency Even the most convinced advocates of managerial conceptions of accountability do not think it enough. They also hold that information about performance and failure of performance should be made transparent to wider audiences. The demand for transparency often leads to increased emphasis on simplified targets, and in particular on numerical performance indicators that can be presented in simple forms, such as rankings and league tables. Supposedly this approach will provide an objective yet transparent ranking of the (relative) performance of institutions (schools, hospitals, universities) or of professionals (lecturers, surgeons, teachers). Since anybody can read a ranking, this allegedly allows wider publics to tell who is performing well and who badly. League tables supposedly bring accountability to the public at large. By and large, transparency has been most strongly demanded of professionals working in the public sector, but it is also commonly seen as a demand for all institutional life. Yet transparency is not always a necessary and never a sufficient basis for accountability to wider publics. It is not a necessary element of accountability because it sometimes damages accountability. Such damage occurs whenever transparency creates a second layer of perverse incentives. If transparency is taken to require institutions to publish all their working papers and internal memoranda, this may deter or damage candid discussion within institutions. Time and energy may be diverted to defensive activity. Position papers may minimise or omit serious discussion of options that might get a bad press, depress share prices or provide information that helps competitors. Minutes may be drafted to support public relations rather than as accurate working records. Even more damagingly, demands for ubiquitous transparency create incentives to do more outside formal meetings, for example in private conversations or unminuted telephone calls. Excessive transparency requirements can damage good professional and policy work, sound management, institutional integrity and even democratic process. More importantly, transparency is also not sufficient for accountability to wider publics, because it insists on mere disclosure of information rather than on good communication. The advocates of transparency are wildly over-optimistic in thinking that requirements for professionals and institutions to disclose more and more information to more and more ‘stakeholders’ will make their work transparent to those presumed audiences. Since transparency is only a matter of making material available – of disclosure – it does not require good communication with specific audiences. 84

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Shovelling facts and figures onto websites is rarely a good way of communicating (except, perhaps, with fellow professionals with time, expertise and motivation to sift and use what is disclosed). Less expert audiences may be unable to find the relevant information, to see the wood for the trees, to assess what they understand, to see what is missing or to judge how the parts fit together. They are unlikely to have the time to take an active and constructive part in any debate. Information is not like a carrier pigeon: it does not wing its way to relevant audiences upon release. The main failing of the transparency culture is that it takes a trivialising view of communication. Good communication has to take account of the specific capacities and concerns of actual audiences. This is necessary to achieve intelligibility to and assessability by the relevant audiences, and so an adequate basis for them to judge whether to place or to refuse trust. Transparency requires only the distribution or disclosure of information; it can be audience blind.

Standards for intelligent accountability Intelligent accountability, I have argued, is a matter of holding agents to account for meeting their primary obligations. Those who hold to account must judge others’ performance of their primary obligations, and must do so competently and fairly. To do this they must be both informed about the standard actually achieved and the required standards, and independent of those of whom those standards are required. If they are also to secure accountability to wider audiences, they must also communicate their judgements intelligibly to those audiences. The benchmarks for intelligent accountability are informed and independent judgement of performance, complemented by intelligible communication of those judgements to relevant audiences. Each of these requirements matters. Informed judgement Intelligent accountability is impossible without informed judgement of what ought to be done, of what was actually done, and of the adequacy with which performance matched primary obligations. Those who hold to account have to grasp both what ought to have been done and what was actually done. Expert judgement of action against intelligible standards cannot be replaced by checklists of targets, let alone by scores on performance indicators. Professional experience and judgement are therefore ineliminable in holding professionals to account for their work. Independent judgement However, informed judgement is not enough for intelligent accountability. Accountability fails unless those who judge are independent. If they are in the pockets of those whose performance they judge, they may judge unfairly. There is an old saying that those who know cannot judge fairly, while those who can judge fairly know too little to provide an informed judgement. This is no doubt an exaggeration, but the tension between informed and independent judgement is real. Do experts inevitably have (too many) interests in common with others in the same field to judge their performance fairly? Must we fear that they will always favour some and ACCOUNTABILITY, TRUST AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: THE END OF PROFESSIONALISM?

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discriminate against others? Can expert judgement achieve sufficient independence? These fears form the core of evidence for the complaint that institutions, experts and professions suffer from producer capture, whereby hospitals are run for the convenience of doctors, schools for the convenience of teachers, universities for the convenience of academics, courts for the convenience of lawyers – and whereby buildings are designed for the glory of architects. The dangers of corruption, producer capture and professional cosiness, the dangers of the ‘club’ culture, are real enough. But it is absurd to try to remedy them by doing without informed judgement of performance. To do so would be like disbanding the police because police corruption occurs. The proper remedy for corruption, producer capture and professional cosiness is to institute robust ways of securing judgement of performance that is both informed and independent. There are well-known ways of requiring inspectors, examiners, auditors and others who hold professionals to account to be and to demonstrate that they are independent of those whom they judge. Those who hold to account must not be colleagues of, paid for or dependent on those whose work they inspect and judge. They must declare relevant interests and stand down where there is any conflict of interest. They must have powers to initiate the removal from office of those who do not meet adequate standards. They may gain by appointing ‘lay’ members to bodies that adjudicate complaints. Intelligible communication Those who hold others to account are themselves (quite properly) accountable to others, and often to the wider public. If they are to be accountable to a wider public they will need to offer intelligible accounts of the achievements and failings of those whose performance they have judged. They must communicate intelligibly to various relevant audiences, with the aim of enabling those with less expertise, less proximity or less time to form a judgement of the adequacy of the performance of those who are held to account. Such communication is intelligible only if it is both accessible to and assessable by relevant audiences, so has to differ for different audiences. Mere transparency will not make complex matters intelligible to all relevant audiences.

Institutions, professions and professionalism In the last three decades professionals and professional bodies have been severely criticised for failing to discharge their obligations. A standard remedy has been to replace professional with managerial accountability. Yet this remedy has had heavy costs. Those who devised and imposed it may not have made the wrong diagnosis: but they prescribed a lethal remedy. The supposed crisis of trust, for which the widespread introduction of managerial accountability, supplemented by transparency, has proved an illusory remedy, was (I suspect) in large part driven by difficulties professions and professionals faced in maintaining and discharging what they

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acknowledged as their duties in changing institutional landscapes. Personal bonds and professional structures were weakened, and professions and professional bodies sometimes failed to exercise independent judgement. These deficiencies were then supposedly remedied by superimposing managerial accountability. As a result professional leaders lost authority. They were kept busy by the demands of implementing managerial accountability, and were left with less time or authority for maintaining – or rebuilding – rigorous professional cultures. Professionalism atrophied. Yet seen with partial hindsight – for all of this is still going on around us – managerial accountability and transparency also failed in their aims. Indeed, they may be responsible for some of the shortcomings that are routinely seen as professional failure. Since the remedy has failed, it may be time for a new prescription. Flourishing and well-organised professions and professional bodies can provide cultural support for meeting obligations that penetrates to parts that the disciplines of managerial accountability do not reach. That cultural support is important. A lot of professional work is pretty unglamorous; some is poorly rewarded. There are always temptations to cut corners, to hurry procedures, to do a less good job than is needed, even to cover up for friends and colleagues. If a revival of serious professionalism is to provide part of the remedy for the evident problems that are being caused by relying on unintelligent forms of accountability, this will not be because it magically secures professional integrity, let alone because it comes with pretty professional codes. Genuine professional integrity grows out of tough institutional structures. It requires rigorous institutional and financial separation between those who judge others’ professional work and those whose work they judge, as well as robust systems for dealing with conflicts of interest, with professional failure and with lack of professional integrity. Structures for professional accountability will be robust only if they provide strong reasons for those who are to hold others to account to meet their obligations. Managerial forms of accountability backed by detailed financial incentives and criminal sanctions have proved burdensome and unreliable ways of securing trustworthy performance. In the long run and in the small hours of the morning, the realities of earning professional respect, or losing professional respect, of being respected by those whose respect one most cares about, may have greater weight. Unintelligent forms of accountability damage the ways in which this sort of respect is gained, and lost. They demoralise professionals, and damage the very professional performance which those who impose managerial forms of accountability probably covet and imagine they are supporting. The fact – in so far as it was a fact – that some professional cultures had failed in specific respects was not a sufficient reason for dismantling those cultures. It was a sufficient reason for reforming and strengthening both professions and professional bodies, and for looking to systems of accountability that align the interests of professionals with those of the publics whom they are meant to serve. If we persist in using unintelligent forms of accountability, the public – who are not unintelligent – will judge, with some accuracy, that they cannot place or withhold trust intelligently. They will find that they cannot distinguish trustworthy from untrustworthy institutions and individuals. In these circumstances, the very basis for placing and withholding trust intelligently will be continually eroded. It will not be surprising if a ‘crisis of ACCOUNTABILITY, TRUST AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: THE END OF PROFESSIONALISM?

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trust’, in which credulity and cynicism are strangely mixed, persists. Yet a serious effort to reinvigorate intelligent forms of accountability, including robust forms of professional accountability, might help to re-establish a basis for placing and withholding trust intelligently. If this could be achieved we might find ways of securing professional obligations that could command respect, and perhaps earn intelligently placed trust.

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Chapter 9

Moral imagination and the practice of architecture Jane Collier

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind wake in the day to find that all was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible. (T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom) As a social scientist, most of what I write about is grounded in a shared intellectual perspective which serves to shape analytical and normative arguments, but also relies on my own experience as consumer, investor or simply as a member of that amorphous entity we nowadays term ‘civic society’. In this paper, however, I write from the perspective of a passive stakeholder, someone who is not an architect but whose life is affected by decisions made about the built environment not only in Cambridge but also in the wider world. Even from my privileged niche I am beginning to ask myself whose needs are being served by the plethora of buildings rising all around where I live, and whether the needs they seek to fulfil are physical, spiritual and emotional human needs, or simply the business need for increased revenue streams. My doubts are prompted by the premise that the resources of our planet are coming under increasing pressure, that more and more people live in densely populated urban environments, and that sustainability in all its aspects – social, environmental and economic – is now the central moral imperative for architects, planners, builders and everyone concerned with decision-taking related to the built environment. The problem at issue is: how is this moral imperative to be realised?

The practice of architecture

1

Blau 1984.

Architecture is a profession, an occupation, a business and a practice.1 I know that for architects it is also a life commitment, a passionate engagement with design, a delight in the objects of their own creation. In many cases architects work for other organisations, but I shall assume here that their commitments

and enthusiasms are lived out in the context of architectural practice, where specialised and interrelated activities by different groups of people, together with their interpersonal interactions, create the webs of meaning which constitute the ‘culture of practice’ in that situation.2 Architecture is thus a ‘practice’ in the communal sense, but it is also an assemblage of practices governed by the professional values of competence, integrity and client service3 as well as by regulatory frameworks. Within these constraints it functions as ‘business’ in the economic sense and ‘organisation’ in the structural sense. In other words, architecture is not something ‘done’ by individual architects; it is the ongoing activity of a professional community instantiated in diverse yet collaborative groups bound together by practice. The choice of ‘practice’ as an organising principle for architectural ethics is determined by the need to opt for a concept which is not so individualistic as to ignore context, and not so deterministic as to ignore agency. Using the concept of practice to theorise a social system gets us away from the dualisms of social theory (agency or structure, society or individual, reality or concept) with which organisation theory has struggled.4 It allows us to distinguish between task and process, and this is a significant distinction in discussions of motivation, identity and self-esteem. In recent years the organisational literature has become less interested in the individual aspects of practice and more interested in the kind of group processes that generate good practice and the personal qualities and values (trust, openness, respect, clarity of purpose) that support these processes. Architecture as social practice reproduces and transforms its ‘world’ in ways enabled and constrained by its rules and resources, so that agency and structure have equal significance in its constitution.5 I want to suggest that ethicality in architecture is something more profound and more complex than personal morality, that it has two aspects, as it were. One aspect is related to ways of working together and outcomes of collaborative processes, i.e. to the achievement of ‘best practice’. The other has to do with the need to be visionary, to be ‘dreamers of the day’ and so to assume open-eyed responsibility, firstly for the shaping of the present and future built environment so as to promote ‘human flourishing’,6 and secondly for the way in which images of this future are created and contained within architecture. I want to approach these issues in a fairly theoretical manner, and to argue that these two perspectives on ethics are not unconnected and are closer in architecture than perhaps they are in other professions. As to the method by which they are realised, I will argue that this is best conceptualised as the exercise of ‘moral imagination’ both by persons and by communities bound together in shared ‘practice’.

Practice as the locus of ‘the good’ Architectural practices strive to fulfil their purpose of excellent design and its appropriate realisation in buildings. This itself is ‘good’ in the ethical sense of the word. But according to Alasdair MacIntyre there is more to being ethical than ‘telos’. He considers ‘practice’, where these purposes are realised, to be the locus of virtue, the situation where people can become virtuous as people. By a practice he means: any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realised in 90

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2

Cuff 1991.

3

Koehn 1994.

4

Collier 1998, p. 628.

5

Giddens 1984.

6

Fox 2000; Harries 1997.

the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.7

He goes on to draw the distinction between bricklaying, which is not a practice in his sense of the word, and architecture, which is. The distinction here brings out the two senses in which he is using the word ‘practice’ – in the sense of what is being done and in the sense of the collaborative context in which it is being done. Bricklaying is a skill possessed by individuals and thus an activity, whereas architecture is an ongoing collaborative practice. The ‘goods’ which can be achieved in the course of any practice such as that of architecture are not only the goods of excellence, they are also ‘virtues’, the acquired human qualities necessary to achieve the ‘goods internal to practice’ – in other words, the qualities to sustain and make excellent the relationships necessary to collaborative practice.8 Furthermore, practices are not to be confused with institutions. Professional bodies may lay down rules governing professional activity, but that is not at all the same as establishing the standards of excellence governing the practice of architecture or medicine or teaching. Those standards are established by the definition and achievement of excellence within the practice.9 The factors which motivate people to collaborate in this way are defined not merely in terms of the ‘goods’ of excellence realised in practice (goods ‘internal’ to the practice), nor in terms of the instrumental or pragmatic goods (power, fame, money) which follow in the wake of successful practice (goods ‘external’ to the practice), but in terms of the gains to be had from interdependence, affiliation and the quality of the human and communal relationships built up over time – relationships of trust, integrity and concern for others. These qualities are personal in one sense, but they are also collective manifestations of attributes that sustain and are sustained by good practice; they are Aristotelian perfectible qualities of habitude exercised in the context of communal ‘flourishing’. So ‘good’ practice engenders not only excellence of achievement but also virtuous relationships within the practice community.

Narratives of practice

7

MacIntyre 1998, p. 187.

8

Ibid., p.191.

9

Collier 1998.

10

MacIntyre 1998, p. 222.

11

Watkin 2001; Ghirardo 1984.

12

Landau 1997.

MacIntyre goes on to point out that ‘practitioners’ are in relationship not only with each other but also with those whose achievements have established the tradition which today’s practitioners inherit. A living tradition is not a ‘dead hand’ laid on practice, but rather a historically extended, socially embedded argument about the ‘goods’ which constitute that tradition10 – in this case an ongoing critical and inventive discussion about what the goals of architecture should be and what might constitute excellence in their achievement. Discussions about tradition are couched in the form of narratives that reinterpret the past in a particular way. Narratives are iconic – windows that point to reality from a particular standpoint and towards a particular direction. Architecture draws on a long succession of narratives, often rhetorical and sometimes ideological,11 by which it has defined and redefined its own identity.12 These narratives have incorporated perspectives not only on design and aesthetics but also on the ways in which these have changed in response to changing social circumstances, MORAL IMAGINATION AND THE PRACTICE OF ARCHITECTURE

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and on how architecture’s interpretation of those circumstances has fed into its interpretation of the human good.13 Every community tells its own stories. Narratives that work are (a) coherent and (b) capable of being seamlessly reinterpreted in the light of the present. In architecture the modernist narrative was coherent; it provided good reasons for considering ‘traditional building’ as aesthetically worthless. That narrative gradually gave way to newer architectural narratives, different but continuous and still coherent with those that had been laid aside. But narratives are not simply professional stories. There has to be a ‘narrative continuity’14 between the way in which we conduct and explain our lives and the way in which we conduct our practice.15 What we do and the choices that we make will then be explicable in terms of that story and be coherent with it. Architecture’s ‘narrative quest’ continually seeks to uncover the unities in changing accounts of architectural order, values and results. Criticism and history thread narrative lines through buildings and their various aspects. These narratives reveal to us paradigms of order, which we then use in our designs – giving to criticism and history yet other buildings through which they can thread yet other plot-lines [yielding] more paradigms of order.16

The story never stays the same; every time we tell it we reinterpret it in the light of new experience. Sense-making happens not just by retelling the past so as to integrate it into the present, but by interpreting both past and present in the light of understandings of future direction and purpose. For architecture, as for the rest of us, these understandings revolve around the need to embrace sustainability before it is too late. There are signs that architecture as a practice is beginning to retell its own story in the light of this and to develop fresh perspectives in the process: A whole new ethical sensibility is beginning to emerge, critical of what was once the new free person now called the self-oriented individual, critical of the destruction of the natural world that disengaged humans are imposing with unfettered ever-developing technologies, critical of faceless market forces that have sponsored the destruction of environments without accountability, all adding to an ever-increasing anxiety about the irreversible damage being inflicted on planet earth … .17

This is the perspective on architecture-as-practice within which the idea of responsibility for the built environment and for a sustainable future most properly belongs.

Communities of practice The idea of ‘good’ practice is not necessarily restricted to the situation where all the members contribute to the achievement of excellence in one activity. Most practices, including architecture, require a variety of activities by different groups for the achievement of the final outcome, and in these communities people learn from one another not only to perfect their own skills but to collaborate with others in creative problem-solving and the evolution of new ventures. ‘Communities of practice’, where collective 92

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13

Bess 2000.

14

MacIntyre 1998, pp. 214ff.

15

Hubbard 1995, p. 97.

16

Ibid., p. 98.

17

Landau 1997, p. 420.

18

Wenger 1998.

19

Schon 1991.

20

Cuff 1991.

21

Weick 1995.

22

Schon 1991.

23

Collier 1998, p. 631.

24

Latham 1994.

learning is accumulated into social practice, have always existed (think of guilds in the Middle Ages or groupings within the scientific community) but have only recently been identified in the organisational literature as engines of learning in organisational and professional contexts.18 ‘Communities of practice’ are informal groupings of people who share an expertise and passion for joint enterprises. They also share the expertise they have developed ‘on the job’ of problem identification and solving with each other and with newer recruits. The creative ‘practice’ that develops within such communities is not simply technical; it is social in the sense that the historical and social context within which it is exercised gives structure and meaning to what is done and a sense of identity to the participants. Communities of practice operate on both an explicit and a tacit basis: they use the language, the symbols, the criteria, the regulations and the procedures to achieve their purposes, but they also work with the rules of thumb, the conventions, the intuitions, perceptions and shared worldviews that define participants as members of a specific community. Learning can be ‘single-loop’ learning where experience is assimilated into existing frameworks of understanding and interpretation, or it can be ‘double-loop’ learning that challenges existing certainties and leads to the creation of new understandings.19 The ‘communities of practice’ literature now springing up focuses on the sharing of existing knowledge and the creation of new knowledge where overall aims and objectives are clear-cut. It does not seem to me as an outsider that architectural practice is so simply constituted in the sense that there appear to be a number of dualities that give rise to ambiguities.20 Most obvious here are the perceived dichotomies between ethos and circumstance, between the significance of the individual designer and the team of professionals who execute a given project within a practice, between the importance given to design or art as against the business objectives of the practice. In architecture, as in other professions, excellence is expected and mandatory. But architectural practices contain a variety of different groups. These member groups will have ‘mental models’ and metaphoric understandings that they use for sense-making within the work context and that may not be shared by other stakeholders – clients, developers, planners, contractors.21 The ‘espoused theory’ of architectural professionalism sees practice communities as the setting where artistic and aesthetic excellence can be realised and creativity can flourish. But within a practice it is ‘theory-in-use’ that guides the way in which projects are undertaken and completed,22 and often lessons learnt are not fully implemented, so that bad practice can become the norm as different groups seek to put their own interests first. The result is a gap between actual and best practice. There is a significant strand in organisational literature concerned with practices that are flawed by the workings of power relations, opportunism and narcissistic behaviour of individuals.23 In the UK context the Latham report approached some of these issues: it sought to lay down guidelines that would define working relations between members of teams responsible for project realisation, with the overriding objective of fulfilling cost and time constraints.24 The report emphasised the concept of partnership and teamwork in supply-side relationships, the centrality of the client’s needs and wishes (not least where value for money is concerned), the integrity of design, and the importance of balance between product creation MORAL IMAGINATION AND THE PRACTICE OF ARCHITECTURE

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and the process of delivery. This is the perspective on practice where responsibility for technical and human ‘best practice’ is properly located.

Agency and responsibility Architecture as a social practice implies moral agency. Architects are agents of change: what they do ‘makes a difference’ to human welfare, both generally and in particular instances. Moral agency is not only individual, it is also collective. The basis of collective moral agency is to be found in the idea that not all the actions of a group can be redescribed in terms of the ‘primary’ actions of participating individuals. Most individual actions are ‘primary’, but when individuals act collectively their actions may be termed ‘secondary’. Collective secondary actions usually occur when individuals act within the terms of their role responsibilities as constituted by the aims and objectives of the group to which they belong. For instance, as a member of my college’s Governing Body I am part of a group that acts as an intentional system, and I share responsibility for outcomes. In the case of architecture, collective moral agency can be located at the level of the practice or at the level of the profession, and individual moral agency at the level of the person. There is no philosophical conflict here: in terms of the basis of moral responsibility it is quite possible for ontological individualism to coexist with methodological collectivism.25 Responsibility, like agency, is always both individual and collective. In the case of architecture it is individual, for instance, when it relates to the aesthetic quality of the architect’s work, but collective when it involves the joint action of designers, planners, builders and project managers in the inception and completion of a major project. Responsibility is thus implicated in the excellence of architectural practice, not simply in the narrow sense of competence and fulfilment of duties to uphold the interests of clients, but also in the wider sense of responsibility for the ‘footprint’ created by the shaping of the built environment now and its implications for the future. Every architect bears responsibility for how human beings are to exist in a shared world, for all building, even the most simple structure, not only presupposes and makes visible an already established way of life; it inevitably helps to preserve, reinforce or challenge it, and thus helps shape the future.26

Responsibility for the future is the crystallised essence of all responsibility of any kind, always and everywhere.27 It is not simply about the consequences of today’s choices, it is also about the way in which we envision the future, because this will shape tomorrow’s choices. As humans we simultaneously live in the present and in a mythic Other Place, a better world.28 Our aspirations and our imagination allow that world to take shape in our consciousness, and so we are mobilised to fight for a positive future, for the abolition of child labour, a more human work–life balance, rights of workers in the global economy, and sustainable development. Our present is what it is only because of the efforts of our predecessors to bring about a future where many of their problems have found solutions. Responsibility for the future is a condition of possibility for being responsible for the present, so that responsible architecture will create its own 94

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25

Werhane 1985.

