1.2 Ethics and Architectural Practice PDF

1.2 Ethics and Architectural Practice PA R T 1 : T H E P R O F E S S I O N Thomas Fisher, Assoc. AIA Understanding ethics helps architects deal with the dilemmas faced in the course of practice as well as those that arise in the design and construction of the built environment. This article discus...

1.2 Ethics and Architectural Practice PA R T 1 : T H E P R O F E S S I O N Thomas Fisher, Assoc. AIA Understanding ethics helps architects deal with the dilemmas faced in the course of practice as well as those that arise in the design and construction of the built environment. This article discusses four ways of considering the ethical issues of practice and offers three case study vignettes with analysis. FOUR WAYS TO TH IN K ABOU T E TH IC S Architecture practitioners continually encounter questions such as: what is the right thing to do in a conflicted situation, and how to decide among the divergent values or opinions of people? Ethics helps architects find answers in such questions. While ethics, like any branch of knowledge, has a long and complex history, this essay explores four of the main approaches to thinking about the topic: • • • • Character-based ethics (Virtue) Contract-based ethics (Social Contract) Duty-based ethics (Deontology) Results-based ethics (Consequentialism) Character-Based Ethics Dating back to ancient Greece, this approach to ethics encourages people to focus on the development of a good character or what the ancient Greeks called “virtue.” Virtues such as justice, courage, prudence, and temperance all stress the importance of a person acquiring a sense of balance, persistence, and moderation, which philosophers such as Aristotle thought of as key to living a good life. Such virtues also lie at the heart of professional practice. Exhibiting fairness when dealing with others, having courage to do the right thing in the face of opposition, using good judgment when encountering new information, and displaying self-control in the midst of multiple pressures can all help architects successfully serve their clients, retain their staffs, and remain well regarded among their colleagues and coworkers. The medieval period saw a shift toward more empathic virtues such as faith, hope, charity, and love. These, too, have direct applications to architecture practice, whether it means having faith in oneself and one’s talent in competitive situations, giving people hope that they can have a better physical environment, showing charity toward the aspirations of clients or needs of users, or loving the act of designing itself. Modern virtues like honesty, respect, tolerance, and trust also underpin the effective operation of commercial society. Following through on what one promised, recognizing the value that comes from a diversity of perspectives, accommodating viewpoints or ideas different from one’s own, and having confidence that others will also do what they have committed to all enable a practice, a profession, and a community to operate effectively. Contract-Based Ethics If the virtues involve the development of a good character, a contractual approach to ethics focuses more on the creation of a good society. Under a “social contract,” morality consists of a set of rules governing behavior, which rational people would accept on Thomas Fisher is the dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities and a professor in its School of Architecture. 1.2 Ethics and Architectural Practice 13 PA R T 1 : T H E P R O F E S S I O N the condition that others accept it as well. People tend to follow the rules because, on the whole, they are to their advantage, while breaking the rules undermines that useful system. Differing historic views of what constitutes a good life and a good social contract derive from two diametrically opposed ideas about the earliest human settlements. The seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes saw human nature as somewhat wild and early human life as “nasty, brutish, and short,” and argued that people should give up some of their personal freedom in exchange for the authority of a strong government able to keep the peace and enable people to lead longer and happier lives. In contrast, the eighteenth-century thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau saw early life in “the state of nature” as one of blissful harmony and independence, ruined only when people started to claim property as their own. Rousseau saw the possessiveness surrounding property as a corrupting influence and argued that the best societies enabled people to live as close as possible to the original state of nature, with the least interference from outside authority. Modern social-contract philosophers, such as John Rawls, take a more nuanced view of what a good society comprises. Rawls argued that people should imagine “a veil of ignorance” behind which they cannot predict their own individual futures or fortunes in life. Using this thought experiment, he said, a good society would distribute resources so that everyone would benefit fairly and without prejudice. These different views of the social contract have clear parallels in architecture. Hobbes foretells the generations of architects who have reacted to urban decay with new visions of urban order, while Rousseau presages the rise of suburbanization and the modern desire to live close to nature. Meanwhile Rawls gives justification to laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act and strategies such as universal design. Duty-Based Ethics All professions have a duty to those whom they serve. In the case of architects, that duty extends not only to the needs and wishes of clients but also to the present and future users of buildings as well as to past generations (via preservation), to other species (via sustainability), and