26

Harries 2001, p. 6.

27

Polak 1957.

28

Polak 1973.

vision of the Other Place, and will anticipate its opportunities and its threats. The requirements of sustainable development, spelt out in detailed form in the Hannover Principles,29 express many of the positive images that can be created by architecture, but sustainable development also expresses the need to facilitate community structures in the built environment, the need to address the dangers of climate change, global warming and the rising tide of crime against persons and property.

Moral imagination How can these kinds of moral responsibility be exercised? The answer is by using the imagination to make sense of moral experience, engage in moral reasoning, and thus form moral judgements as to what course of action to take. The emphasis on the role of imagination in moral reasoning is associated with the move to pragmatism in epistemology and with the shift to classical Aristotelianism in ethics, as seen in the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Martha Nussbaum.30 Pragmatism, and the work of John Dewey in particular, gives imagination a new role. Whereas classical thinking viewed imagination as the facility of ‘imaging’ sensible objects, and the romantic tradition saw it as the ability to generate entirely new objects, pragmatism treats imagination as the capacity to understand the actual in the light of the possible.31 Imagination becomes an exploration of structures of experience in which the future as potential event is allowed to interpret the present, so that in a sense it is a way of seeing what is known and understood, but with new insights and in new ways. Narrative, as we saw earlier, reinterprets ‘the past’ so that new light is shed on the present. Moral imagination takes that process forward in that it allows the future to illumine that present. We achieve this by using our imagination in situations where moral choices must be made to create scenarios on the basis of which we can make judgements as to how to proceed: … possible activities are envisaged in relation to our own situations, thereby amplifying the meaning of the present and creating the context from which present values may be criticised, thus liberating the course of action itself … [It is] an operation in the present, establishing continuity with the past, anticipating the future, so that a continuous process of activity may unfold in the most meaningful way … possible.32

29

McDonough 1992.

30

Alexander 1993.

31

Ibid., p. 371.

32

Ibid., p. 386.

33

Fesmire 2001.

34

Johnson 1993.

This strategy is not at all that espoused by conventional moral theory grounded in the primacy of reason. For Kantians the cultivation of imagination “is at best a luxury, at worst a danger”.33 Conventional ethical theory, whether consequentialist or deontological, rests on the premise that we can know and attain the good by using our reason to apply ethical rules in any given situation.34 Feelings and imagination play no part. It is clear that this version of ethics has a number of problems. Firstly, which particular corpus of rules should we apply? Secondly, it seems impossible to apply universalistic moral rules to complex human situations. Thirdly, people are not only creatures of reason, they are creatures of feeling, and the application of rule-based morality creates a kind of cognitive dissonance in the sense that it fails to take into account how moral agents feel about the issue and the ways in which MORAL IMAGINATION AND THE PRACTICE OF ARCHITECTURE

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people actually make sense of their own moral options. And finally, if we look at moral reasoning from the point of view of semantics we know that it is has to be imaginative in character because it is fundamentally metaphoric, and our moral laws themselves are defined by metaphoric concepts, as for instance in the ‘moral accounting’ metaphor – “he must pay for his crimes”, “the righteous store up treasure in heaven”.35

Exercising moral imagination There are in fact two elements in the exercise of moral imagination. The first of these is empathy, the ability to put ourselves in the shoes of others. Empathy, according to Dewey, is “the animating mold of moral judgement”. We have to be able to imagine ourselves as the other, as inhabiting their worlds, as experiencing in the manner that they do. This demands an imaginative rationality and a passionate engagement that goes way beyond the Kantian categorical imperative: Morally sensitive people are capable of living out, in and through such an experiential imagination, the reality of others with whom they are interacting, or whom their actions might affect.36

Empathetic imagination forms the basis of the way in which we live together in community, and it becomes sharper and more perfect as we exercise it. In that sense it is not simply something exercised by individuals, but rather a defining feature of community. The second element in moral imagination is the creation of mental scenarios as to how one possibility or another might play out in any given situation – “the ability to imaginatively discern various possibilities for acting within a given situation and to envision the potential help and harm that are likely to result from a given action”.37 Dewey calls such imaginative deliberation ‘dramatic rehearsal’, where we seek awareness of latent possibilities, an intuition of the way forward, in the reflective searching phase of a situation. “An aesthetically complete dramatic rehearsal strives to weave the interests and purposes of ourselves and others into an integrated and enduring tapestry.”38 Such deliberation on alternative viewpoints stretches us beyond our present vantage point and transforms our understanding of the present as well as the limits of our own convictions and commitments. Dewey emphasises the pivotal importance of habits working below the surface of ‘dramatic rehearsal’ and the way in which they mark out for us viable courses of action. In a wider sense the unconscious horizon of our social habits allows us to communicate so we can compose the future together.39 It is the operation of habits that holds our acts together and constitutes character. Character allows us to integrate the possibilities of the present by using the experience of the past as we make choices, and the choices we make are in effect choices of the kind of person we want to be/ become. This for Dewey is the genesis of the moral self.

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35

Ibid.

A moral imagination requires experience, a body of developing habits, education, an ability to understand the way other people think and live, and the ideal

36

Ibid., p. 200.

37

Ibid., p. 202.

of discovering through collaborative action. It is the ability to see the meanings in a given situation. It is the moral imagination which continually strives to create

38

Fesmire 1995, p. 571.

39

Fesmire 1999b, p. 137.

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those ideals which offer the possibility of directing situations towards ends which are most fulfilling. This is what it is to have a moral character.40

Moral imagination also works retrospectively and hence correctively; it allows us to gain retrospective understanding of the reasons for our own past actions and those of others. For instance, we can recreate the deliberative processes of others by assuming different perspectives on the possibilities open to them – those that were available to them in their context, those that reasonable agents may be assumed to believe that they had, and those that they actually believed themselves to have.41 There is a deep connection between our evaluation of the actions of others and our evaluation of our own possibilities as moral agents. By imaginatively recreating the past choices of others we may come to recognise our own mistakes, narrowmindedness and tendencies to espouse unsuitable possibilities or to neglect suitable ones. If we recognise our own self-deception in this manner we can guard against recurrences in the future.

Moral imagination in practice

40

Alexander 1993, p. 390.

41

Kekes 1991.

42

Werhane 1999, p. 111.

43

Johnson 1993, p. 217.

44

Nussbaum 1990, p. 157.

45

Werhane 1998, p. 78; Senge 1992.

Moral imagination is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for moral decision-making.42 Moral imagination allows the moral agent to disengage from existing views of the issue and thus perhaps see a way forward, but moral judgement is then needed to prevent moral imagination from becoming moral fantasy. Moral judgements are made on the basis of moral standards and of communal discourse and practice.43 Moral imagination allows us to move between “perceptions of particulars and a rule-governed concern for general obligations”.44 Moral judgement is grounded in self-reflection. We need to recognise that the way in which we perceive the situation is defined by our ‘worldview’, our mental models that frame our perceptions and “focus, schematise and guide the ways in which we recognise, react and conceptually organise the world”.45 Mental models at the level of Weltanschauung are difficult to uncover, but they are easier to perceive at the level of explanatory theoretical and conceptual frameworks. They can take the form of images, stories, myths and strongly held presuppositions. They are buttressed by scripts or schemata – cognitive stores of acquired information that we rely on when dealing with the world. Sometimes they are rooted in upbringing or education, or in our experience of the world to date. More often they are the schemata which guide our professional practice, or our organisation, or the community to which we belong. All our conceptual frames by which we see our options and alternative possibilities for action are framed metaphorically, and the metaphors on which they are based can be so restrictive as to prompt moral amnesia, even moral glaucoma. The most cited example of this is the case of the Ford Pinto car, introduced in 1971. Throughout the production run of the model, it became a focus of a major scandal when it was discovered that the car’s design had a flaw that allowed its fuel tank to be easily damaged in the event of a rear-end collision, which often resulted in deadly fires and explosions. Furthermore, it was discovered that Ford was aware of this design flaw but refused to pay the minimal expense of a redesign. Instead, it was decided it would be cheaper to pay off possible lawsuits for resulting deaths. This discovery of MORAL IMAGINATION AND THE PRACTICE OF ARCHITECTURE

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Ford’s apparent disregard for human lives in favour of profits led to major lawsuits and inconclusive criminal charges. The man in charge of the recall procedure, Denis Goioa, reflected in hindsight that he had overlooked the human and ethical aspects of the issue simply because they did not fit in with the Ford ‘script’ that was based on the logic of the accounting metaphor. The primary aspect of moral imagination is becoming aware of the frameworks that govern the way in which we perceive a given situation. An important part of this is becoming aware of the context in which those scripts are functional. Again, we have the example of Nestlé selling baby milk powder properly and ethically in a developed world that always has clean water, and overlooking the fact that selling the same product to African mothers is tantamount at worst to asking them to poison their babies with milk powder made up with polluted water. We have to disengage from our mental models and schemata, to stand back from our point of view and its operative context and take a ‘disengaged view from somewhere’ by means of critical self-reflection.46 Only then can we begin the deliberative ‘dramatic rehearsal’ of outcomes based on putting oneself in the situation of the other so that we can experience what we might feel like in that situation. Our evaluation of the situation will then include questions about how we would view it if we were operating with different mental models, different scripts. Imagination, disengagement, evaluation are thus the key stages of moral judgement. On 21 October 1987 Merck & Co. announced plans to donate Mectizan (ivermectin), a medicine Merck discovered to combat river blindness, for as long as it might be needed, wherever needed. Onchocerciasis (‘river blindness’) is a leading cause of blindness in the developing world. Merck’s decision halted the spread of the disease, and since that time millions of people have benefited. What was the process of moral judgement here? Surely moral imagination played a part, but on reflecting on Merck’s decision we need to know firstly that Merck gave free antibiotics to Japan after the Second World War and is now the single biggest exporter of pharmaceuticals to Japan. Secondly, Merck is a research-driven company. Researchers will stay only if they are challenged. Developing a wide portfolio of new drugs is of far more importance to Merck than selling them. Other pharmaceutical companies are now following Merck’s lead.

Moral imagination as artistic Engagement, empathy, dramatic rehearsal – all these sound like the kind of imaginative activity exercised by the artist. Does that mean morality is in some sense ‘artistic’? No, but it is ‘like’ art in terms of the similarity between aesthetic perception and moral discernment – noticing, imagining, feeling the possibilities of the situation. Moral deliberation is exploratory when it reflects on situational possibilities; artistic reflection is investigative when it suggests design and enactment possibilities. Both involve the exercise of a skill, techne, that encourages what is latent to emerge and a creativity by which the old is reshaped into the new. Moral and artistic perceptions are both forms of creative self-expression: they both increase self-knowledge and sharpen self-perception and thus, as Dewey suggested, improve the possibilities for imaginative perception, 98

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46

Werhane 1998, p. 89.

imaginative envisionment and imaginative action. Morality learns from art the skills and value of imaginative exploration, but this does not mean that the artist is necessarily moral, nor does it mean that artists don’t have to be moral because they are artistic: We must stop making the mistake of thinking of the aesthetic as an escape from the practical or the moral, that is, as a retreat from moral responsibilities into a realm of the cultivation of artistic taste.47

Morality can be seen as ‘like’ art by conceiving of a two-stage process in either case – drawing the parallels between the artistic aspect (production) and the aesthetic aspect (enjoyment) on the one hand, and of deliberation (dramatic rehearsal) and its outcomes on the other. The importance of this view is that it brings to our understanding of moral imagination the perspective of a two-stage process, the artistic and the aesthetic. Deliberation is artistic, a dramatic rehearsal. The outcome of the process, good moral judgement, can be seen as aesthetic. Our wisest moral productions result from responsiveness to others, to a situation’s ‘whole system of desires’. The qualities needed for the exercise of moral imagination can be compared to artistic endeavour in several different respects. Fesmire’s approach explores the potential of a metaphorical understanding of ‘morality as art’ by drawing analogies between the concepts of art and morality. He gives examples of qualities or characteristics of good artists which are essential elements in moral imagination and moral reasoning – perceptiveness, skill, expressiveness, creativity – but recognises that to say these qualities are essential both to artistry and to morality does not necessarily lead to the deduction that artists are moral, or that their lives as ongoing process are closer to the processes of morality than the lives of others.48

Moral imagination as communal and systemic

47

Johnson 1993, p. 209.

48

Fesmire 1999a.

This paper has addressed the question of ethics in architecture by identifying two collective levels, those of practice and profession, and focusing on the moral responsibilities proper to those systems. It is tempting to think of moral agency and moral responsibility as personal or individual. However, I have suggested that the collective exercise of moral imagination in all its aspects will reveal potential ways forward and possibilities for action. But just as the challenging issues are located systemically – within networks of relationships and patterns of interactions, or within temporal and spatial socio-economic frameworks – so too the response of architecture to those challenges has got to be collective. Historically speaking, architecture has created the shape of the built environment without reference to the wider systemic context. In this architecture is not alone: other professions and businesses have also pursued their interests in the context of rules and practices that failed to challenge the basic socio-economic paradigms that have legitimated their existence. Now we have entered a new era, and we are finally faced with choices. The progress of globalisation and the awareness of the social, economic, political and environmental costs of an apparently unstoppable expansion MORAL IMAGINATION AND THE PRACTICE OF ARCHITECTURE

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of global consumption present a radical challenge to the boundaries and the ethical frameworks within which we have existed so comfortably. We cannot simply continue ‘business as usual’ in business, in politics, in the professions. We cannot continue to ignore the systemic dysfunctions of our ‘world system’ and the unsustainability of its present trajectory. Now we need to develop and to engage our moral imagination so as to find ways of continuing our preferred lifestyle without diminishing that of others and without closing the options for future generations. Moral imagination will allow us first to experience empathy with peoples whose needs remain unfulfilled so that ours can be satisfied, and with environments endangered so that we can consume what we do not need. Our ‘moral discontent’ should commit us to create images of a sustainable future that can provide the new boundaries and the renewed framework for the architectural practices of the future.

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Chapter 10

Codes of ethics and coercion Tom Spector

An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education recently observed that the problem with introducing a sense of class consciousness into US society has been that most Americans consider themselves either rich or pre-rich. I think a similar attitude operates in the society of architects, except that it operates with a different form of currency. That is, architects consider themselves either famous or pre-famous. In both cases, the masses are encouraged to self-identify with the elites, regardless of whether any realistic possibility of achieving that exalted status exists or not. I intend to argue that this attitude helps explain much of what comes to be expressed (as well as omitted) in architects’ codes of ethics and professional conduct on both sides of the Atlantic, and that in reciprocal fashion, our codes of ethics and professional conduct do more to help sustain the practices of the elites in our profession than they do to actually express what we might think of as our ideals or our cherished values. That is, to be blunt about it, our published codes of ethics are as likely to be ideological weapons used by one class of members of the profession to coerce the rest as they are to reflect the values architects actually live by as they trudge on against the forces of indifference, ugliness, unnecessary waste, shoddiness, environmental degradation and all the rest in their practices and daily lives.

The ARB and the RIBA standards Britain has two main sources for standards of ethical professional behaviour: the Standards of Conduct and Practice1 of the Architects Registration Board (ARB) and the Code of Professional Conduct and Standards of Professional Performance of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).2 The ARB details a series of prescriptive standards under the following categories of behaviour that should adhere to people using the title ‘architect’:

1

ARB 2002.

2

RIBA 1999.

• • • •

Honesty and truthfulness Avoiding conflicts of interest Not working with disqualified partners Competence

• • • • • • • • • • • •

Responsible control over one’s work production / internal monitoring Impartiality Care and diligence in one’s work production Fiduciary duties to client’s money Carrying insurance Managing one’s personal and firm’s finances prudently Clarity in what one is providing Expeditious work Maintaining communication Confidentiality Having a complaints procedure Promoting these standards.

It should be noted that the standards under these categories are aimed at clarifying the architect’s responsibilities towards the client. Fair enough. But only one standard, standard number 5, expressly aims at having a regard for the public well-being, and it bears stating in its entirety: Whilst architects’ primary responsibility is to their clients, they should nevertheless have due regard to their wider responsibility to conserve and enhance the quality of the environment and its natural resources.

That’s it; that’s the entire scope of the architects’ standards of practice. Now, it could fairly be argued that the purpose of the ARB is not, nor should it be, to articulate ideals and values. It is doing what it is designed to do: to prescribe to architects and the public certain standards of decency that, if not met, could result in some form of punishment. But the justification of having standards at all is that they spell out requirements that somehow differ from ordinary expectations. To differ, then, these standards of decency must either be more stringent or else have additional content to them than would ordinary business practice. In other words, there would be no requirement for, say, travel agents to be as honest or as careful with a client’s money as architects, or else if these standards are the same, there must be some additional ones in the list that apply to the peculiar conditions of being an architect instead of being a travel agent. The first is probably not true: I would expect my travel agent to tell me, for example, which cruise ships had recently had outbreaks of food poisoning, regardless of how much money the cruise line dangled in his face to book cruises, or to tell me if he had a financial interest in the vacation cabin he wants to rent to me. The standards of decency are probably about as high in both cases. But the second almost certainly is true: additional standards exist which apply uniquely to the practice of architecture. I wouldn’t necessarily expect the travel agent to carry professional liability insurance, for example. This being granted, except for the aforementioned standard 5, there is unfortunately precious little of that sort of distinctive content in the ARB standards. So little, in fact, that it calls into question the efficacy of having a distinctive set of standards that applies to architects that shouldn’t be equally actionable against any other businessperson. If my grocer sells me rutabagas and tells me they’re mangoes, I believe I have recourse, regardless of whether he has violated the grocer’s code of conduct or not or even whether there is a grocer’s code of conduct. In other 102

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words, just by virtue of living in civil society, certain minimal expectations adhere. Unfortunately, all the ARB provides is minimal as well. This should leave plenty of room, then, for the RIBA Code of Conduct to provide a more full-blooded statement of values. The RIBA code is divided into three overarching categories of principles:

• • •

Carrying out one’s duties Integrity Respect.

Comparison with the ARB standards reveals that almost nothing in the RIBA’s principles on carrying out one’s duties and on integrity is not already stated in greater detail in the ARB document. It’s the same stuff, with the exception that the RIBA does go beyond the ARB in requiring under the heading of integrity not to so recklessly conduct one’s financial affairs as to lead to insolvency. However, with the third principle, the principle of respect, some new territory is entered. Respect for others is a recognisable and commendable virtue, and one that would serve practising architects well in enhancing the ability to conscientiously conduct their work. By placing a premium on respect, the RIBA has entered into something above and beyond the ordinary. What does the RIBA principle say about respect?

• • • • • • • • •

Do not use bribes or other inducements to unfairly procure clients. Do not advertise a fee, nor deliberately undercut a fee, nor engage in fee bargaining. Do not attempt to supplant. Regarding competitions, do not engage in unfair competitions or in favouritism. Do not maliciously discredit fellow practitioners. Notify another architect when engaged to give an opinion about their work. Acknowledge the contributions of others on the project team. Define employment terms. Report all known breaches of conduct, either by others or by yourself.

It should be clear by now who the ‘others’ are that the RIBA code is particularly keen that architects should show respect to: their peers. Similarly, in the RIBA standards of practice that follow the principles only one item emerges that is not a restatement of the ARB’s or of the RIBA’s principles, or both: the entirely commendable requirement not to let oneself become isolated from one’s fellows.

Vulnerability

3

AMA 2002–3.

4

NSPE 2003.

“Well,” we might be tempted to say, “this is just the way codes of conduct are. They are bound to fail to capture our most deeply felt motives, the things we feel most passionate about.” A reasonable response, but a look at other professions’ codes of conduct reveals it to be misguided. Both the American Medical Association3 and the National Society of Professional Engineers,4 to take but two examples, have codes of ethics that are substantive, activist and actionCODES OF ETHICS AND COERCION

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guiding. The NSPE, for example, makes the remarkably strong statement in the opening paragraph that engineers shall hold the public good paramount in all their work. So strong is this statement that more than one observer has commented that it is, if taken strictly, entirely too stringent. If an engineer designs a process or structure that saves the client money and the client doesn’t pass this saving along but instead pockets it as profit, then the engineer has quite obviously not lived up to the famed ‘paramountcy’ clause. This is not just the way codes inevitably are. It’s just the way ours are. This lack of motivational and discipline-specific content is unfortunate, from any number of standpoints. Most obviously, it allows outsiders to the profession to call into question the social efficacy of allowing a protected profession to persist. This plays directly into the hands of such forceful observers as Magali Larson, who describe the professions as little more than systematic efforts to secure a measure of non-competitive advantage from market forces.5 For Larson and others of the ‘conflict’ school, the rules and regulations that the professions devise to police themselves are generally self-serving. That is, they function primarily to help the profession maintain its distinct status and discourage interlopers. From this vantage point, Larson can identify a predictable series of steps that a discipline or occupation engages in to achieve status as a profession. First its members organise, then they identify a knowledge base and secure it in schools. Following this the occupation identifies norms of practice, secures government protections, and finally secures public approval of its restrictive practices. It’s all very predictable, and codes of ethics are just part of the mechanism, for it can only be self-serving to have scrapped one’s way to the top of the socioeconomic ladder and then worry over ethics. A concern for ethics at this point is simply a way to better regulate admission into the profession and shore up competitive advantage by requiring those on the ladder below to adhere to a more noble level of behaviour than applied at the time the profession was attempting to make headway. A lax, generic code of ethics or professional conduct gives the profession the appearance of holding itself to a higher standard of behaviour, thus helping the profession justify its market segmentation; but when the content is actually examined, appearance is all there is. In practice, the code is actually used to help the profession police its boundaries more than it is used to police its members, or if it is used to police its members, it is used to police them from one another, and not from malfeasance against the public. When the profession makes itself vulnerable to such criticism, it is basically giving itself over to those who deny any ethical basis for the existence of professions – which can only exist by combining a technical knowledge base with an ethic of practice. When the ethic of practice expresses precious little more than that demanded of any business, the profession is vulnerable to denial of its ethical premises. This vulnerability ought to be perplexing, for if public opinion in the UK at all resembles that in the US, architects are admired and hold a durable and substantial level of public approval. Public sentiment appears comfortable with the idea of having someone held centrally responsible for seeing that the built environment isn’t shoddy, ugly and insensitively contrived. Where is this level of public approval most likely to come from? Is it generated by the high-flying activities of a few dozen elites that dominate the pages of Architectural Record and the other glossies? Or is it, instead, more likely to emanate out of the thousands of 104

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5

Larson 1977.

everyday transactions between Britain’s 30,000 registered architects and their thousands of clients and millions in the public that their work touches? Is the ethical basis for architectural practice – the sense that architects are engaged in a valued contract with the public for its protection in a way that cannot be equally well served by other arrangements – likely to arise out of the glossies and the news footage of the latest skyscraper, or is it more likely to generate itself out of the much more ubiquitous actions of the rank and file? This question is perhaps easier to answer if we consider the likely basis for approval of other professions. Is the widespread approval of the medical profession more likely to emanate from the millions of everyday transactions between physicians and their patients, or from the headline-grabbing news items about artificial hearts, in-vitro fertilisation and other research advances? Furthermore, this lack of content is made doubly unfortunate, if you believe (as I do) that the majority of fellow practitioners are, in fact, highly motivated to do the right thing, eager to make the world a better place, keen to create the best buildings they can according to the widest possible definition of the good. They hold themselves to higher – much higher – standards of behaviour than the ARB, RIBA and, it should be added at this point, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) codes of conduct would suggest. (Fully two-thirds of the AIA Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct is devoted to instructing its members to obey various laws or to tell the truth!6) So why isn’t the practice of architecture described in motivational and discipline-specific terms? This is the question the discussion thus far has been preparing to take up. Why is the architecture profession so willing to leave itself vulnerable to critics of its unwillingness to hold itself to a high standard of public protection and service?

Cultural capital

6

AIA 1997.

7

Stevens 1998.

Having introduced the ideas from one sociologist, Magali Larson, the discussion turns now to some ideas borrowed from another, Pierre Bourdieu, by way of Garry Stevens’ book, The Favored Circle.7 Bourdieu makes way for forms of capital other than Larson’s essentially Marxist insistence on economic relations as the driving force by allowing that symbolic capital may be struggled over just as resolutely as economic advantage, and that the one may in fact be used to buy or exchange for the other. Symbolic capital has certain distinct advantages over either money or the use of brute force: symbolic capital can be deployed in such a way as to seem more natural, and invested in those who truly deserve it. Thus, through the employ of symbolic capital, society’s elites can enlist those they want to dominate in their own domination, making the job much easier. The mere fact, for example, that the National Gallery or the British Museum chooses to add a certain item to its collection gives that item a certain built-in presumption of legitimacy, even if little is known about the item itself. It suddenly becomes a work of art or a piece of history to contend with by virtue of the symbolic capital these institutions wield. And in reciprocal fashion, possession of what is deemed an important item enhances the holder’s symbolic capital. Symbolic capital is terribly important in politics. It has been observed, for example, that the high regard in which the free CODES OF ETHICS AND COERCION

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enterprise system is held in the US encourages people who are actually poorly served by it to support it anyway. But it has been a remarkably successful ideology; thus the observation that everyone considers himself rich or pre-rich. If the lower economic classes in the US were more socialistic, there is a high likelihood that their children would go to better schools and they would enjoy better health care than they do. It’s not hard to see how encouraging the lower economic classes in this approval of free enterprise serves the interests of the elites. Cultural producers, such as artists, architects and musicians, struggle for increased symbolic capital in one of two ways: either they appeal to the domain of mass consumption, as in the movie and, for the most part, the music industries, or else they appeal to the field of elite, or restricted consumption, as do architects and painters. Indeed, so thoroughgoing is the architecture profession’s orientation toward elite production these days that when a style of building or mode of design is in danger of becoming popular and widely accepted, it must be discredited and dropped as pandering. This sort of thing happened during the postmodernist years; when what had been terribly avantgarde was popularised by developers, the profession had to move on. An important feature of the realm of restricted, elite-oriented cultural production is that the greatest rewards and influence will tend to go to those who appear best able to help the discipline preserve and further its autonomy. Thus, as a social movement, modernism was an architectural ho-hum, but as a rarefied aesthetic movement it has been spectacularly successful. Housing the homeless and greening the construction industry receive a polite response, but the esoterica of deconstruction is what really raises tempers in the profession. Someone like Michael Pyatok in Oakland, California, who has figured out how to involve poor people in the making of quality public housing, is barely acknowledged;8 but someone who has built little but has a daring aesthetic generates huge publicity in the trade press and garners the profession’s most coveted awards. These incongruities would be hard to explain were it not for the concept of the struggle for cultural capital. It is the struggle for cultural capital and elite status that, the thinking goes, prevents the profession from descending to mediocrity. After all, it’s only a matter of recognising the best: those doing the most to further the cultural product of architecture. But ‘best’, it turns out, is not what is most likely to enmesh and merge architecture with other fields, but rather those practices and works most likely to make architecture stand apart, to give it distinction – and not just in the sense of ‘elevation’ but also in the sense of differentiation. Thus, the intense emphasis on the pioneers of new forms, the huge resources devoted to their assistance, the vast influence they wield. So, while both the profession and the larger field of architecture (the professionals, and everyone else with a material interest in its activities) amply reward the efforts of practitioners who help push the agenda of autonomy, this orientation penalises in equal measure the rank-and-file who are the most likely and enduring source for its continued existence as a respected profession. Thus, if Stevens’ contention that architecture is embedded in the world of cultural production appears correct, and if it is also correct that architecture produces for an elite rather than for a mass audience, then this places the discussion in a position to make sense of why the codes of conduct are such lame pieces of work. 106

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8

See Bussel 1995; Pyatok 1996; Ryder 1993.

Codes and coercion

9

For the research in this matter see RIBA 2003.

The AIA Code of Ethics, the ARB Code of Conduct and the RIBA Principles all do as much as possible to avoid holding the profession’s elite practitioners to standards they might find objectionable in their role as the guardians of disciplinary autonomy, while at the same time providing barely enough in the way of standards of behaviour so that the discipline can enjoy the fruits of being a profession, with its restrictive barriers to entry, state protection of its practices, and promise of prosecution to those who claim the status without having gone through the hoops. Keeping a veneer of public service through professional codes of conduct helps the entire profession maintain its status, but keeping that veneer as thin and flexible as possible primarily benefits the guardians of the profession’s autonomy, by placing the lightest restrictions on their prerogatives. Thus, of course the current standards of conduct fail to overtly express most architects’ basic values. They are systematically designed to avoid mentioning them. It seems our real values are expressed by their absence. This may seem a bald and contentious statement requiring illustration. The RIBA code has an entire section on ‘respect’. Who is to be respected? Fellow architects in the buddy system. Any mention of the debt a practitioner owes to his or her up-and-coming employees? And yet, aren’t the indifferent or even abusive employment practices that firms engage in towards the most vulnerable members of the profession a most obvious lapse in need of ethical shoring-up? Isn’t it primarily to the benefit of the famous members of our profession to look the other way at such employment practices? How about respect owed to the public? Might such a requirement hamstring the most autonomous aesthetic practices that like as not would offend public taste and opinion? No penalties there either, and no suggestion of them. And what of the requirement to respect one’s peers by not advertising fees? Who does this tend to favour: someone with an established elite practice, or someone trying to break in to those ranks and who would be willing to bargain on price for the opportunity? Does the public benefit from this prohibition? Perhaps this is not as true of the British system (although the recent report concerning why women drop out of the profession would indicate otherwise9), but a basic feature of the American system of architectural practice has been the most blatant, rank and objectionable exploitation of its interns. However, both the AIA and RIBA codes are silent on this obvious issue. Who does this silence serve? A small-town practitioner (say, from a little out-of-the-way place in northern Georgia) could not hire people and refuse to pay them, but an internationally famous firm in London or New York could. Interns who can afford it will gladly work, if they are allowed, for such people for little to no pay for the prestige and exposure. Elite practitioners feel entirely justified in such practices, because, given the current structure of fees and project procurement, they could not deliver the intensely designed products they do without the free or cheap labour. Being able to treat their interns poorly is one of the perks of their elite positions. Not only does looking the other way on this issue prop up the fame machine for the few, but it does so on the backs of the rank-and-file who are actually helping secure the long-term legitimacy of the profession, by placing these practitioners at a competitive disadvantage. Architects who pay little to

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nothing for their labour are simply better placed to create aesthetically adventurous work for the same money. It would be no trouble whatever for the rank-and-file of the profession to sign on to a pledge to treat interns respectfully, help them in their progress into the profession and pay them overtime according to federal wage laws. Who, then, would have an objection to such a provision? This omission is shameful, but it’s only the most obvious tip of the iceberg. Until 1979, statements of the AIA’s highest expression of its values included the unethical behaviour of either advertising or of competing with one another on the basis of fees. These elitist provisions were not rejected by the AIA leadership as unfairly favouring established practices; they were cast out only under threat of anti-trust action by the US Justice Department. Indeed, if enforcement and implementation of the RIBA’s code of conduct resembles that of the AIA’s, it will be the case that fully 70 per cent of all enforcement actions are in response to complaints by architects against other architects. The AIA’s ethics board is preoccupied with policing the buddy system of giving each other proper credit for contributions towards a project. Clients and the public simply do not perceive the code of ethics as a viable vehicle for having grievances addressed. Among America’s 60,000 registered architects who belong to the AIA, only 13 ethics prosecutions over a ten-year period, were brought to the board by either a client or a member of the public. This despite the fact that fully two-thirds of the code is devoted to discussing the architect’s relationship to the public and the client, and only a quarter to how architects are to respect one another. The elite orientation of the profession and the resulting weak ethics statements might be acceptable if they resulted from the widespread and uncoerced approval of the majority of registered architects. But this is not the case. By encouraging the idea of the profession as a meritocracy in which advancement comes from good work, rather than by one’s connections or station at birth, the profession obscures the fact that not only will most practitioners have no chance at such distinction, but it actually tends to smother all but a very narrow set of values. In the United States there are slightly over 100,000 registered architects in 20,000 firms. Approximately fifty of these firms will have their work featured in the publication that is the voice of the profession, Architectural Record, in any given year. Given overlap in coverage from year to year, in a five-year period the names of approximately 600 firms will have featured work out of a pool of 20,000 (a 3 per cent chance), a likelihood that does not improve over the years of one’s working life, because the pool never gets smaller. (The situation may be different in Britain, with its smaller pool and more numerous publications.) Thus, recognition operates more like a lottery than it does a meritocracy, bestowing all its rewards on an exceedingly small group that hits the jackpot, while the average payback for the vastly larger group is negative; it subsidises these activities through dues and by placing itself at a competitive disadvantage. In other words, by encouraging the rank-and-file architect to think that if she doesn’t rise to eminence in the profession, it’s because she’s either not talented or hard working enough, she also implicitly buys in to the elitegiven definition of exemplary practice. But it turns out that exemplary practice means, among other things, only working for elites with lots of money to do magnificent buildings, treating interns miserably and – more to the point for this discussion – discrediting a strong ethic of practice grounded in 108

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a strong commitment of public service, because a strong ethic will tend to limit disciplinary autonomy to pursue and create the most aesthetically daring work. A strong ethic of practice grounded in public service must be portrayed as a form of weakness, or perhaps an excuse for limited talent. And so it is, if the real task is to further the discipline’s autonomy. Someone in a small-town or regional practice who takes the idea of practising architecture as a necessary community service seriously places herself at a double or triple disadvantage for rewards within the profession. Not only does she suffer diminished opportunities for securing attentiongetting work, but by committing herself to serving the community as it wishes to be served, such a practitioner is not engaging in the ‘critical’ autonomy-increasing practices the profession most rewards. But what doubles down on all this, in addition to the vastly reduced opportunity and the self-blaming implication that lack of talent is the culprit, is that it is actually this sort of practitioner’s actions that are most likely to give the profession its most enduring source of public respectability, and hence make it all the easier for the elites to maintain their autonomy (by allowing these actions of the rank and file to help serve as a filter and gatekeeper, as well as a referendum on the practices of the elite). The elites induce the rank and file to do this necessary job of securing a measure of public assent, which tends to keep the rank and file in their place and create more distance from the elites; at the same time it blames the rank and file for their own inferior status, and this makes the whole project, including the deliberately weak code of ethics, coercive. The idea of the meritocracy holds true, but in its current incarnation it’s perverse, because it actually tends to reward an outlook that diminishes an ethical regard for one’s professional obligations; at the same time it flourishes most (by providing the greatest opportunities for being built) if someone else is doing the necessary ethical work of earning public approval and confidence. It’s the prisoners’ dilemma and the tragedy of the commons all rolled into one and played out within the profession.

Some partial prescriptions A code of ethics worthy of its name cannot be prescribed by one angry author: it can only emerge out of intense and widespread debate. But, if this essay is to conclude by speculating briefly on what a non-coercive code of ethics – one that is both discipline-specific and captures architects’ values and motivations – might look like, what would emerge? First, and obviously, architects might propose an unequivocal recognition of the crucial importance of actually behaving responsibly and helpfully to those in the profession who are most vulnerable: the interns and recent graduates trying to get on their feet in the working world and striving for competence and respect. Those professionals who finance their ‘critical’ practices by circumventing employment laws on the backs of their young workers, or who take no interest in their professional development, need to be called to task: they need to be held liable for failing to meet the profession’s ethical standards. Second, the profession needs to formally recognise that it derives its legitimacy from public approval, and that this approval derives in turn from public perception that the actions of architects provide important protections to its health, safety and welfare: specifically, protection from CODES OF ETHICS AND COERCION

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something like unsafe, shoddy, ugly and insensitively built environments. The public is unlikely to license people simply for their art. Architects who are unwilling to subscribe to this sort of ethic of public responsiveness because it would infringe upon their art are putting the legitimacy of the entire profession at risk. Coupled with this might be a statement of what architects consider to be motivating, unless we are somewhat ashamed of our motives. The existing codes of conduct certainly raise this possibility. Does anyone go through the pain of architecture school, the humiliation of seeing professionals of other stripes who are similarly educated earn vastly greater sums, and suffer the public scrutiny of their work – does anyone go through all this for the sake of a single line (with the possible exception of the aforementioned standard number 5) in the ARB or RIBA code? After the thrill of influencing the expenditure of vast sums of money, and of getting to see one’s idea actually built, begins to mellow, most of us suffer all this for the sake of a dream to make the world a more beautiful and humane place, if only a little, through our efforts. And, we hope, for the pleasure of being occasionally recognised and appreciated for having done so. This dream is what ultimately makes it all tolerable. Architects who are unwilling to hold themselves to something like the commitment to making the built environment a safer, more beautiful and better constructed place are trading on the good name of those who are. Finally, the profession could cut out a lot of the filler by striking out of its current codes of conduct any provisions that apply to any businessperson operating any business. If this leaves the code of conduct less than half a page long, so much the better. To be so lengthy, the current codes’ sins are almost entirely those of omission.

Postscript My presentation at the conference raised several objections. I would like to address two of these after having had a chance to reflect on them in the weeks following the conference. The first and, I believe, most easily despatched is that by stating my case as I have I am holding myself out as a paragon of a virtuous practitioner, and thus proposing little more than a regime change. This was not how I envisioned the purpose of this argument. My approach served more as a device to personalise a discussion about the clash of values than to rally the architectural troops around any one paradigm of practice. The clash of values within the architectural profession is between the profession’s dominant elitist orientation and a plurality of marginalised practices and values. I could have just as easily led the discussion with the recent exhaustive report on the reasons women leave the profession and, I believe, made exactly the same points. The Bourdieuvian concept of the struggle for cultural capital and disciplinary autonomy still applies and provides a ready explanation for the 2004 Pritzker Prize’s recognition of the work of one woman, Zaha Hadid, over that of the many who give up – discarding years of schooling and practice in the process – trying to find recognition in a profession that doesn’t seem to value what they have to offer. Hadid’s design values are those of the elite, and with the Pritzker Prize she was awarded accordingly. The second objection is more far-reaching and requires a more detailed response. The concern was raised that I am making an awful lot out of a set 110

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of statements that no one pays much attention to and that has always been superfluous to what the profession was really about. I take it that the fact that the AIA did without a code of ethics for a decade under threat of antitrust action serves to demonstrate further the triviality of worrying over concerns such as this: if the organisation could live without a code for ten years, why not permanently? I actually agree with this observation, up to a point, but heartily disagree with its import. It is manifestly obvious that the AIA and the RIBA could live without their formal codes of ethics. With the ones currently in place, they count for little anyway. I just believe that it’s also obvious that this would only contribute to the erosion of the profession’s already tenuous status. To live and practise without a formally stated code of ethics is by no means to live and practise without some quite obvious values. The profession has its unique values: why doesn’t it state them? A deliberately bland statement might arise for any number of reasons. Architects may wish to throw clients and the public off the scent, so to speak, so that they can pursue their real, motivating, values without outsiders suspecting. Though some members of the public do indeed charge architects with systematic self-gratification over clients’ wishes, one would think that if this were generally the case the profession would have collapsed long ago, especially in Britain, where an architect’s stamp is rarely a requirement anyway. People would catch on eventually to this ‘bait-andswitch’. Blandness might also reflect a certain anxiety not to offend; and this seems a more likely source. The question is: offend whom? Clients? The government? The public? Why would any of these groups object to architects holding themselves to strongly worded statements? More plausibly, the blandness of our codes of ethics reflects the desire not to alienate different constituencies within the profession itself. My conclusion is that this blandness does not serve all the constituencies within the profession equally well; that, as it all works out, the blandness serves to appease the interests of one group far more effectively than it provides an even-handed appeal to all interests within the profession. This does not require a grand conspiracy; it just recognises how the profession is dominated by a particular orientation and set of interests. It is inevitable that the profession, to keep from becoming completely fractured, be dominated by a set of values. I maintain (what I thought was going to be the real controversial issue of my presentation) that the codes of ethics are symptoms of a larger problem, in which the great majority of practitioners are poorly served by the currently dominant values. Continuing with the trivial role our codes of ethics occupy in organising the profession and in explicating its values is certainly plausible, likely even, but is desirable only as a fall-back position.

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Part 4

Personal and public ethos The following two essays consider architects’ proper position in relation to broad and particular ethical issues. Andrew Ballantyne describes the ways in which architects resolve competing ethical demands. Groups in society develop an ethic as a result of habit – the way that they are conditioned or accustomed to behave – rather than through a self-conscious examination of fundamental principles. This was understood in the nineteenth century by Samuel Butler, and his perceptions have been endorsed more recently by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. But architects’ habits are formed in the studios within the competitive subculture of architecture schools, and by a romanticised view of their role, which characteristically casts them in the role of heroes battling for their ideals against an uncomprehending society. An alternative ethic was articulated by Spinoza, however, who stressed the interlocking interdependence of all aspects of the physical and social world. The task of the architect is therefore not self-realisation, but the fashioning of artefacts that are in concord with their broader context. The myriad of our individual decisions, as we are aware, has universal consequence for the ecology of our planet: this is a case that has already been made in rational terms. But, if architects are to take their responsibilities seriously, they have to question their conventional habits both of individual creative self-fulfilment and of comfort – the primacy of ‘hearth and home’ – in favour of an ethic with a wider horizon which privileges collective social consequences. Ballantyne is not optimistic that this will happen: “it is quite possible that we will insist on seeing our world collapse before we consent to make such fundamental changes”. Richard Hill considers a more particular ethical problem, that of luxury. Despite their care for the state of the world, most architects are constrained by patronage: they can only exercise their art on behalf of public bodies or private individuals who are able to afford it. Sometimes there arise conflicts between their desire to practise and the social ideals they espouse. Luxury, Hill observes, is a quality that is hard to define, and in classical literature was regarded as dangerously subversive – liable to bring disorder and instability into the world. But luxury in a consumerdriven era is now the “very motor of a modern economy”, and architecture, as a visible part of the fashion industry, serves it. A justification for embracing luxury was offered in the early eighteenth century by Bernard Mandeville, whose Fable of the Bees influenced not only capitalist apologists like Adam Smith and Maynard Keynes, but also Karl Marx, for whom the puritanical idea of the Existenzminimum was part of the

capitalist’s aim of maintaining workers’ conditions at the lowest acceptable level. But Hill shows that architectural theorists, from Vitruvius to Le Corbusier, have connived in a campaign against excess, proscribing magnificence in the ‘wrong place’. In modernism, of course, there is a different kind of excess – plain and unadorned surfaces combined with space of especial generosity. Architects’ ethical resistance to excess may therefore be on aesthetic grounds, as well as, in the well-known case of William Morris, reflecting an anger about the necessary source of their patronage.

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Chapter 11

Hearth and horizon Andrew Ballantyne

The line of thought that is developed in this essay is concerned not so much with what happens when we contrast the ethical with the unethical, which would be to contrast the good with the bad. The approach is, by contrast, to consider what happens when we contrast alternative versions of the good, when one ethos competes with another, or offers an alternative idea of the best thing to do.1

Competing ethical demands

1

Zygmunt Bauman calls such an approach ‘ethnoethics’. It tells us about what certain people believe to be right and wrong, without telling us that these beliefs are right or wrong (Bauman 1995, p. 10).

Ethics is about doing the right thing, and in the abstract we know that we want to do what is right. Only cartoon villains set out to do wrong for its own sake. In practice our dilemmas arise when we find that different individuals give more weight to one ‘right thing’ than to another. For example: in the abstract we all want freedom and truth and justice, but in practice we settle for weekends, common sense, and the hope of slightly better pay. We strike a balance between one good and another. Again, we might pursue prosperity, which makes it possible to do a wider range of good and pleasurable things, giving us more freedom, but if we spend all our time earning the money, then there is no time to do any of those things, and our freedom to act is limited. In such situations, when we are faced with striking such a balance between different sorts of goodness, then different individuals will feel that an appropriate balance has been reached when there are different proportions of each ‘good’ in the whole; and more interesting than different people finding the balance as individuals, there are systems of values that seem to operate across social groups – in a family, in a cultural group such as ‘artists’ or ‘the young’, in ethnic cultures or religious groups (for example, within the so-called ‘protestant work ethic’). The point to be made here is that in each case the ‘ethics’ of the group are not something closely reasoned, and individual members of these groups might not be able to articulate what it is that they believe they should do, but nevertheless they as a group behave as if they made similar judgements. One group works hard now, hoping to enjoy a long and wellprovided retirement. Another group looks for a mixture of effort and

enjoyment along the way, unwilling to trust that there will be a future in which to reap the rewards of current efforts. How do we decide? If I ask myself how I arrive at a judgement where I have to weigh one group of benefits against another, then what I want to be able to tell myself is that I have done the right thing. Actually it is only in novel and unusual circumstances that I would feel that I had to think in terms of principles and reasoning. Normally I would do what it feels right to do. Where does that feeling come from? What informs it?

Habit The answer that I want to give is that it comes from habit. Our habits of behaviour and habits of mind do more than predispose us to do and think certain things; in a sense – bundled up together – they actually constitute who we are. For example, Saint Benedict sought to establish certain states of mind in the monastic community, by making a set of rules that were to be obeyed without question by those who were to become monks.2 It was following the rules that made men into monks (specifically in this case Benedictine monks). The habits prescribed by Saint Benedict made a framework for the identity of the monk, and they were not negotiable. In this sense my ethos – my habits, from which my system of values can be inferred – is what I am. Samuel Butler described the formation of personal identity in his book Life and Habit. He makes the point that the things we know about most firmly are the things that we have ceased to think about as principles. We have absorbed them so fully into our system of habits that we cease to think about them at all. Principles of any kind, including ethical principles, in his description are to be inferred rather than enforced. “As many people have been wrecked from principle as from want of principle”, he says. They are, as their name implies, of an elementary character, suitable for beginners only, and he who has so little mastered them as to have occasion to refer to them constantly, is out of place in the society of well-educated people. The truly scientific invariably hate him, and, for the most part, the more profoundly in proportion to the unconsciousness with which they do so.3

Butler’s understanding of the role of habit was endorsed by Gilles Deleuze, who said: No one has shown better than Samuel Butler that there is no continuity apart from that of habit, and that we have no other continuities apart from those of our thousands of superstitious and contemplative selves, so many claimants and satisfactions: “for even the cornfield grows upon a superstitious basis as to its own existence, and only turns the earth and moisture into wheat through the conceit of its own ability to do so, without which faith it were powerless” … Only an empiricist can happily risk such formulae.4

2

Saint Benedict wrote before 547, translated in McCann 1952. See

The habits of architecture If we turn this sort of thinking towards buildings, then we can see that the walls and roofs with which we surround ourselves are habits as surely as 116

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Ballantyne 2002, p. 28. 3

Butler 1910, p. 37.