even to underserved populations (via public interest design). What distinguishes professions from ordinary businesses is the obligation, embedded in professional licensure, of using disinterested judgment to do the right thing, regardless of the biases of particular interest groups. In duty-based ethics, one’s own actions must be ethical regardless of the consequences, and the ends do not justify the means. This approach to ethics is most closely associated with the eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant who argued for a set of what he called “categorical imperatives” to guide a person’s decisions when faced with common ethical dilemmas. The first of these imperatives would have everyone treat others as ends in themselves, and not as a means to an end. This is a variation of the biblical appeal to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This imperative helps practitioners remember to treat clients, users, and society with respect and dignity. A second categorical imperative entreats people to judge every action as if it were to become universal. In architecture, this idea relates most closely to attempts by practitioners and scholars to develop architectural theories: principles derived from particular buildings that should apply to all buildings. While some theories may have universal relevance, most do not: Think of the pretensions of “International Style” architecture and how ill-suited it was to many cultures and climates. A possible caveat related to duty-based ethics has to do with the importance of having good intentions and acting accordingly, regardless of the results. Kant’s dismissal of consequences brings to mind Colin Rowe’s observation that modernism was an “architecture of good intentions,” whose practitioners seemed too willing to overlook its negative impact. Architecture education, too, has had a strong focus on design intentions, with relatively little attention paid to design results, as would be learned from postoccupancy evaluations of buildings. 14 Ethics and Professional Practice Results-Based Ethics PA R T 1 : T H E P R O F E S S I O N In part as a reaction to duty-based ethics, results-based ethics—consequentialism— arose in the nineteenth century, arguing that we determine the goodness of an action by looking at its consequences. In consequentialism, the ends justify the means. Architecture, of course, has always had functional utility at its core: Buildings have to meet occupants’ needs, protect people from the elements, and stand up against the forces pulling or pushing a structure. And buildings make the consequence of ignoring such things quickly evident: They fail, leak, or fall down. Utilitarianism, one example of consequentialism, is a theory that values whatever brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number. For the nineteenth-century thinker Jeremy Bentham, that involved a simple calculation: Whatever maximized the most good for the most people was, by definition, the right course of action. But that quantitative approach also brought problems. Providing everyone the same minimum shelter would maximize happiness for the greatest number, but would it result in a good built environment? Bentham’s follower John Stuart Mill argued instead that qualitative consequences have more value than quantitative ones: that the quality of the built environment, for example, matters more than the quantity that each person has. For pragmatists like William James and John Dewey, what matters is not maximizing happiness, but looking at the results of our actions to discover what works best in a given situation. James argued that something is good if it is useful and corresponds to how things actually are. Dewey thought, instead, that experimentation is needed in order to find the good, repeatedly trying things and learning from the results. A recent variation of this results-based ethic has a strong environmental component. Philosopher Peter Singer has argued that we cannot limit thinking about consequences to human beings, but instead need to include all “sentient” beings—all of the animals who, like us, can feel pleasure or pain. This presents a major challenge to architecture, which consistently degrades the habitat of other animals in the process of creating habitat for human beings. Were architects to consider the impact on all sentient beings, buildings would likely be much more energy conserving, environmentally friendly, and ecologically diverse than most are now. Summar y TABLE 1.1 Four Approaches to Ethical Issues in Practice Being Good Doing Good As Individuals Character-based ethics Fairness, courage, moderation, good judgment Faith, hope, charity, love Honesty, respect, tolerance, trust Duty-based ethics Treat others as ends, not means Act as if it were to become universal Act with good intentions, regardless of consequences As a Group Contract-based ethics The good lies in social harmony and security The good comes from living close to nature The good comes from helping the least advantaged Results-based ethics Do the greatest good for the greatest number Do what seems most useful and true Maximize benefits to all sentient beings C A SE ST U DY VIG N ETTES These four approaches to ethics (see Table 1.1) offer different ways of resolving the ethical dilemmas faced during the course of practice. The following case studies, all adapted from real situations, show how ethics can help professionals sort through and evaluate alternative decisions and actions. 