4

Deleuze 1994, p. 75. Deleuze quotes Butler 1910, p. 82.

5

Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels have been reprinted many times and are widely distributed. The first was The Talented Mr Ripley (Highsmith 1957).

6

Rand 1943.

are the rules of the monks, and these buildings are as certainly a part of our identity. We make ourselves through our lives, and our lives are shaped by many things, including the kinds of places where we end up living – whether by choice or powerlessness. And to turn this back to the architect: the kinds of judgement that the architect reaches in designing buildings will depend on the architect’s ethics – the sense of what it is that matters most, and how that should be weighted in making the judgements about what is to be done. And how is such an architectural ethic formed? Partly of course it will be formed from pre-architectural concerns, learnt as very basic lessons in growing up and from experience in other parts of life. Some of it is formed in the studio and in practice, where we learn that some sorts of judgement meet with approval and win the respect of the people we would want to impress. It is not always clear that this is what is being taught, as the exercises that are set tend to have other objectives as their declared purpose – there are bodies of knowledge to acquire, and sets of skills to master – but the architect’s value-system is built up somehow along the way and is in the end the most important part of the education, even if it has been inculcated without anyone quite noticing. These undeclared lessons are the most thoroughly absorbed, and continue as unconscious and unexamined habits. If we want to try to articulate architects’ ethical principles then they must be adduced from the ways that architects behave when they feel that they are doing the right thing, or the best possible thing that can be done in the circumstances. Even someone who knows that he is doing something criminally wrong might feel that it is the best thing to be done in the circumstances – this is the territory explored in Patricia Highsmith’s novels – and what goes wrong then is that the damage done to others is not weighed as part of the cost. In Highsmith’s novels the victims are usually dead and cause the protagonist no further trouble, so in this specialised moral universe that seems to be the end of the matter – no guilt or remorse necessary. It is a pragmatic ethics with a limited horizon of responsibility. Her bestknown protagonist (it is best to avoid the word ‘hero’ here) was Tom Ripley – charming, intelligent and accomplished, but murderously unscrupulous.5 One of Highsmith’s great skills as a storyteller was her ability to persuade the reader to go surprisingly far in empathising with such evil-doers; and one of the things that left many readers convinced of the author’s own wickedness was the fact that in the novels Ripley was allowed to succeed – to escape detection, and live an apparently happy life, surrounded by the things that very rich people have. The closest parallel we have directly in the architecture world is Howard Roark, the fictional architect-hero of Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead.6 Roark is semi-autistic, with an inflexible will. He is harder than the rocks on which he sits, and harder than the buildings that he shapes. He is quite capable of taking criminal action, but his author defends him because he is responding to a higher morality – one in which he has a duty to act to stop crimes against humanity, such as the building of nonmodernist monuments. Roark’s ethics are strictly limited – he has an unbending responsibility to his architectural vision, and a will to realise that vision by whatever means can be found. The ethics do not consciously reach further than that. He does not feel particularly responsible to the rest of society, but is presented as a determined individualist – an egoist; and in fact HEARTH AND HORIZON

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the author makes it clear that in her view the rest of society should be responsible to him, and to people like him. One could take the view that he is as criminally insane as Highsmith’s characters, but the text invites us to see him as admirable, and to take satisfaction in the triumphal ending where he is seen standing at the top of New York’s greatest skyscraper, being realised to his design. The closing sentence is an image of isolation: “Then there was only the ocean and the sky and the figure of Howard Roark.”7 Everything else, everyone else, falls out of the view, and is insignificant.

An alternative ethos This admiration of an indomitable personal will can be contrasted with a view that takes a much more quizzical look at the will, and where it comes from. Baruch Spinoza (1632–77), in his Ethics, took the view that everything was interconnected and had a bearing on everything else: Every body … must be considered as a part of the whole universe, and must agree with the whole and cohere with the other parts. Now since the nature of the universe … is not limited, but is absolutely infinite, its parts are modified by the nature of this infinite potency in infinite ways and are compelled to undergo infinite variations.8

Spinoza was one of the greatest of seventeenth-century rationalists, and his Ethics is meticulously set out as a series of interconnected axioms and arguments. Individual statements taken out of their context can sound innocuous, and give no sense of the intellectual power of the whole elaborate mechanism that takes shape gradually, piece by piece, before the reader’s eyes. It is a vision of the universe as a machine, with mechanisms of cause and effect that are in principle simple and direct, but in practice too subtle and interactively complex to comprehend, so we do not properly grasp the processes that are at work on us and on our surroundings. For example, he describes how a stone is set in motion by a force acting on it, and how the stone’s motion is dependent on the force that was applied (ideas we routinely associate with Newton and his ‘laws’). Spinoza goes on: What here applies in the stone must be understood of every individual thing, however complex its structure or varied its functions. For every single thing is necessarily determined by an external cause to exist and to act in a fixed and determinate way. Furthermore, conceive, if you please, that while continuing in motion the stone thinks, and knows that it is endeavouring, as far as in it lies, to continue in motion. Now this stone, since it is conscious only of its endeavour and is not at all indifferent, will think it is completely free, and that it continues in motion for no other reason than that it so wishes. This, then, is the human freedom which all men boast of possessing, and which consists solely in this, that men are conscious of their desire and unaware of the causes by which they are determined. In the same way a baby thinks that it freely desires milk … .

7

Ibid., p. 727; and see Loughlin 2004 (in Ballantyne 2004).

8

Spinoza to Henry Oldenburg, 20 November 1665, in Spinoza

9

1992, pp. 281–2. See also Deleuze 1990 and Deleuze 1988.

The manner of expression here – the thinking stone – corresponds well with Butler’s (the thinking cornfield). If the thinking is unconscious, does it then make any practical difference whether they were making 118

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9

Spinoza to G. H. Schuller, October 1674, in Spinoza 1992, p. 286.

metaphorical or literal statements? There is an idea here of the unconscious working in a mechanistic way, to produce either actions, or desires that manifest themselves to a conscious mind (that then wills an action). If my idea of myself is formed from my conscious understanding alone, then I have desires, and my idea of freedom is being allowed to satisfy them. This is the territory of Ayn Rand and Howard Roark. But Spinoza saw the production of desire as something that is not under the individual’s control (at least, not usually) and to be dependent on the interactions that the individual has with other people and with things. So, after prolonged careful argumentation, Spinoza drew the conclusion that there is a vast interconnected interdependent mind that runs through the whole of nature. He said: I maintain that [the human mind] is part of Nature, for I hold that in Nature there also exists an infinite power of thinking which, in so far as it is infinite, contains within itself the whole of Nature as an object of thought, and whose thoughts proceed in the same manner as does Nature, which is clearly its object of thought. Further, I maintain that the human mind is that same power of thinking, not in so far as that power is infinite and apprehends the whole of Nature, but in so far as it is finite, apprehending the human body only. The human mind, I maintain, is in this way part of an infinite intellect … .10

10

Spinoza to Henry Oldenburg, 20 November 1665, in Spinoza 1992, p. 282.

11

Minsky 1987. Minsky is particularly bracing in his dismissal of the idea of free will, which he describes as the myth that human volition is based upon some third alternative to either causality or chance (p. 331).

12

Alberti 1988 p. 23.

13

Butler 1910, p. 83; cf. Deleuze and Guattari 1987, p. 3: “Why have we kept our own names? Out of habit, purely out of habit … Also because it’s nice to talk like everybody else, to say the sun rises, when everybody knows it’s only a manner of speaking.”

To say this might sound as if Spinoza was being vague and mystical, but in fact he was being very logical and rigorous. A very similar pattern emerges in the model of the workings of the mind offered by Marvin Minsky, who works in artificial intelligence.11 His image of the mind is of a society composed of many thousands of interdependent parts. What makes it work is the plethora of linkages between and among those parts, which are in themselves fundamentally simple and which in themselves do not think. It is when they are aggregated and networked that they function as a mind. So, depending on the scale at which we imagine this metaphor, we can see the mind as a society in miniature, and its workings as a kind of micropolitics; or we can see society as a kind of mind. (At the back of my mind here I am thinking of Alberti’s rhetorical question: “What is a town but a large house; and what is a house but a town in miniature?”12) The various disparate parts of the world interact and work together to produce the effects that we see, and are composed of machines that produce those effects: dispersed machines, composed of organic and inorganic parts, machines that are taken apart and recomposed in a fluid way, machines that produce good conditions in which to live, that produce clouds in the sky and waterspouts, machines that produce states of mind and the desires of which Spinoza spoke. If everything connects with everything else, then it becomes impossible to separate out autonomous entities. Everything is part of one machine or another; and the machines are all part of a great machine – the whole, which Spinoza identified with God. Nevertheless we have a need to be able to speak about apparently autonomous parts, individual people and individual buildings, if we are to function in the society of which we are a part. Butler describes such conventions as “façons de parler” – just a manner of speaking.13 The idea of dispersed machines is also to be found in Butler, writing in 1872: HEARTH AND HORIZON

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We are misled by considering any complicated machine as a single thing; in truth it is a city or society … Man has now many extra-corporeal members, which are of more importance to him than a good deal of his hair, or at any rate than his whiskers. His memory goes in his pocket book. He becomes more and more complex as he grows older; he will then be seen with see-engines, or perhaps with artificial teeth and hair … [he showed that] none but millionaires possessed the full complement of limbs with which mankind could become incorporate.14

Nature and culture It is such a type of machine that Gregory Bateson wrote about, when he supposed that we should not try to discuss an organism as something distinct from its habitat. This organism-plus-habitat is a machine, and is to be considered as the unit of survival – the identity of the organism being caught up in its interaction with its place. In a passage of particular interest to those of us concerned with habitats, Bateson invites us to consider what happens when you make the epistemological error of choosing the wrong unit: you end up with the species versus the other species around it or versus the environment in which it operates. Man against nature. You end up, in fact, with Kaneohe Bay polluted, Lake Erie a slimy green mess, and “Let’s build atom bombs to kill off the next door neighbours.” There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds, and it is characteristic of the system that basic error propagates itself. It branches out like a rooted parasite through the tissues of life, and everything gets into a rather peculiar mess. … You forget that the eco-mental system called Lake Erie is part of your wider eco-mental system – and that if Lake Erie is driven insane, its insanity is incorporated in the larger system of your thought and experience.15

Félix Guattari took up this idea, and in his book The Three Ecologies he remarked that Now more than ever, nature cannot be separated from culture; in order to comprehend the interactions between eco-systems, the mecanosphere and

14

Samuel Butler, from the three

social and individual Universes of reference, we must learn to think ‘transversally’ [i.e. for the purposes of the current argument, ‘connectedly’]. Just as monstrous and mutant algae invade the lagoon of Venice, so our television screens are

chapters dedicated to a

populated, saturated, by ‘degenerate’ images and statements. In the field of social ecology, men like Donald Trump are permitted to proliferate freely, like another species of algae, taking over entire districts of New York and Atlantic

1932, pp. 151, 161–2). A ‘see-

City; he ‘redevelops’ by raising rents, thereby driving out tens of thousands of poor families, most of whom are condemned to homelessness, becoming the equivalent of the dead fish of environmental ecology.16

dispersed machine is taken up by

description of “The Book of the Machines” in Erehwon (Butler engine’ is a lens, here in spectacles. The idea of the Deleuze and Guattari and is used as the basis of their descriptions of the working of not only the

It’s a startling image – the property tycoons as scum. What Guattari and Bateson were arguing for was to see the unit of survival not as an individual organic species but as the species plus its habitat. And the habitat is likely to include other species. However, there is a style of speaking at work in his texts that fuses the inorganic parts of a habitat as part of the living ‘unit of survival’ (species plus habitat). So buildings are certainly to be included in the 120

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mind but much else besides (Deleuze and Guattari 1977, pp. 284–5; Guattari 1979). 15

Bateson 1972, pp. 459–60; cited in Guattari 2000, p. 71.

16

Guattari 2000, p. 43.

17

Guattari 1995, p. 120.

18

Canetti 1962.

equation, along with the market that produces them. And there is also talk of “incorporeal species such as music, the arts, cinema”,17 in the company of which the gestural art of architecture certainly belongs. So Guattari’s ecology is extraordinarily wide-ranging in its scope. If we see our ideas and actions as inhabiting such an ecology, then we are concerned to maintain a balance in which the good things that we want do not overwhelm the rest of the environment that sustains us. The concerns of the domestic hearth are not to be seen as isolated and self-contained – no matter how little we speak with our neighbours. Decisions taken within the house – decisions about how to live one’s life – have consequences that reach to the far horizon, if we care to notice. The personal is the political. Imagine, for example, an innocuous domestic ethos, where we want to live reasonably well on limited means, where we want some privacy and personal space, and to be able to sit outside in the garden on summer evenings. It sounds anodyne, but yet if we take this ethos and multiply it by four or five hundred thousand, or a few million, then we have something like the towns and cities that we have in the UK. The countryside is depopulating because our food comes from places where it can be grown more efficiently – places with better weather, and big flat fields. One of the more startling things that came to light as the result of the foot-and-mouth outbreak in the UK in 2001 was that only 20 per cent of the economy of the countryside was concerned with food production (and most of that has a subsidy to keep it going). The other 80 per cent of the economy was dependent on one form or another of tourism: money earned in towns being spent in the countryside. We want privacy, so there is a shortage of property and prices continue to escalate; housing becomes prohibitively expensive for people we don’t want to pay highly (because that would mean we would have to pay more either in the cost of goods or in taxes). And our desire for outdoor space at home generates our sprawling cities and the traffic jams that could never have occurred in the days when everyone lived within walking distance of their work. As a society we seem to accept the depopulation of the countryside, rising house prices, and traffic jams. We are habituated to them and have ways of seeing them as part of the fabric of life, and as they are part of our system of habits we cease to see them, so that – as a society – we have not seen it as necessary or even possible that we should modify our simple innocuous desires. Like Spinoza’s stones, we move along our inevitable trajectory, apparently convinced that we are doing just the right thing. To change our desires we would have to change our habits and our identities, and we have ways of thinking that discourage us from doing such things. If we were to be forced to make the change then it would be seen as a violation of democratic rights. We are in the grip of an interconnected crowd, which has a group psychology that (as seems to be the way with these things) does not respond to reason.18 There will at some point in the future be a change, because the current patterns of behaviour are not indefinitely sustainable; but it is not at all clear when the change will come about, or whether it can happen gently or catastrophically. Our current collective ethos allows us to feel that we are doing the right thing when we satisfy our modest desires without considering their more distant consequences. We feel when we are part of a group that we are doing the right thing when we are all doing the same thing – it makes us feel secure, convinced that we are not in real danger, because our friends are nearby and doing the same thing as us. The mechanism to bring about a HEARTH AND HORIZON

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change would not be to pursue the matter through academic reasoning, as the cases to be made by reasoning have already been made. It will become necessary to spread appealing aspirational images through the popular media; but to spread a message that undermines the idea of hearth and home for the sake of an abstract and uncertain future is to challenge one of the cornerstones of our society, and to set oneself up as a subversive element. It is quite possible that we will insist on seeing our world collapse before we consent to make such fundamental changes. Spinoza used the example of the baby, convinced that it freely desires milk. The baby’s view of the universe revolves entirely around the baby itself and its needs. As we grow up and our horizons widen, we grow to be more aware of the consequences of our actions and their impact on others. Gregory Bateson’s point is that if we neglect these impacts on others, they can undo the things that we thought we were achieving for ourselves: the others are not separate from ourselves, if they would only notice it, but are another part of one interconnected mechanism. The relations between causes and effects are not always directly apparent, and we can be blind to the consequences of our actions because we put them into different categories, and have effective ways of resisting the changing of our habits. Our patterns of behaviour have an architecture, which goes by the name of ethics. Our habits of mind, and our habits in deed, generate our world.

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Chapter 12

Architecture, luxury and ethics Richard Hill This essay is dedicated to the memory of Catherine Cooke (1942–2004)

There is a famous scene in the movie Queen Christina. The queen, played by Greta Garbo, has spent a night in an inn with Don Antonio, the Spanish envoy. She is, of course, incognito, escaping from the formality and duties of the Court. She eats grapes – grapes in Sweden, in winter – brought by Don Antonio: “They warmed and ripened in the Spanish sun. My hacienda is overrun with them. In the season of the grape harvest, the air smells purple.” Garbo moves around the room, touching fabrics, furniture, the linen of the bed, a spinning wheel, a candlestick holder, trying to memorise exactly what it feels like. “In the future, in my memory, I shall live a great deal in this room.”1 At this point in the film she is undecided between love and duty, but by the end she has made her choice. Tragedy intervenes, however, and Don Antonio is killed, but the final shot depicts her at the prow of a ship, leaving Sweden for Spain. Roland Barthes has made the scene doubly famous: Garbo’s face represents this fragile moment when the cinema is about to draw an existential from an essential beauty, when the archetype leans towards the fascination of mortal faces, when the clarity of the flesh as essence yields its place to a lyricism of Woman.2 1

The quotations are from www.filmsite.org/quee3.html. I owe the example of Queen Christina to a remark made by my friend Mike Jones many years ago.

2

Barthes 1973, pp. 56–7.

Luxury is hard to define, so in the first instance one resorts to examples, like that marvellous scene where Garbo – and, vicariously, her audience – samples all the pleasures of the flesh. In fact Diderot used the term ‘luxe’ as an example of the general difficulty of encyclopaedic definition:

We say, without any of us being mistaken, of an infinity of objects of all sorts, that they are luxurious … but what is this luxury that we attribute so infallibly to so many objects ? Here is a question which will not be answered with any precision except as a result of a discussion which those who demonstrate the most accuracy in the application of the word luxury have not had, are not perhaps even in a position to have.3

In The Republic Socrates describes a modest way of life in which citizens build their own houses, produce their own food, clothes and shoes, and eat their meals like picnics, reclining on couches of myrtle and briony. In response to Glaucon’s protests Socrates allows that there will be salt, oil and cheese, a variety of vegetables, and that there will be roasted acorns too. That’s not much of a pudding, replies Glaucon, fine for pigs but not for humans. Why can’t there be proper furniture, and the variety of food we are accustomed to? Socrates takes up the challenge and describes the consequences of allowing luxury free reign, warning Glaucon that this will be a description of a society in a fever rather than in health: It will want couches and tables and other furniture, and a variety of delicacies, scents, perfumes, call-girls and confectionery. And we must no longer confine ourselves to the bare necessities of our earlier description, houses, clothing, and shoes, but must add the fine arts of painting and embroidery, and introduce materials like gold and ivory.

Socrates points out that the state will need to become bigger to accommodate all the new luxury occupations. There will be hunters, fishermen, artists, sculptors, painters, musicians, reciters, actors, chorus-trainers and producers, manufacturers of all kinds of domestic equipment, “especially those concerned with women’s dress and make-up”. There will be more servants: tutors, wet-nurses, nannies, cosmeticians, barbers, butchers, cooks. Pigs and cows will have to be looked after, if we wish to eat meat. The new luxuries will increase the demand for doctors. The state will need more territory, to allow more land for pasture and cultivation. Then, Socrates argues, we shall have to cut a slice off our neighbour’s territory. And if they too are no longer confining themselves to necessities and have embarked on the pursuit of unlimited material possessions, they will want a slice of ours too.

Glaucon then agrees with Socrates that war is the inevitable result of unbridled acquisitiveness and opens the way for Socrates to describe the specialised warrior class that will be needed for successful warfare: “For soldiering is not so easy a job that a man can be a soldier at the same time as he is a farmer or shoemaker or follows some other profession.”4 In short luxury, the desire for which might be a quite normal human attribute,5 brings disorder and instability into the world, and to counter those explosive forces there must be a powerful state apparatus. Bernard Mandeville is famous for having challenged this classical view of luxury. His Fable of the Bees was published in 1714, and an expanded edition followed in 1729. The subtitle, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, sums up what is to come in the versified fable, and in its more sober explanatory 124

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3

From Denis Diderot’s article “Encyclopédie” in Encyclopédie 9, p. 764, quoted in Goodman 2003, p. 75.

4

Plato 1974, pp. 62–6. On ancient Greek ideas of luxury see Davidson 1978. See also Sekora 1977, chapter 1; Springborg 1981, chapter 2; and Berry 1994, chapter 2.

5

Berry 1994, chapter 2.

notes. The hive in question provides an allegory for human society, and at the beginning of the story all the bees within it live in “luxury and ease”: Vast numbers throng’d the fruitful hive; Yet those vast numbers made ‘em thrive; Millions endeavouring to supply Each other’s lust and vanity;6

In fact the hive is riddled with crookery and cheating; lawyers are corrupt, physicians lazy and incompetent: Thus every part was full of vice, Yet the whole mass a paradise; … The root of evil, avarice, That damn’d ill-natur’d baneful vice, Was slave to prodigality, That noble sin; whilst luxury employ’d a million of the poor, And odious pride a million more: envy itself, and vanity, Were ministers of industry; Their darling folly fickleness In diet, furniture and dress. That strange ridic’lous vice, was made The very wheel that turned the trade.7

Then the bees take it into their heads to be virtuous. Debts are paid, criminals are punished and the innocent set free, doctors become skilful, the clergy become devout, and politicians live frugally. But: Now mind the glorious hive, and see How honesty and trade agree: The show is gone, it thins apace; And looks with quite another face, For ‘twas not only that they went, By whom vast sums were yearly spent; But multitudes that lived on them, Were daily forced to do the same. In vain to other trades they’d fly; All were o’erstock’d accordingly. The price of land and houses falls; Mirac’lous palaces whose walls, Like those of Thebes, were rais’d by play, Are to be let; … The building trade is quite destroy’d, Artificers are not employ’d; 6

Mandeville 1934, p. 30.

7

Ibid., pp. 33–4.

8

Ibid., p. 38.

No limner for his art is fam’d, Stone-cutters, carvers are not nam’d.8

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Mandeville’s satire is the pivot for modern discussions of luxury, turning a sin into the very motor of a modern economy. Indeed his thought-experiment leads him to question whether there is any meaning at all in the term luxury: If everything is to be luxury (as in strictness it ought) that is not immediately necessary to make man subsist as he is a living creature, there is nothing else to be found in the world, no not even among the naked savages.

Even they, Mandeville asserts, will have made some improvements on a subsistence mode of living, as he says: either in the preparation of their eatables, the ordering of their huts, or otherwise added something to what once sufficed them. This definition everybody will say is too rigorous; I am of the same opinion, but if we are to abate one inch of this severity, I am afraid we shan’t know where to stop.9

We can now look back on The Fable of the Bees as a poetic summary of the consumer society of the eighteenth century, and specifically of its architecture and building: the innumerable terrace houses offering a quite new standard of comfort, the relentless pursuit of fashion in furnishings, decoration and façades, the vast expenditures on country houses, the building of whole new towns devoted to pleasure. Note, as an example of the employment effect of architectural fashion, Adam Smith’s reckoning that at one point 3,000 people were dependent on Robert Adam and his brothers for work.10 Consider also the intellectual influence of The Fable. Marx gleefully pointed out Adam Smith’s debt to Mandeville, noting that the opening of his famous discussion of the division of labour “is copied almost word for word from B. de Mandeville’s Remarks to his Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Publick Benefits”.11 Keynes, in his notes on theories of under-consumption in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money quotes from The Fable, adding, “No wonder that such wicked sentiments called down the opprobrium of two centuries of moralists and economists who felt much more virtuous in possession of their austere doctrine that no sound remedy was discoverable except in the utmost of thrift and economy both by the individual and by the state.” He continues, saying that the “entertainments, magnificent shews, triumphal arches etc.” of Mandeville’s period gave place to the penny-wisdom of Gladstonian finance and to a state system which “could not afford” hospitals, open spaces, noble buildings, even the preservation of its ancient monuments, far less the splendours of music and

9

Ibid., Remark L, p. 91.

10

Uglow 2003 in Berg and Eger

the drama, all of which were consigned to the private charity or magnanimity of improvident individuals.12

All this speaks to our contemporary world, to the Mandevillian/Keynesian discussions about the economic significance of cultural production, to lottery funding of arts and heritage buildings,13 and indeed to the vast economic significance of that modern hive, Las Vegas, where ‘private vices’ of expenditure on hotels, dining, shows and gambling were, in the 1990s, worth $12 billion a year.14 It is said that Mandeville takes luxury out of the realm of morality, that he ‘de-moralises’ luxury.15 Conservatives, as Keynes remarks, found 126

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2003, p. 152. 11

Marx 1970, pp. 354–5.

12

Keynes 1973, p. 362.

13

The seminal document is Myerscough et al. 1988. My thanks to Ken Worpole for help on this topic.

14

Twitchell 2002, p. 242.

15

For a discussion of Mandeville and his influence see Hundert 1994.

this offensive,16 but I would like also to point to Marx’s struggle against the moralising of early socialists on the question of human needs. In her study of the political history of the idea of human needs, Patricia Springborg quotes, as an example, Wilhelm Weitling: “If one wishes to attain a state of general felicity, one must wish each to possess and enjoy all that he needs and nothing more.”17 And, referring to other socialist writers who catalogued necessities of existence as food, a roof, clothes, etc., Springborg points out that there was a great deal of Rousseau in this idea of “the man of few needs”. Marx would have none of this: The crude communism is only the consummation of this envy and of this levelling-down proceeding from the preconceived minimum. It has a definite, limited standard. How little this annulment of private property is really an appropriation is in fact proved by the abstract negation of the entire world of culture and civilisation, the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and undemanding man who has not only failed to go beyond private property, but has not yet even attained to it.18

So far as Marx was concerned the project of defining human needs was part of the capitalist’s drive to set the conditions of existence of workers at the absolute minimum which would allow labour power to be continually reproduced. Workers were subjected to a constant live experiment to see just how low that definition of needs could be. Thus: Even the need for fresh air ceases for the worker. Man returns to living in a cave, which is now, however, contaminated with the mephitic breath of plague given off by civilisation, and which he continues to occupy only precariously, … A dwelling in the light, which Prometheus in Aeschylus designated as one of the greatest boons, by means of which he made the savage into a human being, ceases to exist for the worker. Light, air, etc. – the simplest animal cleanliness – ceases to be a need for man.19

16

The conservative opposition to ideas such as Mandeville’s is discussed in Sekora 1977.

17

Springborg 1981, pp. 62–5.

18

Marx 1959, p. 94.

19

Ibid., p. 109.

20

Ibid., p. 104.

21

Foot 1975, vol. 2, pp. 78–80.

Patricia Springborg has described Marx’s understanding of the role of needs in human life as “the most appealing and most humane aspect” of his thought. In place of the conception of the man of few needs, Marx asserts, “It will be seen how in place of the wealth and poverty of political economy come the rich human being and rich human need.”20 Again, once its moral basis is eroded, the distinction between needs and luxuries becomes meaningless. Discussion of modernism in architecture has often focused on the idea of a ‘subsistence standard’ of housing, an Existenzminimum. No doubt this was an element in modernist thinking, but consider also the extent to which, in the manner that Marx describes, socialist and social-democratic housing authorities and their architects created new definitions of needs, needs that would be recognised as needs only in the future, and that were now luxuries. Thus Nye Bevan provided subsidies for rural authorities to build in their local vernacular materials, and fought for the provision of an upstairs lavatory in new council houses, to the derision of Hugh Dalton, who called him “a tremendous Tory”. Then it was a luxury; now it is a need. Bevan’s famous remark was, of course, “While we shall be judged for a year or two by the number of houses we build … we shall be judged in ten years’ time by the type of houses we build.”21 Consider the extraordinary efforts ARCHITECTURE, LUXURY AND ETHICS

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that the Borough of Bermondsey went to in planting trees along its terraced streets. Mere luxury. Consider the efforts of the housing authorities in ‘Red Vienna’, described by Eve Blau. Here the entrance hall to the flat became the contentious issue. Strictly unnecessary, it helped to buffer the interior from cold and noise, and prevented other people’s kitchen smells penetrating the flat, but also, as Blau adds, in a beautiful phrase, it added “a grace note to the proletarian dwelling, an interstitial zone not only between inside and outside, but often also between the newly internalised toilet and the social living space of the apartment itself; something inessential that improved the dwelling’s quality.”22 More dramatically, the housing programme began to redefine the relationship between home and the public world in its provision of laundries, libraries, kindergartens, public halls and gardens that wove a continuous fabric of open space from the street into the courtyards of housing blocks.23 In these practical conceptions of “rich needs”, as Marx described them, the possibility of a sharp distinction between needs and luxury is blunted, and deliberately so. I would like to say a little more about the connection between luxury, on the one hand, and the relationship between private and public, on the other. Among the five crucial terms for understanding architecture, Vitruvius includes ‘correctness’: decor in Latin.24 Houses are divided into personal and public areas. The former are only accessible by invitation of the owner. The size and design of the public areas are constrained by the occupation and status of the owner: this is a matter of social correctness. For those of moderate income, magnificent vestibules, atria and so on are unnecessary, since they will conduct their business by going to visit others. Moneylenders, tax collectors, lawyers and orators require elegant and spacious public rooms, to varying degrees, and, “For the most prominent citizens, those who should carry out their duties to the citizenry by holding honorific titles and magistracies, vestibules should be constructed that are lofty and lordly, the atria and peristyles at their most spacious … .”25 In fact the libraries, picture galleries and basilicas needed by such citizens meant that their homes may approach the magnificence of public buildings. One of the least attractive aspects of classical architectural theory comes into view in this kind of discussion, namely its obsessive desire to control, order, monitor, the correct use of architectural forms and decoration. It is a massive disciplinary operation which aims to prevent builders and clients from transgressing rules of social order. Here the term luxury comes into play in its pejorative meaning: to paraphrase Freud, luxury is magnificence in the wrong place. John Sekora has expressed this point forcefully: … there evolved a tacit double standard regarding what actually was luxury. Legislators in general drew a sharp distinction between the immoral and illegal lust for false wealth and station that corrupted men and nations, on the one hand, and the natural and admirable expression of position and self-interest that produced genuine value on the other. In theory all men were subject to the prohibitions of luxury; in reality persons of authority were free to do as they pleased.26

David Thomson has charted the issue in its application to architecture, noting that renaissance theorists used magnificence, authority, restraint, as 128

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22

Blau 1999, pp. 181–2.

23

Ibid., pp. 205–9.

24

Vitruvius 1999, 1.2.6, p. 25.

25

Ibid., 6.5.1, pp. 80–1.

26

Sekora 1977.

terms of approval and the term luxury as their antithesis. He points out that Alberti lists examples of transgressions of codes of modesty, magnificence and luxury from the classical period, where bronze, ivory, glass, gold and marble were used to excess or indecorously, but he also notes in passing that Alberti avoids making potentially tactless comments on secular buildings of his own time.27 Sir John Soane takes up the private/public distinction in his Lectures: in contrast to the magnificence of public works Roman houses were more distinguished by their elegant simplicity than by the costliness of their architecture, or the sumptuousness of the furniture. This did not, however, always continue. In the times of the emperors, the distinctive characters of different buildings were blended together, and profusion in everything became so general that luxury and ostentation were then considered necessary, and had made such gigantic strides as to become destructive of any principle of true taste … Such was the progress of luxury and extravagance in the buildings of the Romans, that in their villas, and baths, intended at first for use more than for ornament, we are told that they were not satisfied unless the floors were of silver and the ceilings shining with glass and glittering with precious stones.28

In building and decorating their houses, individual citizens should not attempt to compete with the elaboration and richness of public buildings: that was an offence against architectural correctness. The issue becomes complicated when we consider the most powerful ranks of society, since they have both private and public personas. They are, as individuals, part of the magnificence of the state: therefore its grandeur can rub off on them. This creates a space for the double standard of criticism of luxury that John Sekora has noted. Excess can be justified, or tolerated, where the division between public and private becomes blurred. The notion of excess that lies at the base of ideas about luxury needs some further discussion, not least because of the argument that there can be true and false luxury, which raises the awkward possibility of an excess of something that doesn’t exist. Here, for example, is Le Corbusier, protesting at the mass of consumer goods thrown on to the market: … we are being buried alive by these things, by this snowballing avalanche of novelties … Every morning, we invent new consumer products “to keep trade and industry going” and to provide everyone with work. But luxury, that notorious superfluity, this flood of totally sterile, innumerable, unlimited, proliferating pieces of nonsense that we create to adorn our egos, costs money; and the money we are earning now is insufficient to pay for our daily bread and luxuries as well.29

27

Thomson 1993, pp. 9, 28, 151.

28

Watkin 1996, Lecture XI, p. 640.

29

Quoted in Watkin 1996, p. 150.

The quotation comes from The Radiant City, first published in 1930, and it leads on to a call to make an inventory of human needs, and to forbid “with stoic firmness” the production of all useless products. The idea of ‘the man of few needs’ – at least of definable and countable needs – is discernible again here, fitting into the syndicalist and utopian politics of The Radiant City as a whole. The general tone of the complaint could of course be found in numerous manifestos stretching back through the Arts and Crafts movement, to Ruskin, to Pugin, and probably beyond. The point I ARCHITECTURE, LUXURY AND ETHICS

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wish to stress is that these luxuries were seen as hollow deceits, not real luxuries at all, only passed off as luxury because the manufacturer can exploit an aching wish for variety, for some kind of visual diversion, for respectability, conformity. The essential point about luxury, in its classical definition, was that it involved an excess of sensory experience, softness, sweetness: but these so-called luxuries merely frustrate the senses. Here is Le Corbusier’s alternative to such false luxuries: For all men, in cities and in farms: sun in the house, sky through their window panes, trees to look at as soon as they step outside. I say: the basic materials of city planning are: sun, sky, trees, steel, cement, in that strict order of importance. Yet when I look about me, I see city authorities – reputedly the most modern in the world – planning towns that will deprive men, for a century to come, of the BASIC PLEASURES.30

The phrase “basic pleasures” has complexity within it. Marx saw the denial of light in the worker’s dwelling as an offence against humanity, but to state daylight as a need would have been to block out the possibility of other needs developing, and to set a definition of invariant, minimal, subsistence needs, which would give the capitalist some certainty in setting the basic wage rate. Light and air, in their architectural meaning, must not be used as a hostage to stop the development of new needs and desires. But there is another ambiguity, a profound one for modern architecture. Among the preliminary drawings for the Villa Stein – a double house designed by Le Corbusier for Gertrude Stein’s brother and his friends the de Monzies – is a corrected plan done by an assistant. Le Corbusier crosses out a range of rooms which open off a corridor and writes that every room must have light coming from more than one direction. He breaks the rule sometimes in his career, but it is a key point in most of his compositions. This is light and sun manipulated as a real, a true, luxury. So pleasures can be ‘basic’ in two ways. They may have priority over other more sophisticated pleasures: they may be fundamental in a social sense as The Radiant City suggests. Alternatively they may be basic from an aesthetic point of view, arising from a generic sense experience, but endlessly variable in their realisation in a particular building. In this latter meaning, what is basic aesthetically can also be a matter of excess in a cruder sense, a financial one. The Villa Stein uses the simplest architectural means – light, space and the most ordinary constructional details – but it is a very large house, and it was very expensive to build.31 With an allowance for the addition of some simple stone and metal detailing, the point holds good for a type of large but austere modern house that would embrace the house that Wittgenstein and Engelmann designed for Wittgenstein’s sister, and, at the present day, the Sainsbury house by Tony Fretton, the Casa Fontana, by Stanton Williams Architects, or the 130

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30

Le Corbusier 1967, p. 86.

31

“… roughly 1.5 million francs, making it by a fair margin the most expensive single house built by Le Corbusier before the war” (Benton 1987, pp. 175–6).

Brick Leaf House by Woolf Architects. Wittgenstein wrote, “My ideal is a certain coolness. A temple providing a setting for the passions without interfering in them”,32 and in truth the house that he and Engelmann designed for his sister is very cool indeed: classicism stripped and stripped again. Alan Stanton writes of the Casa Fontana that “there is the idea of space being alive, moving and sensual, with spaces folding one into another”.33 Christopher Snow, who has written “Notes on making a grand house” to accompany publication of the Brick Leaf House, describes how grandness comes from the planning of the house and its relationship to the site, but it is clear that the detailing and finishes are of the utmost simplicity.34 However, only a pedant would say that these houses were not luxurious, on the grounds that they show little sensuous excess. Our definition of luxury should be able to accommodate these special kinds of excess, which derive from pleasures of mere space, mere light, mere ease with which one use gives way to another as the house opens itself up. Perhaps this is hyperluxury, the highest form of luxury, which takes to excess all those aesthetic features of architecture which are most difficult to conceptualise and which lie on the border between sensuous and intellectual understanding. Another voice is nagging at me. Don’t forget that these houses are absolutely enormous: this in itself imparts an underlying coarseness, a vulgarity, which requires massive architectural effort to civilise and polish.35 I’m not sure where this voice is coming from. It could be a Vitruvian one, the whingeing voice that wants us to keep to convention, not to splash out beyond our station in life. It might, though, be an angrier voice, echoing down the corridors of Rownton Grange, near Northallerton. The famous story, one that should begin or end any discussion of luxury in architecture, comes from W. R. Lethaby: Morris attended to the decorative painting of the house himself. Sir Lowthian Bell told Mr. Alfred Powell that one day he heard Morris talking and walking about in an excited way, and went to enquire if anything was wrong. ‘He turned on me like a mad animal – “It is only that I spend my life ministering to the swinish luxury of the rich.”’36

32

Wijdeveld 1994, p. 179.

33

“Stanton Williams in Ticino” in Architecture Today, 146, March 2004, p. 26.

34

Snow 2003, p. 54.

35

For an extreme example see the house for Andreas Gursky, designed by Herzog and de Meuron, illustrated in RIBA Journal, January 2003, pp. 21–8.

36

Lethaby 1935, p. 94.

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Part 5

Ethics and aesthetics

The final section of this book is the most ‘theoretical’, in that the two essays are concerned with architectural and ethical judgement at a philosophical level. Neil Leach and Julian Roberts are sceptical about two of the most influential philosophers commonly referred to in the aesthetic debate – Heidegger and Kant respectively. Leach maintains that architectural discourse needs to embrace its historical, social and political context, while Julian Roberts, on the analogy of the law, argues that aesthetic judgement, though it should be informed, would more properly be like a “trial by jury” than an “oracular” judgement issued by persons with a particular training. Neil Leach’s essay explores the link between ethics and aesthetics by discussing Karsten Harries’ book The Ethical Function of Architecture, in contrast to the work of Fredric Jameson. Harries’ approach is Heideggerian – lamenting the placelessness of contemporary architecture and its inauthenticity. But as the illustrations in his book reveal, Harries, in common with many architectural historians and critics, in criticising postmodern commercial developments ignores or anaesthetises contemporary economic and social reality, and hence aestheticises the architecture. Jameson’s work, on the other hand, acknowledges that these developments “embody the placelessness of late capitalism”. Jameson rejects Kenneth Frampton’s argument that regional differences can somehow overcome the resultant homogenisation of environments, showing that those (usually superficial) differences that are fought for are a product of precisely the same forces. Leach is also suspicious of Harries’ appeals to authenticity (a problematic term in itself) and of the potential sentimentality of terms such as ‘dwelling’. The work of Jameson requires that “a viable form of aesthetic practice” would begin with the actual conditions of contemporary society – with its sophisticated technologies and its privileging of the image – rather than with conditions as we imagine they used once to be. Within this framework, the treatment of architecture as an autonomous aesthetic discipline would need to give way to a more rounded critique, within which ethical concerns would have a prominent place. Julian Roberts outlines Kant’s aesthetic position (in a manner, it should be acknowledged, that would not be accepted by many Kantians), which he compares unfavourably to that of Adam Smith. For Kant, though aesthetic judgements cannot be objective, they should be scientifically

disinterested, and that is what makes them potentially generalisable rather than merely private and ‘sensual’. Kant privileges formal beauty, and the sublime is thrilling not on account of its sensuality (which would render it ‘barbarous’) but because, to an educated taste, it gives a “stern thrill of selfdenial”. Thus Kant seeks to rescue unruly taste into the orderly world of culture. In the matter of judging architecture, this means that he tends to value depictions of architecture over the architecture itself, and this becomes the domain of the expert. By contrast, the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume and Adam Smith, trust the first intuitions of ordinary men and women as the starting point for the right judgement of art and architecture, just as the first perceptions of the jury in the matter of moral judgements are to be valued. As a provocative illustration, Roberts discusses Courbet’s Origin of the World: it is a deliberate offence to Kantian views of taste even if, paradoxically, in view of its manifestly distorted un-naturalness, a vindication of Kant’s demand for the disruption of natural expectations by a work of art. By analogy we can understand that in architecture the typical modernist position would claim that architecture is ‘moral’, just as the world in general is ‘good’ whenever things are suited to a purpose. Architectural value may thus be determined by reference to functionality: if a building is good for people and for their purposes, then it is ‘moral’. Obviously, architecture must also be beautiful and pleasing, but the orthodox bottom line is analytical and functional, and emotional valuations are frequently dismissed as secondary – the position outlined by Richard MacCormac is called to mind. But Roberts would claim that ours is a world which violates rationalism at all points: this kind of modernism is not at all convincing, and at root this is a philosophical issue. Kant’s influential model is a failure, Roberts concludes. There are other ways to articulate morality – understood, at any rate, as excellence of character in the face of adversity and self-regard – without falling into naïveté, dogmatism or brutalism. Moral and aesthetic judgements are not indistinct versions of analytical ones, Roberts claims, rather they are elementary in their own right. Unlike analytical judgements, they do not adhere to systemic criteria such as non-contradiction, and so cannot be computed in advance. They are humanistic and conventional rather than absolute. Of necessity, reflection on them takes place on an empirical level: the questions of what constitutes virtue, and what constitutes good taste, are – quite properly – ones of experience, training and historical observation. But they have to be argued in the common court of law, and eventually ordinary people constitute the jury.

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Chapter 13

Less aesthetics, more ethics Neil Leach

1

For example, the PolishCanadian public artist Krzysztof Wodiczko exhibited Homeless Vehicle, his mobile home for the homeless, a work that is highly characteristic of his often polemical attempts to reinscribe social and political concerns within the artistic arena (see

“Less aesthetics, more ethics” was the theme given to the 2000 Architecture Biennale in Venice. However, the role of ethics in the exhibition was somewhat ambiguous. For although there were some works on display by artists and architects with a genuine ethical commitment, there were others by those with seemingly little interest in such concerns.1 Indeed the commissioner for works in the Biennale, Massimiliano Fuksas, went so far as to play down the importance of ethical concerns:

Wodiczko 2000). On the other hand the Biennale also displayed the work of the Finnish architect Marco Casagrande, of Casagrande and Rintala, who exhibited Maaltapako Land(e)scape, his project for placing traditional farm huts on

The instructions for use advise you not to look for etymological or philological meanings for ‘Less Aesthetics, More Ethics’; not to think that we are somewhere between the origin of the world and its future and not to spend months debating whether it is aesthetics that includes ethics and vice versa. I sincerely hope that no one has the bright idea of dusting off Kant’s three theories. The answer is in the ninety or so installations, that make up, as they should do, the heart of the exhibition.2

stilts, which he subsequently torched in a highly charged ritual, in the manner of a traditional slaughter carnival (see Casagrande and Rintala 2000). It would be somewhat harsh to read fascistic undertones into this ‘soil, blood and fire’ display, but it is difficult to overlook the personal record of Casagrande, who served as a mercenary in the Balkans conflict. 2

Fuksas 2000, p. 12.

3

Here I am not referring to the way that ethical terminology has been appropriated within architectural theory and practice

As a result the relationship between ethics and aesthetics remained relatively unexplored. Nonetheless the theme, “Less aesthetics, more ethics”, raises some interesting questions. What exactly is the relationship between ethics and aesthetics? And how might this relationship be played out within an architectural arena?3 Here I intend to explore the link – at a theoretical level – between ethics and architectural design. I will explore this through a discussion of Karsten Harries’ book The Ethical Function of Architecture, which has been one of the most prominent in recent years to have addressed the concept of ethics.4 I will then contrast this with the work of Fredric Jameson, to expose the limitations of Harries’ thinking. Harries’ work, I wish to argue, offers us a very ‘thin’ concept of ethics, and although Jameson’s writings on architecture avoid a direct engagement with the question of ethics, his approach offers us a more constructive framework in which to address that question.