1.2 Ethics and Architectural Practice 15 1. Conflict Between Personal and Employer Values PA R T 1 : T H E P R O F E S S I O N An architect worked, during the day, designing big-box stores. During her free time, though, she volunteered for nonprofit groups helping the poor, some of whom had been displaced by the same big-box stores she had designed. While big-box stores provide a public good in the sense of making low-cost products available to more people, such developments sometimes disrupt existing neighborhoods and environments in ways that can bring harm. This architect considered quitting her job because of its conflict with her values, but she also needed the income and had few other employment alternatives. Analysis In her sense of responsibility for the well-being of people negatively affected by the work of her employer, this architect exemplifies such virtues as a sense of fairness, an instinct for charity, and a deep respect for others. However, the decision to stay in her job or leave it depends upon other virtues, like the courage to act even if it runs counter to her financial best interest or the honesty to tell her employer of her misgivings even if it means her dismissal. Situations like this also show how complicated questions of duty can become. This architect has a duty to her employer, but does that trump her feeling of duty to those negatively affected by the employer’s buildings? Design as a way of thinking can help when confronted by such divided loyalties, since it can often find win-win solutions to seemingly unresolvable dilemmas, whether in a building or in life. As a way to honor duty to the community and to her employer, this architect might do better staying with the company and trying to change its practices rather than leaving and relinquishing that possibility. From a social-contract perspective, the dilemma has to do with a paradox of capitalism. Her employer has an obligation to generate the greatest return to its shareholders and to attract customers to its products and services. But in a case like this, a company cannot maximize its returns while damaging its reputation in the community in which it wants to do business. The idea of ensuring that the least fortunate benefit from every action applies here. If this company put more emphasis on how its actions affect the community, and worked more on improving community relations and less on maximizing profit, it would likely make more money. There is a reason why the terms ethics and economics both have their origin in ancient words having to do with stewardship and care. The company could argue that, from a strictly consequentialist perspective, the benefits of a big-box store to a community—directly through its goods and services and indirectly through its taxes—outweigh the displacement of a much smaller number of homeowners and the qualitative deficiencies of big-box stores. Making less-expensive goods available to less-affluent people can improve the quality of their lives economically, but does that have to come at the expense of the quality of their physical environment? The architect, in this case, decided to talk to her employer about her volunteer work and her misgivings about the impact of the company’s big-box stores on lowerincome communities. And to her surprise, her employer asked her to move into a community-relations position in which she could work with neighborhoods prior to the development of the company’s urban stores, in order to mitigate their negative effects. That response showed an understanding within the company that it is often beneficial to proffer in good as well as in goods. 2. Clash of Ethics and Aesthetics A client came to an architect wanting his firm to design a building that would put it on the covers of magazines and get the publicity presumably needed to market the facility. The architect obliged and created a structure so striking that it achieved the coverage the client wanted, but at a price. The structure proved so difficult to occupy and unpleasant to be in that the client still had a hard time attracting tenants, and the design represented such an extreme that it triggered 16 Ethics and Professional Practice a broader conversation in the profession about the absurdity of such work, ultimately leading to less coverage of the architect’s work thereafter. Analysis PA R T 1 : T H E P R O F E S S I O N From the point of view of duty ethics, this situation seems perfectly justifiable. Architects have an obligation to meet the clients’ needs and help them achieve their goals, and so, in that sense, the architect here did the right thing as a professional. While architects also have a duty to the general public and to protect people’s health, safety, and welfare, that does not preclude the architect from helping a client get as much publicity as possible for a project, including getting it featured on the covers of magazines. The client, too, conceivably has a duty to get the greatest return on the investment in a building, and getting a lot of press for the project can be an effective way of doing that, attracting potential tenants without having to do as much marketing. Other ethical approaches, however, help shed some light on why the project’s reception did not turn out as either the client or architect expected. Consider the character of the client in this situation. His placing publicity above all else suggested that the building was as much about his desire for attention as it was about attracting tenants. And the architect’s accommodation of the client’s immoderate ambitions casts doubts on the character of this design practitioner as well. Architects may have a duty to meet clients’ needs, but professionals also have a duty to advise clients about potentially unwise actions. From a social-contract perspective, the self-importance of this project also raises ethical questions. Buildings represent creative responses to the needs of people, organizations, and communities, but at the same time, architecture also has an obligation to meet at least some of the expectations of the societies and cultures in which it stands. Moving too fast and too far away from those expectations can backfire, as happened here, when the building, having received the press coverage that the client had wanted, still could not attract tenants. In terms of functional utility, this project hardly met that measure, either. While its design obviously held some value for the client and architect, both of whom had the freedom to largely do what they wanted, the structure lacked even the most basic utility, given the number of people who found it too hard to inhabit. By ignoring certain important consequences of their actions, in favor of pursuing publicity, both architect and client undermined their original goal of attracting tenants. In addition, the building’s pragmatic flaws did not end with the structure itself; its sheer extremism cast a pall over the architect’s career. 