The ethical function of architecture What exactly is Harries referring to when he uses the term ‘ethics’? It should be pointed out straight away that Harries is concerned here not with the ethical practice of architecture as such, but with the ‘ethical function’ of architecture – the capacity of architecture to articulate a common ethos, or spirit, and to help us “find our place and way in an ever more disorienting world”. Harries is a philosopher deeply influenced by Martin Heidegger. He adopts a broadly phenomenological position from which to expose the factors which he sees as being responsible for the ‘disarray’ of contemporary architecture. For Harries it is the current obsession with technology and aesthetics that has led to the empty scenography of our postmodern, ‘playboy’ architecture – our ‘decorated sheds’ with their applied ornamentation. Likewise, the placelessness of much contemporary architecture has done much to fragment society. Harries calls for an architecture which might enable humankind to ‘dwell’. What we need today, Harries argues, is an ‘authentic’ architecture, responsive to the genius loci, an architecture that can contribute to a sense of community. What we require, Harries seems to be saying, is a contemporary architecture with an ‘ethical function’ to replace that of the temple and the church. A cursory glance through the illustrations in The Ethical Function of Architecture is very revealing. Harries shows plenty of images of seductive American farmsteads set in idyllic landscapes, which he contrasts with pictures of scrappy mobile homes in trailer parks. The message is simple: “Seductive farmsteads are good; scrappy trailer parks are bad”. This is supported by the text itself, a largely Heideggerian inspired discourse, which looks to the possibility of ‘dwelling’. His is a discourse of rootedness. Trailer parks belong to a discourse of nomadism. They do not forge a sense of attachment to place. As a secondary layer, Harries seems also to be attacking the superficiality of postmodern aesthetics. In further illustrations he criticises buildings such as Michael Graves’ Portland Building in Oregon. He also criticises the obsession with technology in our contemporary world. What soon becomes clear from Harries’ approach is that it has its limitations. Harries’ interpretation of ethics as the articulation of a common ethos derived in part from classical philosophy is somewhat removed from the more common contemporary understanding of ethics as the science of morals. His notion of ethics does not offer any engagement with the social sphere – spatial practices and so on. Nor does it seem to address the political sphere, except through some form of politics of acquiescence – by precisely not engaging with that sphere, and thereby inadvertently sanctioning a politics of the status quo. But above all, it fails to address the economic sphere. What Harries seems to overlook is that not everyone can afford to live in seductive American farmsteads. For many it is an economic necessity – if not also a social choice – to live in trailer parks. This failure to engage substantively with social, economic and political questions is common enough. Harries is not alone, for example, in failing to address economic considerations. This problem occurs throughout mainstream architectural history and theory. Indeed – from Pevsner to Jencks, Frampton and beyond – there has been almost no reference to economic concerns in any of the principal histories of architecture. Despite the fact

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to defend a certain aesthetic practice. Since Vitruvius architects have used moral terms to justify a certain type of aesthetics. It has been easy enough to justify firmitas (structural integrity) and utilitas (usefulness) in fairly objective terms, but the third term of the Vitruvian triad, venustas (charm, beauty), has proved so subjective that architects have resorted frequently to moral terminology to justify it. ‘Becoming’, ‘seemly’, ‘appropriate’, ‘sincere’, ‘good’ – these are all moral and moralising terms that have been used over the years to justify certain aesthetics. This tendency reached its apotheosis in the nineteenth-century battle of the styles, a period which is echoed in the present age by David Watkin’s Morality and Architecture (Watkin 1977 and 2001). 4

Harries 1997.

that no construction of any kind – from a simple house extension to a new city – can proceed without the basic motor of finance to support it, the financial arena has remained a blind spot of almost all architectural histories of the twentieth century and before. It is as though there is an elision of social, economic and political concerns that is brought about by an approach which could be accused of being a form of aestheticisation – a ‘rinsing’ of social, political and economic concerns. Harries himself is critical of the concept of aesthetics. He sees that the distinction between aesthetics and technology is symptomatic of an age of divided representation.5 Yet – paradoxically – his whole discourse remains a highly aesthetic one. In calling for a poetic approach to architecture, Harries subscribes to an aestheticisation of architecture, and a consequent anaesthetisation of its social, political and economic dimensions. In my book The Anaesthetics of Architecture I described this syndrome, portraying the world of aesthetics as an escapist domain that fails to engage with ontological reality.6 The simple illustration of a hauntingly beautiful, eerie green night-sight view of Baghdad on the first night of activities of the first Gulf War illustrates the danger of this approach. The missiles, bombs and anti-aircraft fire look curiously attractive, and almost like fireworks. But it is at the point when they begin to look like fireworks that we begin to sense that something has been lost, for they are being judged not for what they really are, but merely for what they look like. The harsh machinery of war has been converted into an escapist domain of beautiful imagery. This is the principle of aestheticisation, a syndrome that has become all the more dominant in our high-visual postmodern society of today. The problem about aestheticisation is that it leads to an anaesthetisation of other concerns, not least the domain of ethics: The raising of one’s consciousness of sensory matters – smell, taste, touch, sound and appearance – allows a corresponding drowsiness to descend like a blanket over all else. The process generates its own womb-like sensory cocoon around the individual, a semi-permeable membrane which offers a narcissistic state of constant gratification while filtering out all that is undesirable. To aestheticize is therefore to sink blissfully into an intoxicating stupor, which serves to cushion the individual from the world outside like some alcoholic haze … The aestheticization of the world induces a form of numbness. It reduces any notion of pain to the level of the seductive image. What is at risk in this process of aestheticization is that political and social content may be subsumed, absorbed and denied. The seduction of the image works against any underlying sense of social commitment. Architecture is potentially compromised within this aestheticized realm. Architects, it would seem, are particularly susceptible to an aesthetic which fetishises the ephemeral image, the surface membrane. The world becomes aestheticized and anaesthetized. In the intoxicating world of the image, the aesthetics of architecture threaten to become the anaesthetics of architecture.7 5

This idea is pursued further by Dalibor Vesely, in Vesely 2004, passim.

6

Leach 1999a.

7

Ibid., pp. 44–5.

This condition has had a negative impact on contemporary architectural production, as architectural culture has increasingly been reduced to a discourse of visual sound bites in glossy magazines. The problem of aestheticisation, however, is not new to architectural culture. From Piranesi onwards we can point to countless examples of a tendency to create LESS AESTHETICS, MORE ETHICS

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escapist imagery in architectural culture. Indeed Piranesi’s own etchings of prisons offer prime examples of this. The etchings do not convey the harsh reality of prisons, but portray them as romantic labyrinths. It is precisely in this condition of aestheticisation that – despite his claims to the contrary – I would locate Harries’ work, a study which addresses interesting questions, but is constrained by its predominant aesthetic outlook, and its failure to engage substantively with social, economic and political issues.

Cognitive mapping Fredric Jameson provides us with an interesting point of comparison to Karsten Harries. In his early book, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Jameson offers one of the most powerful and incisive critiques of postmodernity, a society in which everything is co-opted into images and commodities.8 This is a culture of depthlessness in which everything is judged on appearances. But, importantly, it also bears the imprint, according to Jameson, of the socio-economic condition which spawned it: late capitalism. Jameson illustrates the condition through an analysis of the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, designed by John Portman. In the vast atrium of this building, with its confusing escalators and bewildering circulation, Jameson becomes disorientated.9 This curious incident illustrates the primacy of architecture in Jameson’s thinking, as an aesthetic reflex necessarily tied to capitalist production. It is not simply that, for Jameson, the hotel represents a form of glitzy postmodern commercial development. Rather its importance lies in the way that it comes to embody the placelessness of late capitalism. But architecture also plays a secondary role in Jameson’s work, as an aesthetic reflex that might counter this condition. A central concern for Jameson is the question of how human beings might find their place in the homogenising placelessness of late capitalism. For sure there is no space outside capitalism. It is therefore a question not of overcoming capitalism, but of learning how to live productively within its constraints. This has led Jameson to pursue the question of ‘cognitive mapping’, the mechanism by which the individuals find their spatial bearings and are thereby able to reinsert themselves in society.10 Jameson offers us a potential way out of this condition in suggesting that the world of the image might play an important social role in providing us with a form of ‘cognitive map’. In this sense he moves beyond the impasse of thinkers such as Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard, who see the aestheticised realm of the image – or ‘spectacle’ – as the inescapable condition into which society has sunk. The aesthetic realm would appear to be ‘Janus-faced’ in Jameson’s thinking. It is both the source of some of our problems and also potentially the way out. What we need today, Jameson would argue, is a viable form of aesthetic practice that reinserts the individual in society. In this sense, Jameson offers a qualified endorsement of our contemporary cultural conditions, and does not succumb to the pessimism of other commentators. This has led Jameson to explore ways of ‘reading’ the built environment as a means of providing this sense of ‘cognitive mapping’. This ‘mental map’ is a hybrid concept derived in part from the ideological thinking of Louis Althusser, and in part from the urbanistic theories of Kevin Lynch. As Jameson explains: 138

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8

Jameson 1991.

9

Jameson becomes so disorientated in fact that he misspells the name of the hotel ‘Bonaventura’.

10

For a discussion of the architectural relevance of cognitive mapping see Hale 2002, pp. 31–42.

There is, for one thing, a most interesting convergence between the empirical problems studied by Lynch in terms of city space and the great Althusserian (and Lacanian) redefinition of ideology … Surely this is exactly what the cognitive map is called upon to do in the narrower framework of daily life in the physical city: to enable a situational representation on the part of the individual subject to the vaster and properly unrepresentable totality which is the ensemble of society’s structures as a whole.11

Initially Jameson engages with Kevin Lynch, but is soon disappointed, realising that what Lynch means by ‘reading’ the city is not some semiological study, but merely a prosaic call to make architectural features ‘legible’. He therefore turns to Kenneth Frampton’s analysis of ‘critical regionalism’, which suggests a more reflexive approach to such questions. Jameson offers an incisive critique of Frampton, his aim being not to destroy Frampton’s argument, but rather to expose its weaknesses, so that it can be reinforced. In a postmodern world, according to Jameson, ‘difference’ threatens to become ‘identity’, and ‘identity’ to become ‘difference’. In the context of Frampton’s argument, Jameson therefore asks whether critical regionalism does in fact overcome the homogenising placelessness of late capitalism, as Frampton would claim, or whether in fact it supports it. Is not the whole call for ‘difference’ (to which critical regionalism belongs) the product of that which it seeks to resist? Is not ‘difference’, in other words, another commodity on the marketplace? Jameson writes: An even graver objection to the strategies of Critical Regionalism, as to the various postmodernisms generally when they claim a political vocation for themselves, is awakened by the value of pluralism and the slogan of difference they all in one way or another endorse. The objection does not consist in some conviction that pluralism is always a liberal, rather than a truly radical, value – a dogmatic and doctrinaire position that the examination of any number of active moments of history would be enough to dispel. No, the uneasiness stems from the very nature of late capitalism itself, about which it can be wondered whether pluralism and difference are not somehow related to its own deeper internal dynamics … Is global Difference the same today as global Identity?12

11

Jameson 1991, p. 51.

12

Jameson 1997, pp. 254–5.

13

There are, of course, further criticisms that could be levelled at the discourse of critical regionalism, not least as a result of the contextualism that it has helped to promote, which has too often been used to justify a banal replication of the given, thus stifling invention and promoting conformity. See Frampton 2002.

Critical regionalism itself can therefore be exposed as being not a response to late capitalism, but a symptom and product of it.13 Nonetheless, even though Jameson finds fault with both Lynch and Frampton, it is possible to perceive a potentially redemptive social role for architecture as an aesthetic medium which provides a form of ‘cognitive mapping’. Although we should not simply resort to regionalism or contextualism, it can be argued that architecture can serve to overcome the “homogenising placelessness of late capitalism” through the very principle of design itself. Architectural design, in other words, can provide precisely that “viable form of aesthetic expression” that Jameson calls for, which might reinsert the individual in society. A similar critique could be levelled at Harries. It would be churlish perhaps to accuse Harries of operating within a postmodern paradigm, given his opposition to such a paradigm. Nonetheless, one is left wondering whether in fact Harries is not wrapped up in the same paradoxical condition. Could it not be that Harries’ critique of postmodern culture itself bears the LESS AESTHETICS, MORE ETHICS

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imprint of the culture that it is criticising? This suspicion is reinforced by the ‘thin’ concept of architecture pursued by Harries – one that is seemingly abstracted from its deeper social, economic and political context. In other words, Harries’ somewhat nostalgic celebration of authenticity, tradition and the vernacular could be seen to operate, like costume dramas on television, as a symptom of our postmodern condition – a somewhat superficial celebration of history that always threatens to slip into the pastiche that characterises postmodernity. This, at least, is the guilty suspicion that haunts Harries’ work – that its claimed opposition to postmodern culture is itself a facet of postmodern culture. In his other work Jameson goes on to question a further concern celebrated by Harries: the desire for authenticity. This, Jameson observes, belongs to another antinomy that threatens to collapse in our postmodern age.14 As the distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity is effaced, so the completely inauthentic – Las Vegas – becomes authentic, while the authentic is inauthentically reproduced in the work of contemporary classical architects, such as Quinlan Terry. Indeed the fragility of the term ‘authenticity’ is exposed when one considers how it ‘claims’ its authenticity against the supposed absence of authenticity elsewhere. As a result authenticity itself no longer holds much meaning. Authenticity is so often degraded into a groundless, moralistic term, based on circular argumentation. Still worse, calls for authenticity can lead to its opposite – Disneyfication. This, according to Jameson, is the danger into which all reconstruction may slip. This is most especially the case when this reconstruction seeks to appeal to some historical authority. An even graver objection to the term ‘authenticity’ is raised within the work of Judith Butler. Butler is concerned to challenge the hegemony of the given. Nothing is authentic in itself. Everything is authorised through repetition. Yet through its own repetition it begins to instantiate a certain norm as a form of hegemonic practice. It is important to recognise, however, that any norm can be destabilised. If it has been authorised by repetition, so as to seem ‘authentic’, it can equally be de-authorised by new hegemonic practices. In light of this we might decide to dispense with the term ‘authenticity’ altogether. Jameson, therefore, comes close to Harries’ concern for an ‘ethical function’ of architecture, even though both view the fundamental problem from different perspectives. For Harries the problem is the ‘disarray’, the fragmentation of contemporary society, whereas for Jameson it is totalisation – the homogenising placelessness of late capitalism. But importantly Jameson also locates this problem within the conditions of production, and does not treat it as an abstract philosophical problem in the manner of Harries. Jameson’s work, then, provides us with an alternative framework within which to consider the problems of postmodernism. He also provides us with a foil to Harries. For Harries’ outlook is not innocent. It is steeped in a phenomenological outlook that brings with it an antipathy towards certain aspects of contemporary culture, from which Jameson’s account does not suffer. We should be cautious, then, of many of the terms used by Harries, such as ‘dwelling’.15 We should be cautious too of his scepticism towards technology.16 Likewise we should be cautious of subscribing to an equally nostalgic discourse of ‘authenticity’. Above all we must be wary of any discourse which nostalgically calls for a return to some ‘golden age’, an originary state of oneness with the world, which was somehow erased by contemporary 140

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14

Jameson 1999.

15

On this see Leach 1999b, pp. 150–62.

16

On this see Leach 2002, pp. 21–30.

existence. Not only did an age like this not exist, but such an outlook fails to engage with the actual conditions of life today.

Conclusions

17

“If the Eucharist has lost the bewitching power that enabled us to partake in such identifications, we will have two choices: we can read literature or we can try to reinvent love.” (Kristeva 1995, p. 175).

Harries raises some important questions about the relationship between ethics and architectural design. However, there are a number of shortcomings in his account as it stands. It is not enough to simply address the poetics of architecture. For this will lead inevitably to a form of aestheticisation – a rinsing of social, political and economic concerns. Furthermore, although we could argue for an important social role for architecture as a form of cognitive mapping, we still need to move beyond a certain theoretical paradigm that avoids the limitations of a potentially nostalgic Heideggerian discourse that is out of tune with contemporary society. Jameson’s critique of postmodernity echoes the similar critiques in the writings of Guy Debord, Jean Baudrillard and others. Where Jameson differs, however, from the often somewhat undialectically negative critiques of postmodernity, is that he manages to recognise the positive side of aesthetics. There is, as Jameson has explored, a potentially redemptive role for the aesthetic realm. By providing a form of ‘cognitive mapping’, that realm might help serve to reinscribe the individual in society. However, this should not lead us to explore regionalism or contextualism. Rather we should explore how design itself can provide that ‘reinscription’. Architectural design may indeed take the place of the religious domain in providing a sense of belonging, as Harries suggests. This would be in keeping with a number of theoretical positions, including that of Julia Kristeva.17 It may also compensate for love and forms of emotional bonding. Jameson’s work would therefore seem to support the notion in Harries that architecture can somehow allow us to find our place in the world. But he also seems to move beyond Harries, and opens up the possibility of considering ethics in a more comprehensive framework. Certainly before we can address substantively the question of ethics, we require a theoretical paradigm that engages with the complete range of issues encompassed by architecture, a paradigm which acknowledges the full social, political and economic dimensions to the built environment. For example, for many people a central ethical concern for architects should be their attitude to issues such as environmental questions. Jameson’s work, although not directed primarily at the question of ethics, nonetheless suggests a theoretical paradigm for considering the ethical potential of architecture within its broader social, economic and political context. As such, it both offers a powerful riposte to Harries and also reveals the shortcomings of his approach. Of course, there are criticisms to be made also of Jameson. His insistence on reading the world in terms of the political leads him to privilege reading over experience, and representation over process. A more complete approach would be open to the texture as much to the text of everyday life, and would perhaps engage with the actual mechanics of socioeconomic operations. Nonetheless Jameson’s intervention in architectural discourse is very timely. In a postmodern world where surface tends to be privileged over depth, and form over content, Jameson offers a constructive way of critiquing that culture, while at the same time also recognising its potential to provide a constructive mechanism of engagement. In a world where capitalism has LESS AESTHETICS, MORE ETHICS

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come to condition all forms of cultural production, Jameson understands its fundamental role in conditioning architectural production. But, above all, in a world where ethics seems to have disappeared largely from the architectural discourse, Jameson suggests a new framework for re-incorporating it. For too long architectural discourse has been limited largely to a question of aesthetics itself, as though architecture were some autonomous art form which stood outside the constraints of capitalist production. We now need to redress this situation by introducing these other concerns that come under the broad umbrella of ethics. In short, architects need to focus less on aesthetics and more on ethics: “less aesthetics, more ethics”.

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Chapter 14

Architecture, morality and taste Julian Roberts

What, if anything, does morality have to say about architecture? And why should it matter? Intuitively, one would expect there to be an analogy between aesthetic and ethic valuation. At all events, one would expect it to be necessary to describe why the two are different from one another. In this essay I shall consider two approaches to this question: the aesthetics of Immanuel Kant, and the moral theory of his near contemporary Adam Smith. Kant appears to have been familiar with Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments,1 in particular the third edition, of 1767, which appeared in German in 1770. Kant’s own work on aesthetics, the Critique of Judgement, appeared after The Theory of Moral Sentiments, in 1790.2 Although, as will become apparent, I regard Smith’s work as a more attractive and advanced account, I propose to consider the Kantian work at length because of its enormous influence. The questions we need to address to Kant are, first, whether he is successful in his account of art, and, second, how well his general model of valuative judgements acquits itself.

Philosophy, history and philosophical merit

1

Smith 1767.

2

Kant 1987. Citations to Kant, with the exception of the Critique of Pure Reason, are standardly located by the appropriate volume and page number in Kant 1900–. This practice has been followed hereafter. Most translations are, however, taken from Kant 1987.

I regard the term ‘advanced’ as legitimate in philosophy because strictly philosophical questions (as opposed, for example, to formal, logical or argumentative ones) can ultimately only be answered in historical terms. ‘Advanced’ does not imply that there is any final goal or settled aim in history. It merely, in the absence of any more compelling criterion, serves to adjudicate between positions counterposed in terms of social or political structures. The two socio-political structures relevant to the debate I am about to discuss are related to the question of where truth arises. The question of where truth arises is – in practical terms – more important than the question of what, in any particular case, truth might be if we possessed it. Truth may arise, for example, when God speaks through the oracle. Or truth may arise in the laboratories of natural scientists.

The model for truth in the epoch I am about to consider – and I think there is a good argument for saying this model applies even today – is juridical. The first possibility for where truth arises, in this model, is to say that it arises in the deliberations of a panel of judges. Judges are experts appointed by society to consider what is true and right both in particular cases and in general ones. When they deliberate, they do so as independent autonomous individuals, free of influence from political authority and free of any hierarchy amongst themselves. There is an alternative method, also from within the juridical sphere. The alternative possibility is that truth presents itself not to experts (such as judges), but to the ordinary reason of laymen. This option is realised in the institution of the jury, which in English law had by 1670 established itself as the independent and exclusive judge of fact. ‘Fact’ means the particular case. Unlike judges, juries are not called upon to generalise their feelings into statements of the law, nor to ‘subsume’ their feelings under technical rules. The function of the jury (in criminal cases, which nowadays is their main role) is to consider whether the accused is guilty of the crime charged. This is a deliberately non-technical question. Whether or not an accused is guilty of murder is (in English courts) not a question of law, but of fact. ‘Facts’ are objects of immediate individual experience, as are the feelings and value judgements that go with them. What the juror in a murder trial has to consider is whether he finds the act so reprehensible that he would support the penalty prescribed for murder. This is a personal and individual decision. The decisions by individual jurors do, however, become generalised by virtue of the fact that courts can punish only if juries convict. Laws which do not take account of the feelings of jurors will fall into disuse. In that respect, active laws (under the English system) are inductive generalisations from individual verdicts. Now, as it happens, the development of the jury and the development of the characteristic modern system of ‘experts’, namely the universities, were taking place at roughly the same time. In institutional terms, the English jury matured into being the unchallenged judge of fact towards the end of the seventeenth century (Bushell’s Case, in 1670, settled the principle that jurors could not be punished for acquitting). Significant parts of British empiricist thought, in the eighteenth century, were devoted to the question of what non-expert determinations might be. In Germany, the institutions of expert knowledge arose with the great university reforms of the early nineteenth century. They had been preceded, however, by long philosophical reflection over the nature of knowledge and – in the terms we have mentioned – the nature of the context in which truth arises. This corresponds to the British ruminations with which it was nearly contemporary; except that the British were attempting to justify a laicist programme, while the Germans were concerned with experts.

Beauty and the sensual Doing aesthetics is a challenge for experts, because judgements about individual works of art are clearly controversial, so it is not clear why experts should be any more than opinionated partisans: de gustibus non disputandum. Nonetheless judgements of taste, at least from appropriate sources, are widespread and compelling, and in addition reflection on works of art links well with considerations about morals, national identity, man’s place in history and so on. 144

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3

Kant 1987, p. 338.

4

Ibid., p. 211.

Kant’s approach to aesthetic judgement tackles this problem head on.3 Because aesthetic judgements cannot be the object of demonstration, he says, it is evident that they cannot be part of the domain of concepts (Begriffe). Concepts allow us to prove things conclusively. If we cannot do so with matters of taste and beauty, then these must belong to some other sphere of mind. Kant uses this basic conundrum to set up his programme of aesthetics. Concepts are, in his view, not to be conceived as merely logical. Concepts are the counters by means of which human beings engage with the real world. They use concepts to organise the messages of their senses. Concepts are, so to speak, weapons in the battle to survive. They reflect a real engagement in the physical world. If aesthetics is not rooted in conceptuality, it follows from the above consideration that it is not merely unavailable to demonstration and calculation, but also that it is removed from the world of sense – to a degree, at least. This at first sight slightly unexpected approach conforms to Kant’s philosophy generally, and to the religious overtones of his programme. In particular – and we shall see more of this shortly – it conforms to his view of morality. Morality, for Kant, is the observance of duty in confrontation with inclination. Good behaviour consists in deliberately choosing duty over those things one might spontaneously prefer. It is, in that sense, a ‘mortification’ of the senses. In the case of aesthetics, this principle is introduced as follows. First, normal engagement with the outside world involves not only concepts but interest. Interest is the whole matrix of empirical motives, preferences and inclinations which impel us to act this way or that, and to become involved in the immediate material world. This interest is controlled and regularised so long as concepts are in play. Concepts are the elements which introduce order and truth into perception. Concepts, as Kant insists in the Prolegomena, are the bedrock of ‘objectivity’. In particular, concepts make it possible to submit experience to the tribunal of science, deliberation and discussion. They allow the mind to abstract from the particular perceptions before it at any one time, and to arrange knowledge in a way that is independent of standpoint. Concepts guarantee intersubjectivity. Without concepts, however, the material world enters the mind in a raw sensuality which includes all the instincts and desires – the ‘interests’ – controlling and motivating the perceiving individual. In consequence, unstructured – conceptless – consciousness tends to be merely individual, private and ‘subjective’. The mind is left alone in a flood of disordered impressions that are specific to itself and that resist entering the realm of communicable rationality. Now, Kant assumes (in conformity with the tradition inaugurated by Alexander Baumgarten) that taste is in the first instance a matter of ‘aesthetic’ judgement – that is to say a matter of the senses, rather than of the intellect. That means that artistic judgements at least start out being part of raw subjective impressions – and they continue to be so to the extent that they are, and should be, distinct from the realm of clear proofs and demonstrations. The question is, then, how judgements of taste can be rescued from being merely subjective and arbitrary. They should be in some sense correct, even if they cannot (and should not) be provable. The answer, according to Kant, is that a controlled aesthetic response must be based on a pleasure that arises “without any interest”.4 ARCHITECTURE, MORALITY AND TASTE

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The argument runs as follows. Selfish inclinations distort valuative judgements. In analogy to Kant’s account of moral judgement – namely that moral judgements can follow only from the pure exercise of duty – the measure of the validity of such a judgement is precisely the extent to which it discernibly contradicts the individual’s personal inclinations. Specifically, the individual must not allow himself to be distracted by mere ‘titillation’, or ‘stimulation’ – Reiz (Pluhar translates this as ‘charm’, which is too mild5). His aesthetic judgement must be ‘pure’.6 Titillation engages the individual’s interests. Avoiding titillation does not stop the perception being non-conceptual, and to that extent ‘subjective’, but it does prevent the judgement being purely selfish and individual. The consequence is that a judgement which eschews mere private inclination is, at least, impartial.7 When someone makes a judgement of taste which is free from his own immediate sensory preferences, he is, according to Kant at least, entitled to attribute the same judgement to everyone else as well; the verdict becomes ‘general’.8 This, in turn, provides the basis for Kant’s account of taste as an object of philosophical enquiry. Taste is the concern with sensual (‘aesthetic’) judgements which can be generalised to all human beings. They do not become general as the result of concepts (which is the case with the natural and moral sciences). They do, however, become ‘non-private’ as a result of the mind’s disregard of merely individual stimulations. And by virtue of their non-privacy, judgements of taste acquire a substitute generality which makes them, despite their lack of conceptuality, appropriate for orderly discourse and debate. There seems to be a gap in the argument at this point. Why turning away from livelier pleasures should by that token alone make the remaining ones more ‘general’ is not entirely apparent. According to Adam Smith, certain sensory delights, such as erotic representations, are less compelling to others, because they cannot be shared by anyone not in exactly the same circumstances. For Smith, in other words, personal passions have to be eliminated because they are less communicable, not because the other ones are intrinsically more communicable. Kant, on the other hand, seems to feel that ascetic disregard of titillation of itself raises non-titillatory sense perceptions to a higher and more communicable power. In Kant’s account, disregard of ‘private’ delights leads to the perceiver being ‘free’;9 and in this higher sphere judgements of taste can unfold their ‘pure’ force. In any event, Kant purifies the senses so that they should become “generally communicable”.10 Getting rid of the merely personal clears the decks for a sensibility shared by all, which, while still being ‘subjective’ (i.e. no concepts), provides the basis for the ordered ‘subsumption’ of particular works of art under generally accepted norms.11 The rules of aesthetic pleasure flow from these principles – in particular, from the principle that sensuality is of a lower dignity, and can only be redeemed by mortifying it in some way. As far as beauty is concerned (on the distinction between the beautiful and the sublime, Kant takes over much from Burke), it has to be considered as appealing in two respects. On the one hand, the beautiful is the normal, or typical. Whatever tends towards a middle position between all the variations of natural kinds is apprehended as beautiful.12 A straight nose is beautiful because the ‘average’ of all noses, between the extremes of retroussé 146

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5

Kant 1987.

6

Kant 1987, p. 223.

7

Ibid., p. 223.

8

Ibid., p. 211.

9

Ibid., p. 211.

10

Ibid., p. 217.

11

Ibid., p. 290.

12

Ibid., p. 234.

on the one hand, and aquiline on the other, and taking into account the great majority of more or less straight noses, is straight. ‘Normality’ in this sense is clearly an appeal to a kind of Aristotelian mean. Adam Smith puts forward a similar notion, as do modern anthropologists researching into the kind of adult face that appeals spontaneously to babies. From a Kantian point of view, it has the merit of abstracting from excessive individualism. Nonetheless, this is, as Kant points out, merely a negative feature: “It is [not] because of its beauty that we like its exhibition, but merely because it does not contradict any of the conditions under which alone a thing of this kind can be beautiful.”13 The more active feature of beauty relates to function. According to Kant, something is beautiful if it is seen to be ‘purposive’, or displaying excellence in its fitness for some purpose. However, this criterion too is of a somewhat restrained kind. Purposiveness may not be related to the individual judging it, because otherwise the individual would fall prey to interest. Kant gives the examples of beautiful horses, women or houses.14 In as far as any of these is associated with a purpose in the real world, and even more so if it may be possessed and used for a function by the observer, then its beauty becomes polluted by interest and utility. The purposiveness proper to beauty, in fact, has to be “purely formal, that is, a purposiveness without purpose”.15 This would seem to leave beauty a rather abstract and even arid thing. Kant seems to be aware of this, for he hurries on to the comment that the human form does in fact bear a beauty quite superior to ‘normality’, namely what he calls the ideal of beauty. When associated with the ideal, the human form is seen to express something which quite transcends the immediate realm of taste and sensuality, for at this point it becomes the “visible expression of moral ideas”. Such a virtue, in fact, goes far beyond ‘normality’ (which has only the negative merit of not offending); the ideal, indeed, is positive and general.16 The only trouble is, the ideal seems to slide almost entirely off the plane of aesthetics. Kant writes: The correctness of such an ideal of beauty is proved by its not permitting any Reiz of sense to be mingled with the liking for its object, while yet making us take a great interest in it. This in turn proves that a judging by such a standard can never be purely aesthetic, and that a judging by an ideal of beauty is not a mere judgement of taste.17

13

Ibid., p. 235.

14

Ibid., p. 230.

15

Ibid., p. 226.

16

Ibid., p. 235.

17

Ibid., p. 236.

18

Ibid., p. 250.

19

Ibid., p. 255.

20

Ibid., p. 244.

21

Ibid., p. 255.

A similar move is apparent in the context of the sublime. The sublime is the taking of pleasure in the terrifying, for example in the contemplation of frightening natural phenomena and the like. If beauty takes effect despite the senses (by eradicating their ‘interest’), then the sublime takes effect directly in opposition to the senses. Kant defines it as a capacity of mind which “exceeds all measure of the senses”.18 Whatever it is that the sublime takes pleasure in, it cannot be sensory: “Nothing that can be an object of the senses is to be called sublime.” In the sublime, the mind expands in such a way as to “exceed the barriers of sense”.19 Kant defines this excess in various ways, for example by relating it to the apprehension of a ‘totality’20 or an ‘absolute whole’,21 which clearly cannot be an object of direct sensory perception and is (Kant is thinking of ARCHITECTURE, MORALITY AND TASTE

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his own discussion in the first Critique) ‘contradictory’ and therefore not accessible to concepts. So while beauty is compatible with sense stimulation, even though it may be ‘impaired’ by it to a degree, the sublime seems if anything to confront the senses with outright hostility. Kant speaks in connection with the sublime of the ‘violence’ done to the senses.22 So if there is pleasure in the sublime, it is, as Kant says, “negative pleasure”, the stern thrill of self-denial. The feeling for the sublime is incompatible with Reiz, and, since the mind is not just attracted by the object but is alternately always repelled as well, the liking for the sublime contains not so much a positive pleasure as rather admiration and respect, and so should be called a negative pleasure.23 At the same time, the sublime appeals very directly to human consensus. The ‘grammar’ of beauty implies reference to pleasures that are common to all mankind (because they are disinterested). The grammar of the sublime, however, goes further beyond sensuality than this, in that it transcends the measured sphere of concepts altogether. Beyond that sphere it reaches what Kant calls a “supersensory substrate”. This substrate should perhaps be understood as the collective consciousness which unites mankind regardless of the trivia of given experience. It is founded in social morality (Sittlichkeit). Only in this realm can humanity’s feeling for the sublime start to develop at all; the ‘raw’ man, says Kant, will find such phenomena no more than ‘repellent’.24 The groundwork for a feeling of the sublime is called ‘culture’; and culture is rooted in the sense of moral ideas.

Culture Now, although Kant clearly gets some religious mileage out of his assimilation of art to morality, the more far-reaching association is with science. As we noted, the base model of truth at this period is judicial truth. Such a thing rests on the supposition that truth can be discussed and deliberated in an orderly context. The conceptual grid supplied by the natural sciences is a clear option for this. But if judgements of taste are to be defined as non-conceptual, then this poses problems for a rationalism such as Kant’s. He overcomes the difficulty, however, by identifying the goal and tendency of taste as something which has an anchorage in the collective even if it fails to attain the conceptual. Judgements of beauty appeal to criteria which are asserted to be general, which means they conform to the same logical grammar as empirical statements, and are presumably falsifiable by counterexamples. Judgements of the sublime appeal more or less directly to moral principles. Kant buttresses this principle of what might be called artificial objectivity in two respects. In the first place, he defines the methodology of aesthetic judgement in careful detail. The basis for rules of beauty is, as we saw, falsifiable generalisation. The strict generality of concepts is replaced by an empirical one of “general communicability”.25 This principle Kant associates with “maxims of common human understanding” which articulate the discursive community. They are thinking for oneself, putting oneself in the position of others, and thinking consistently26 – one is reminded of Habermas’s principles of communicative rationality. These principles, meanwhile, flow into what Kant repeatedly characterises as a level of ‘reflection’. Judgements of taste, ultimately, are justified because they successfully replace conceptuality with reflection, which is the sphere of peculiarly human sensibility. There, 148

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22

Ibid., p. 271.

23

Ibid., p. 245.

24

Ibid., p. 265.

25

Ibid., p. 231.

26

Ibid., p. 295.

human beings are aware of their identity and their community independently of specific empirical interests, and independently of perception of the real world. Reflection is the sphere of self-awareness. Second, taste’s relation to rules is re-interpreted institutionally. The source of artistic pleasure is removed from the senses and is relocated into something initiated by human beings – in particular, by what Kant calls the Genius (Genie). Genius is spontaneous and rule-free creativity; it neither knows where its principles come from nor can it formulate them prescriptively for others.27 Genius works by installing something new as a pattern which can be followed by others. Genius, as Kant says, typically founds a “school, i.e., methodical instruction according to such rules as one has been able to derive from these products of spirit and their peculiarity”.28 The consequence of this is that taste ceases to be individual and arbitrary (as it would be, at least in Kant’s view, if it were merely a function of sense), and is instead integrated into ordered social structures. Artistic innovation feeds into something analogous to education – the ‘school’. The consequences of this for artistic practice are somewhat arid. The underlying principle is that art cannot be dependent on the admixture of Reiz or emotion; if it is, it is in itself ‘barbarous’,29 and its sensual content will eventually cause surfeit and revulsion.30 The most direct implication of this position is that the figurative arts should essentially be a matter of form. The paradigmatic skill is drawing; colours are merely a source of Reiz.31 Ornament is always destructive of beauty, says Kant, foreshadowing Adolf Loos.32 The only examples of art mentioned by Kant occur in the context of the sublime. Here he speaks of bold, overhanging and, as it were, threatening rocks, thunderclouds piling up in the sky and moving about accompanied by lightning and thunderclaps, volcanoes with all their destructive power, hurricanes with all the devastation they leave behind, the boundless ocean heaved up, the high waterfall of a mighty river, and so on.33

27

Ibid., p. 308.

28

Ibid., p. 318.

29

Ibid., p. 223.

30

Ibid., p. 326.

31

Ibid., p. 225.

32

Ibid., p. 226.

33

Ibid., p. 261.

34

Ibid., p. 269.

35

Ibid., p. 322.

Another vision is of “massive mountains climbing skyward, deep gorges with raging streams in them, wastelands lying in deep shadow”.34 This catalogue of natural phenomena is hardly a very rewarding compendium of good aesthetic response, and it is difficult not to feel that the price of Kant’s ‘rescue’ of unruly taste into the orderliness of ‘culture’ and the academic has been rather high. Certainly Kant produces no examples beside the natural phenomena he mentions in the context of the sublime. In particular, Kant does nothing to explain how sensual or functional works can ever claim to be art, or be approached as such. That problem is pressing not least in the case of architecture which is functional, colourful and, in its sensory presence, irreducibly ‘here and now’ for the observer. Kant’s response to this is not very clear.35 Clearly buildings do have a purpose; but how, then, can they be ‘beautiful’, if that concept implies ‘purposiveness without purpose’? Kant says the ‘aesthetic ideas’ have to be ‘restricted’ to the building’s functionality ‘as a condition’. What, then, does that leave for ‘pure’ aesthetic sensibility? The answer seems to be: not very much. Indeed, Kant is happiest moving away from concrete objects of sense experience altogether. In the case of architecture, this means that proper aesthetic response appears not ARCHITECTURE, MORALITY AND TASTE

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in the buildings themselves (which, presumably, are too much tied to function and sensuality), but in drawings. Drawings manifest the pure form which goes missing once the design is executed. In painting, in sculpture, indeed in all the visual arts, including architecture and horticulture insofar as they are fine arts, design is for Kant what is essential; in design the basis for any involvement of taste is not what gratifies us in sensation, but merely what we like because of its form. The colours that illuminate the outline belong to Reiz. Though they can indeed make the object itself vivid to sense, they cannot make it beautiful and worthy of being beheld.36 Kant succeeds in situating aesthetic discourse in a realm of scientific disinterest. He accounts for the differences in taste, and the fact that they cannot be resolved demonstratively, by locating taste in ‘reflection’ about a sensibility which, though human, is general. That generality is enough to ground scientific discourse; and once, with Kant’s Romantic successors, the generality becomes associated with history – that is with the cultural forms specific to moments in human development – the basis is created for a tremendously influential system of academic discourse. The price of ‘culture’, however, is the subjection of valuative judgements to an ideology of the expert. The notion that individuals might quite legitimately reach judgements about morals or taste independently of any scrutiny by experts disappears. The danger of such a position, however, becomes clear when one considers the rubbish which was generally acclaimed as ‘science’ throughout much of Europe only sixty years ago. This, in Germany at least, was not merely conventional wisdom – it was a set of compulsory norms which entirely took over universities and the judiciary, was untroubled by the reservations of individuals, and could be theoretically buttressed by the artificial collectivities of culture and ‘race’. This is not the place to set out any of the alternatives to Kant’s theories. It will serve to set the historical context, however, to point to the Scottish Enlightenment, particularly Adam Smith and David Hume. For both of these thinkers it is axiomatic that judgements of taste and of morals are elementary, and do not arise from cognitive exercises such as generalisation or the attribution of taste to others. In the case of taste, Kant accepts that judgements are non-cognitive (“blind” – compare his statement in his Critique of Pure Reason37) but provides a substitute cognitive structure in the form of ‘culture’. For the Scots, however, these judgements can be load-bearing despite being ‘blind’, and despite not having been produced by reason and philosophy. Hume, for example, speaks of the “blind, but sure testimony of taste and sentiment”. Such judgements, he insists “must be considered as a part of ethics, left by nature to baffle all the pride of philosophy, and make her sensible of her narrow boundaries and slender acquisitions”.38 Smith claims that the only sure path to rules of ethics (and taste) is to work inductively from individual cases.39 Reason serves to give us a general picture of what is right and wrong. But it can never discover what is right and wrong; the “first perceptions” of morality are always a subject of immediate feeling: it is altogether absurd and unintelligible to suppose that the first perceptions of right and wrong can be derived from reason … These first perceptions, as well as all other experiments upon which any general rules are founded, cannot be the object 40

of reason, but of immediate sense and feeling. 150

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36

Ibid., p. 225.

37

Kant 2003, p. 75.

38

Hume 1975, p. 267.

39

Smith 1767, p. 319.

40

Ibid., p. 320.

14.1 Courbet’s Origin of the World (1866).

The ‘inductive’ generation of normative principles from elementary feelings is, of course, exemplified in the proceedings of the jury trial. Guilt may be a matter only for the “first perceptions” of the lay jurors, never for the speculations of the professional judge.

Courbet’s Origin of the World

41

Smith 2001, commentary to catalogue entry 29.

To illustrate my reservations about Kant’s view I would like to take an example from the figurative arts, namely Courbet’s painting Origin of the World of 1866 (Fig. 14.1). This picture should be seen against the background not only of Kant, but also of classicist art theories such as those of Winckelmann. Kant’s own comments about the primacy of ‘form’ were a reflection of debates about the nature of form that extended over several decades. The basic classical principle, as enunciated by Winckelmann in 1766, was that the outer shell of a sculptural work should express the ‘soul’ within; and this soul, at least in Winckelmann’s view, should exhibit “noble simplicity and silent grandeur”. This, although not nearly as restrictive as Kant’s exclusive focus on ‘form’, served to achieve a similarly sober exterior. Winckelmann himself, for example, insisted that the sculptor must not represent the fortuitous and contingent features of the body (as he saw it, at least), for example nipples and body hair. The smooth geometric regularity of a perfect classical form referred to the volumes and structures below the skin, and did not linger on the surface or reproduce the features and blemishes which distinguished a particular individual. Keeping away from such elements directed the gaze to the soul, which occupied the body as its ‘house’. Failure to adhere to this abstract form, on the other hand, and looking instead to the characteristics of the individual as individual, opened the mind to all sorts of unchaste distractions. As George Frederic Watts stated 100 years later, “unchastity depends on representing the individual”, so nudes should not be identifiable as particular models.41

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Courbet’s Origin deliberately offends against almost any of the classical, or Kantian, principles of artistic taste. The first point is the priority of Reiz – in this case sexual stimulus – over any other element. The figure’s genitals are represented in preference to – or indeed to the exclusion of – her face. The view is from below; and the face is covered by a sheet. Even the arms and hands are concealed. If the face is the favoured mirror of the soul, then in conventional terms the abdomen is the area where it is least likely to be accommodated. Through their faces, human beings are the subjects of interaction and initiative. Reduced to her abdomen, however, a human being is an object, and her observers fall prey to their lusts. The intellectual virtues which Kant associates with beauty have no access. The second point is that the picture clearly dwells on features of the body decried by classicists as intrusive marks of individuality. In particular, the figure’s pubic hair forms the centre of the composition, and is represented in a way which makes no concession to the various ways in which even this part of the human anatomy may be dressed for exhibition (as in Michelangelo’s David, for example, or indeed in any number of classical female nudes). The figure represented in Origin is clearly a real individual; and the particular kind of ‘grooming’ (or lack of it) in relation to her private parts makes a statement as definite in its way as the dressing of head hair. This statement, however, has little to do with the articulate pronouncements of classicism. To dismiss the picture’s artistic merit on this account is premature, however. The striking feature of this picture is what has been called the unnatural twist of the torso.42 The view of the figure is unnatural in that it contradicts the perspective one ‘normally’ has of another person. As a result of the perspective adopted, the figure consists of three equally broad limbs – the torso and the two legs – radiating from the central point, and terminating without reference to any other components. This is inconsistent with the image one habitually has of the distribution of body and limbs, and foreshadows, with similar effect, the dismembered nude torsos painted by Francis Bacon. In Courbet’s picture, the three visible elements of the woman’s body radiate outwards, spinning clockwise around the central hub at which they join. The surroundings of the figure remain schematic. Although she appears to be partially wrapped in a sheet, it is not clear whether this is part of any other furnishings, and in the black plane behind the sheet there is no further hint of location. The torso, in fact, is suspended in a void, without supporting context. As a result the picture turns inwards towards the woman’s genitals, which are depicted as an opening, an orifice. While classical beauty seeks to maintain a peaceful surface, enveloping and preserving the spiritual integrity within, Courbet penetrates this surface abruptly and at the centre, allowing our gaze to descend into a revolving vortex. The woman in the picture is an origin, a source – not a projection of peaceful spirituality, but a threshold into turbulent materiality. The power of the painting lies in two things. First, it arouses. It radiates the kind of Reiz that Kant repudiates. Moreover, its willingness to arouse is associated with a disdain for ornamentation or decoration which is shameless in classical terms, but strongly active in the context of the picture. In these respects, the painting violently dismisses Kantian and classical aesthetics. 152

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42

Hurd 2004, p. 80.

Second, however, the painting also brusquely demolishes ‘natural’ expectations, and in that respect a fundamental aspect of Kant’s aesthetics is, despite itself, vindicated. The ‘natural’ expectation of naked bodies is, as Kant intimates, that they should be objects of our existing interests. Pin-ups, for example, elicit the desire to possess, and to take into our worlds. But Origin is not a pin-up. The power of the image resides not in a ‘reification’ of the woman. On the contrary, the twist of her loins, dissociated from the body’s more purposive and deliberate limbs, emphasises her proud materiality. If, as Hume and Adam Smith argued, the humanity of mankind lies in individual feelings, not in science, then Origin is an expression of that. It may not be part of the institutionalised and rather cowardly ‘culture’ Kant himself envisaged. But it does exhibit the violent dislocation of our ‘natural’ habits and expectations which he, rightly, saw as fundamental to art.

Conclusions

43

Hume 1975, p. 266.

44

Benjamin 1973.

Kant’s account of aesthetics lays the foundation for a discourse which is cognitive, generalising and ‘scientific’, and lends itself readily to being institutionalised in academies. Generalisation, however, is a high price in relation to art. Art, or at least aesthetic response, is fundamentally a matter not of the general, but of what is individual, unique, present. Taste excites me, perhaps just me, perhaps only here, and only now – not what excites other people, or what I think ought to excite me if I pondered the matter for long enough. In particular, erotic response is an intuitive and individual matter. This individuality, however, does not remove it from the realm of ‘taste’ and the aesthetic. On the contrary, these elements are of one kind. Hume suggests that moral judgements have the same structure as judgements of cleanliness,43 and the same may be said of taste and eros: they are identical in character. The eroticism of Courbet’s Origin does not remove it from the domain of art; on the contrary, it is the very force that sets the painting in the realm of the properly aesthetic. Mere pornography is schematic and non-individual, like the scrawls on the walls of public lavatories. The fact that Courbet’s model is clearly a specific woman is what gives the painting its power. The same applies no less to architecture. Of all the arts, architecture resists cognitive analysis most strongly. A ready vocabulary exists for identifying the structural and stylistic elements of a building. But it is much harder to interpret its plastic, tactile or colorific content. Buildings do not tell stories, and in that respect they are on a level with the most ‘abstract’ (i.e. non-verbal) of the arts. Moreover, the aesthetic force of a building eludes generalisation. Because it is situated and local, a building is inescapably unique. More than any other form of art, buildings resist mechanical reproducibility. For these reasons, buildings do not open themselves to strenuous contemplation. As Walter Benjamin said, people apprehend architecture in a ‘distracted’ way (Zerstreuung).44 Buildings work at an intuitive, sensory level. The judgements they elicit, to start with at least, are non-verbal and nondiscursive. They are emotional, even passionate. If people are excited by a building, this happens at the same visceral level as the excitement aroused by an erotic painting. If they then say something about this excitement, this represents reflection, but not transposition into ‘culture’ or ‘science’. The elements of architectural response are intuitive, sensual and individual. Such ARCHITECTURE, MORALITY AND TASTE

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a response is properly comparable with the response to the erotic; and this, if anything, should be the concern of those anxious to promote sensitivity and taste in relation to buildings. Kant’s scheme for aesthetics is remarkable in its own terms, and his notions of culture and the sublime laid the foundations for two centuries of academic theory. As an account of taste, or as a model for engaging with particular works of art, however, it is a failure. Architects needing to reflect on their own activities must look elsewhere.

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Chapter 15

Afterword

1

Raz 2003.

2

Aristotle 1976, Book 2, Section 1.

The conference which generated this book was reviewed sympathetically by Noam Raz in arq: Architectural Research Quarterly.1 He found a surprising congruity of view among the disparate speakers. Readers of these essays may or may not agree; below I attempt my own summary of the various arguments. Julian Roberts and Jane Collier both suggest that a particular philosophical stance is appropriate for architects, especially in the light of the changed situation of the twenty-first century. Roberts argues against the prevailing Kantian view, which privileges analytical and functional judgements over emotional ones; using the analogy of the law he claims that judgements of taste are properly humanistic and conventional rather than absolute. In the same way we may say that a virtuous architecture would be identified by good practice. Collier refers to the Aristotelian tradition and particularly to the pragmatism of John Dewey in her argument for a practice-based rather than a rule-based ethics. We may be reminded of Aristotle’s famous passage in the Nicomachaean Ethics where he uses the example of building to illustrate his notion of what we mean by ‘good’: since ethics is a practical science, we would study “not to know what goodness is, but how to become good men”. “The causes and means that bring about any form of excellence” are therefore a result of practice: “Men will become good builders as a result of building well, and bad ones as a result of building badly.”2 Neil Leach also argues for a position which begins with conditions as they are, rather than the striving for an ‘authentic’ ideal, and Sjoerd Soeters illustrates how his own practice has sought to challenge architectural ‘good taste’, which is often arid, and identify popular values. Thus he aspires to build on the conventions of the past rather than impose some heroic vision of the future. There is therefore some common ground as to how architects can resolve the dilemma posed of an activity that is inescapably particular but somehow “intends what ought to be”. There is also some agreement as to the most important ethical criteria – the issue of sustainability figures in many of the papers, and architects’ responsibility for appropriate design is emphasised. Tom Spector shows that the codes by which architects are supposed to practise describe these criteria most inadequately. Whether architects as a group, or society as a whole, will succeed in redirecting value-systems (those of consumer-driven capitalism) that have been familiar over many decades is less certain: Andrew Ballantyne is pessimistic that we can reform our habits and that an ethic with “a wider horizon” will emerge in time to prevent the world as we know it imploding. On architects’ day-to-day practice, most contributors mention the need for working within a team, and stress the importance of the way that

architects are trained, which in the past has too often tended to encourage the notion of heroic individual invention rather than the discovery of form in dialogue with others; Giles Oliver is particularly clear on this point. Michael Latham explicitly advocates the restriction of architects’ roles, primarily on the grounds of efficiency; Andrew Saint argues that, despite architects’ rhetoric, it always was quite limited. My own paper examined a building where the architect was operating within what seems, with the benefit of hindsight, to have been a privileged relationship – one that will be restricted in the future, Latham predicts, to very few bespoke commissions. Perhaps it will become a luxury, one that architects will embrace rather than one which, as Richard Hill shows, they have somehow felt obliged to resist. How the unquantifiable aspect of architecture, described by Richard MacCormac, can then be incorporated so that the possibility remains that enduring work emerges will surely continue to exercise architects. Their work is required to be accountable, but a form of accountability needs to be fashioned which is truly appropriate to the professional activity in which they are engaged and is not, as Onora O’Neill finds too often to be the case, inappropriately managerial. What is called for is not therefore some form of quantifiable check-list but a context within which sound judgements can be made, and that implies a degree of professional trust. The papers in this book evidently only begin to map out an agenda for much fuller and more thorough investigation. By considering historical case studies, contemporary questions of practice and more universal philosophical issues in close juxtaposition it has aimed to stimulate further work in the important area of architecture and its intersection with many ethical issues.

156

AFTERWORD

Select bibliography

AIA [American Institute of Architects] (1997) Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, Washington, DC: AIA. Alberti, Leon Battista (1988) De re aedificatoria, translated by Joseph Rykwert, Robert Tavernor and Neil Leach, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Alexander, Thomas (1993) “John Dewey and the moral imagination: beyond Putnam and Rorty toward a postmodern ethics”, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 29: 2, pp. 369–400. AMA [American Medical Association] (2002–3) Code of Medical Ethics, Washington, DC: AMA. Amery, Colin and Cruickshank, Dan (1975) The Rape of Britain, London: Paul Elek. ARB [Architects Registration Board] (2002) Architects Code, Standards of Conduct and Practice, London: ARB. Aristotle (1976) The Nicomachaean Ethics, translated by J. A. K. Thomson, revised edition by H. Tredennick, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Arup, Ove (1985) “Modern Architecture: The Structural Fallacy” and other writings, The Arup Journal, 20, 1 (Spring), pp. 2–47. Atkinson, Fello (1959) and AJ editors, “Frank Lloyd Wright 1869–1959”, obituary and editorial in Architects’ Journal, 16 April, pp. 571–3. Ballantyne, Andrew (2002) “The Nest and the Pillar of Fire”, in What is Architecture?, London: Routledge. Ballantyne, Andrew (ed.) (2004) Architectures: Modernism and After, New York: Blackwell. Banham, Reyner (1968) “History Faculty Cambridge”, in The Architectural Review, December, pp. 328–41. Barthes, Roland (1973) “The Face of Garbo”, in Mythologies, St Albans: Paladin. Bateson, Gregory (1972) “Pathologies of Epistemology”, in Steps To an Ecology of Mind, New York: Chandler. Bauman, Zygmunt (1995) “Morality Without Ethics”, in Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality, Oxford: Blackwell. Benjamin, Walter (1973) “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, in Hannah Arendt (ed.), Illuminations, Glasgow: Fontana. Benton, Tim (1987) The Villas of Le Corbusier 1920–1930, New Haven: Yale University Press. Berg, Maxine and Eger, Elizabeth (2003) Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: debates, desires and delectable goods, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Berry, Christopher J. (1994) The Idea of Luxury: a conceptual and historical investigation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bess, Philip (2000) “Two rival views of ethics and architecture”, in Philip Bess (ed.), Inland Architecture: subterranean essays on moral order and formal order in Chicago, Oxford, OH: Interalia/Design Books, pp. 122–32. Blau, Eve (1999) The Architecture of Red Vienna 1919–1934, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Blau, Judith (1984) Architects and Firms: a sociological perspective on architectural practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Boyarsky, Alvin (1968) “The Cambridge History Faculty”, Architectural Design, October, pp. 454–74.

Bussel, Aby (1995) “The (Social) Art of Architecture”, Progressive Architecture, 76: 1, January, pp. 43–6. Butler, Samuel (1910) Life and Habit, London: Jonathan Cape. —— (1932) Erewhon (Everyman edition), London: Dent. Canetti, Elias (1962) Crowds and Power, translated by Carol Stewart, London: Gollancz. Casagrande and Rintala (2000) “Maaltapako Land(e)scape”, in La Biennale di Venezia, Città: Less Aesthetics, More Ethics, Venice: Marsilio Editori, pp. 44–5. Cole, C. (2003) “Designing the Customer Experience”, Building Research and Information, 31: 5 (“Design Quality”, eds D. M. Gann and J. K. Whyte), pp. 357–66. Collier, Jane (1998) “Theorising the ethical organisation”, Business Ethics Quarterly, 8: 4, pp. 621–55. Communications Act (2003) London: HMSO. Cuff, Dana (1991) Architecture: the study of practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Davidson, James (1978) Courtesans and Fishcakes: the consuming passions of Classical Athens, London: Fontana Press. Deleuze, Gilles (1988) Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, translated by Robert Hurley, San Francisco: City Lights. —— (1990) Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, translated by Martin Joughin, New York: Zone. —— (1994) Difference and Repetition, translated by Paul Patton, London: Athlone. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix (1977) Anti-Oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia, translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane, New York: Viking. —— (1987) A Thousand Plateaus, translated by Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Demos (2001) The Moral Universe, Demos Collection 16, London: Demos. Dewey, John (1974) The Collected Works (ed. Jo Ann Boydston), Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Egan, John (1988) Rethinking Construction, London: HMSO. Egan, John (ed.) (2002) and Strategic Forum for Construction, Accelerating Change, London: HMSO. Egbert, Donald Drew (1967) “The Idea of ‘Avant Garde’ in Art and Politics”, in American Historical Review, 73: 2, December, pp. 339–66. Engelhardt, H. Tristram Jr and Callahan, Daniel (1977) Knowledge, Value and Belief, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY: Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences. Fairclough, John (2002) Re-thinking Construction, Innovation and Research, London: HMSO (retrieved at www.dti.gov.uk/construction/main.htm). Fesmire, Steven (1995) “Dramatic rehearsal and the moral artist: a Deweyean theory of moral understanding”, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 31: 3, pp. 568– 97. —— (1999a) “Morality as art: Dewey, metaphor and moral imagination”, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 35: 3, pp. 527–50. —— (1999b) “The art of moral imagination”, in Casey Haskins and David I. Seiple (eds), Dewey Reconfigured: essays on Deweyean pragmatism, New York: State University of New York Press, pp. 133–50. —— (2001) Imagination in Pragmatist Ethics, paper given at the 2001 conference of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, March 11–13, University of Nevada. Foot, Michael (1975) Aneurin Bevan, London: Paladin. Forty, Adrian (2000) Words and Buildings: a vocabulary of modern architecture, London: Thames & Hudson. Fox, W. (ed.) (2000) Ethics and the Built Environment, London: Routledge. Foxell, Simon (ed.) (2003) The Professionals’ Choice: the future of the built environment professions, London: CABE/RIBA. Frampton, Kenneth (2002) Labour, Work and Architecture: collected essays on architecture and design, London: Phaidon. Francis, Susan (2004) “Making special places for healthcare”, in Sebastian Macmillan (ed.), Designing Better Buildings: quality and value in the built environment, London: Spon, pp. 107–15. Fuksas, Massimilio (2000) and La Biennale di Venezia, Città: Less Aesthetics, More Ethics, Venice: Marsilio Editori.

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Index

Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations not included in text page range. References to notes are prefixed by ‘n’.

Aaltor, Alvar 33 abstract art 71 Accelerating Change 39 accountability 32, 49–54, 75, 77–8, 79–88 Achieving Excellence in Design Evaluation Tool (AEDET) 60 adjudication 41–2 aestheticisation 137–8, 141 aesthetic judgement 144–8 AIA (American Institution of Architects) see American Institution of Architects Althussser, Louis 138–9 American Institution of Architects (AIA) 105, 108; Code of Ethics 107, 111 Amsterdam 70, 72 Anaesthetics of Architecture, The 137 Angel of the North 53 ARB (Architects Registration Board) 101–3; Code of conduct 107 Architect in Practice, The 7–8 architects, young 65 see also interns architectural education 62–7, 70–1 architectural practice see practice architecture: as art 9–10; survival of 9 Architecture: Art or Social Service 51 Architecture Biennale: Venice 135 Architecture of Humanism, The 11 art: architecture as 9–10; and Fascism 71; popularity of 52 Arup, Ove 15 authenticity 140 avant-garde: idea of 17–20 Baltic Mill 53 Banham, Reyner 27 Bateson, Gregory 120, 122 Baudrillard, Jean 138 Bauman, Zygmunt 115

BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 53 beauty 146–8 Beleschenko, Alex 54 belief-systems 8–9 Benjamin, Walter 153 Better Regulation Task Force 81–2 Bevan, Nye 127 Bickerdike Allen 25 Blau, Eva 127 Bohigas, Oriol 25 Bonaventure Hotel: Los Angeles 138 Bourdieu, Pierre 105 Boyarsky, Alvin 24 Brick Leaf House 130 bridges 14–15 brief-taking 57 Britain: public architectural practice (1870–1970) 18–20 Buildings and Projects: review of 23, 25–6 Buildings and Projects 1950–74 24 Butler, Judith 140 Butler, Samuel 116, 119–20 CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment ) 49, 66 Cambridge History Faculty Building 5–6, 23–34 capital: cultural 105–6; symbolic 105–6 capitalism, late 138, 139 Casa Fontana 130 Casagrande, Marco 135n1 Chambers, William 49 churches 12–13 ‘churn’ (turnover) 66 client empowerment 40 Cockerell, C. R. 25 codes of ethics 107–11 codes of practice 76, 101–5, 107–11 cognitive mapping 138–9

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Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) 49, 66 communities of practice 92–4 competitions 65 concepts: domain of 145 conferences: RIBA Oxford (1958) 51 consistency 82 Constructing the Team 39, 40, 66, 93–4 construction cost 45–7, 51 contractors: specialist 44–7 contracts 41–2 Contrasts 12 Corps des Ponts et Chaussées 14, 15 costs: construction 45–7, 51 Courbet, Gustave 151–3 critical regionalism 71, 139 Critique of Judgement 143 Cruickshank, Dan 70 cultural capital 105–6 cultural economy 52 culture: Kant 149–50 Curtis, William 10 Dalton, Hugh 127 Debord, Guy 138 defects 46 Deleuze, Giles 116 ‘departmental architecture’ 19–20 design: idea of 10 design quality 47–8, 67–8 Design Quality Indicators 68 design teams 61–2 Dewey, John 96–7 Diderot, Francis 123 dispute resolution 41–2 domestic ethos 121 duties 7–8, 82–4 ecology movement 20 ‘Economy of the Imagination, The’ 52 education, architectural 62–7, 70–1 Edwards, K. J. R. 25n11 Egan, Lord 39 Egan report 35, 36, 39, 49 Egan targets 45–7 Einzig, Richard 31 elite practitioners 107–8 elite production 106 Elton, Geoffrey 24n6, 31 empathy 96 Engelmann, Paul 130 entitlements 82–4 ethical dilemmas: examples 39–42 ethical function 136, 140 Ethical Function of Architecture, The 135, 136 ethical principles 116 ethical theory 95–6

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ethics: and aesthetics 135–42; competing 115–16 Ethics 118 ‘ethnoethics’ 115 Evans, Lord 52 excess: notion of 129–30 exemplary practice 108–9 exploitation 107 Fable of the Bees 113, 124–5 Favored Circle, The 105 Felix Samuely and Partners 29 Fesmire, Steven 98 fishing villages 70 Ford Pinto car case 97–8 Forty, Adrian 13 Fountainhead, The 117–18 Frampton, Kenneth 10, 71, 139 Fretton, Tony 130 Frost, Brian 32n34 Fuksas, Massimiliano 135 Garbo, Greta 123 garden city movement 20 Gehry, Frank 32n31 general rights: Nagel’s idea of 27 George, W. N. B. 7–8 globalisation 99–100 Goodhart-Rendel, H. S. 19 Gormley, Antony 53 Gothic style 11–12 Gregotti, Vittorio 25 Guattari, Félix 120–1 habits: of architecture 116–18; system of 116 Hadid, Zaha 110 Harries, Karsten 135, 136–8, 139–40, 141 Haverleij, Den Bosch 72 Heidegger, Martin 136 Highsmith, Patricia 117 History Faculty Building, Cambridge 5–6, 23–34 Holland 70, 71, 72, 73 Hood, Raymond 16–17 houses: Brick Leaf 130; Luyt family 73; Sainsbury 130; Villa Stein 130 housing 18–19; modernist 71; public 106 Howard, Ebenezer 20 Hume, David 150, 153 ‘humility’ 69 IDBE (Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment) 61 imagination, moral 95–100 intelligent accountability 82–4, 85–6 Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment (IDBE) 61

interns: treatment of 107–8, 109 IT technology 43–4 Jameson, Frederic 135, 138–41, 141–2 Java Island, Amsterdam 72 Joint Contracts Tribunal (JCT) forms of contract 40, 41–2 Jubilee Line station, Southwark 54 judgements of taste 144–8, 153 Kant, Immanuel 143, 145–8, 151, 153 Keynes, John Maynard 126 Kleihus, Josef 25 Larson, Magali 104 late capitalism 138, 139 Latham, Sir Michael 35, 66 Latham report see Constructing the Team league tables 84 Le Corbusier 10, 129–30 legitimacy 109–10 Lethaby, W. R. 131 libraries: Cambridge History Faculty building 23–4; Viipur 33 Life and Habit 116 LIFT (Local Improvement Finance Trust) 55–7 Lime Street station 24–5 Llewelyn Davies, Richard 51 Local Improvement Finance Trust (LIFT) 55–6 London: public architectural practice 18–20 London building cycle: early 1800s 11–12 long-term projects 66 Loos, Adolf 69–70, 72–3 luxury: classical view 124; definition 123–4; Fable of the Bees 124–6; false 129–30; and needs 126–8; private and public areas 128–9 Luyt family house 73 Lynch, Kevin 138–9 MacIntyre, Alasdair 90–1, 95 managerial accountability 79, 80–2, 83, 86–7 managerial–ethical values 59–61 managerialism 61–2 Mandeville, Bernard 113, 124–6 Mariënburg, Nijmegen 73 Martin, Sir Leslie 23 Marx, Karl 126–7 mass consumption 106 Merck Co. 98 meritocracy 108–9 Michelangelo 16 Mills, E. F. 29n24 Minksy, Marvin 119

modernism 13, 70–2, 106, 114, 127 Modern Movement 18, 49–50 moral agency 94, 99 moral imagination 95–100 moral individualism 16–17 morality 145 ‘morality as art’ 98–9 moral judgement 97, 153 ‘Moral Luck’ essay 26, 28 moral responsibility 94–5, 99 Nagel, Thomas 2–3, 6, 26, 32 Nagel’s types of value 26–9, 32 Natalini, Adolfo 72 National Pensions Institute 33–4 National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) 103–4 Nestlé 98 Newby, Frank 29 New Engineering Contract 41–2 NHS LIFT programme 56–9 Nussbaum, Martha 95 obligations 82–4; Nagel’s idea of 26–7 Origin of the World 151–3 Oud, J. J. P. 70 partnering 43–4 partnership 93–4 perfectionist ends: Nagel’s idea of 28 performance indicators 84 Perronet, Jean-Rodolphe 13–14, 15 PFI (private finance initiative) 50–1, 55 Pillar Patent Glazing (PPG) 30–1 Piranesi, Giovanni Battista 138 Plomer, Hugh 31 Portman, John 138 Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism 138 postmodernity 141 practice: communities of 92–4; concept of 89–90; ‘good’ 90–1; narratives of 91–2; public 18–20 press, the 66 Prime Minister’s Award 54 principles 116 Pritzker Prize 110 private finance initiative (PFI) 50–1, 55 process: of construction 42–3 procurement 42 professionalism 7, 77–8, 87 Professionals’ Choice, The xvi, 66 project management 41–2 projects: long-term 66 proportionality 82 public architectural practice: model of 18–20 Pugin, A. W. N. 5, 11–13

INDEX

165

Pyatok, Michael 106 Queen Christina 123 Radiant City, The 129 Rand, Ayn 117 Rape of Britain, The 70 Raz, Noam 155 reading room: Cambridge History Faculty building 24 regeneration 53 regionalism, critical 71, 139 regulation: of professional practice 77–8 regulatory revolution 77–9 Republic, The 124 ‘respect’: RIBA code 107 responsibility 94–5 Rethinking Construction 39 Reynolds, Joshua 49 RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) 101, 103, 111; Principles 107 RIBA Oxford conference (1958) 51 rights 82–4 Roark, Howard 117–18 Rounton Grange 131 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) 101, 103 Sainsbury house 130 Scott, Geoffrey 10, 11 Scottish Enlightenment 150 Scruton, Roger 10 Sekora, John 128 self-reflection 97–8 shopping street: Mariënburg, Nijmegen 73 ‘signature buildings’ 32 Smith, Adam 126, 143, 146, 150 Snow, Christopher 130 Soane, John 8, 128–9 social engineering 19 Socrates 124 Soufflot, Jacques-Germain 13–14 Spalding, Julian 71 specialist contractors 44–7 Spinoza, Baruch 118–19, 122 Springborg, Patricia 126, 127 Stamp, Gavin 24–5 Standards of Conduct and Practice: ARB 101–3 standards of practice 101–5 Stanton Williams Architects 130 Ste Geneviève, Paris 13–14 Stevens, Gary 105 Stirling, James 5, 23–4, 25–6 St Pancras Station 49 students 64 Stuttgart: housing estate 71 sublime 147–8

166

INDEX

survival: of architecture 9 sustainability 75–6, 89 sustainable development 95 Swedish fishing village 70 symbolic capital 105–6 Talented Mr Ripley, The 117 targeting 82 targets 84 taste, judgements of 144–8, 153 team work 61–2, 93–4 technology 43–4 Terry, Quinlan 140 ‘The Fragmentation of Value’ essay 26 Theory of Moral Sentiments, The 143 Thomson, David 128 Three Ecologies, The 120 trailer parks 136 train shed, Liverpool 24–25 transparency 77–8, 79, 84–5 ‘trophy buildings’ 32 True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture, The 12, 13 trust 77, 78–9 Trust and Money 41, 66 truth 13, 15, 143–4 turnover (‘churn’) 66 University College London 51 university schools of architecture 51 Unwin, Raymond 19, 20, 69 usefulness 16–17 Utilitarianism 51 utility 16–17; Nagel’s idea of 27 Venice: Architecture Biennale 135 villages: Sweden 70 Villa Stein 130 visual arts 53 Walsall Art Gallery 53 waste: reduction of 45–6 Watkin, David 10 Watts, George Frederic 151 Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart 71 Weitling, Wilhelm 126 Williams, Bernard 26, 28 Willis, Arthur J. 7–8 Willkins, William 23 Wilson, Colin St John 50 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 151 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 130 Wodiczko, Krzysztof 135n1 Wolfe, Tom 29n25 women architects 107, 110 Woolf Architects 130 Words and Buildings 13 Wright, Frank Lloyd 16–17, 51–2