3. Difference Between Employer Obligation and Employee Needs An intern in an office wanted to go through the Intern Development Program (IDP) required of him in order to sit for his licensing exam. The principal of the firm in which he worked, however, could not be bothered by the requirements of IDP and did not give his intern the variety of experiences in the office that IDP expected. The intern complained to the national organization that oversees the program, but its representatives told him that there was nothing they could do to force this architect to participate and, despite the poor economy and few employment options, they told him that he could always look for work in another firm. Analysis Being an architect involves not just the acquiring of the skills required to design and detail buildings, but also the joining of a community of professionals. Professional communities are not without their tensions. Architecture firms, for example, often have to compete against each other for commissions even as they cooperate with each other on matters affecting the profession as a whole. And, as happens in every community, practitioners have different levels of involvement in the profession; some get very engaged and even seek leadership positions in the various professional organizations in the field, while others pursue their practice and never attend a single meeting or 1.2 Ethics and Architectural Practice 17 PA R T 1 : T H E P R O F E S S I O N ▶ Intern Development Program (3.2) discusses the IDP in further detail. contribute to any committee. Professional obligations range, in other words, from the mandatory—taking the licensing exam, for instance—to the voluntary, such as joining the American Institute of Architects. That personal preference becomes an ethical issue when it affects others, as in the case here, where an architect did not see his oversight of an employee’s progress through the Intern Development Program (IDP) as part of his professional obligation. The IDP arose in the 1970s to address this very problem. Because so many firms in the past did not attend to the needs of interns for diverse experiences in order to become well-rounded professionals, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) made the IDP a requirement for an intern to sit for the architect registration examination (ARE). The profession saw this as being in the best interest of the entire field and, in utilitarian terms, as doing the greatest good for the greatest number of those who aspire to become architects. The IDP, however, puts the responsibility on the interns and has little force in requiring practitioners to participate in it. Most practitioners do support interns’ IDP efforts because it has become an expected part of being an architect in the United States, part of the “social contract” that an older generation has to the younger generation of professionals. Most architects also see this as part of their duty to their staff and perhaps, selfinterestedly, as a way of attracting and keeping interns who want to become architects themselves. From almost every ethical position and from the perspective of an employer as well as an employee, participation in the IDP makes sense. Virtue ethics may shed some light on that question. A character-based approach to ethics emphasizes personal responsibility, and while that has many benefits in terms of helping people lead better lives, it also tends to see a community as a set of autonomous individuals. In cases like this one, an emphasis on individualism allows practitioners to opt out of their community responsibilities, with little or no leverage to force them to do otherwise. However, as of 2012, the AIA National Ethics Council has adopted a rule that makes supporting the professional development of interns an ethical obligation of AIA members. WH AT’S N E XT FO R E TH I C S A N D P R A C TI C E ? Architecture has taken an “ethical turn” in recent decades, reflecting a renewed emphasis on ethics in other fields like medicine and law and a reinvigorated interest within the profession in issues like sustainability and social justice. Ethics has become a required part of an accredited architecture curriculum and a topic covered with greater frequency in the profession’s annual meetings and academic conferences. At the same time, ethics has highlighted areas in which the profession needs to pay more attention: • Architects generally have good intentions, but rarely give enough time and attention to postoccupancy evaluations of the consequences of what they do. • Architects often seek to create the greatest good for the greatest number, but have largely overlooked the needs of the world’s poor and the habitat of other creatures. • Architects frequently respond well to the contexts in which they work, but have a much worse record when it comes to giving awards to buildings that represent a-contextual extremism. The work of architects has such an enormous effect on large numbers of people and other species that the profession cannot avoid the ethical consequences of its actions. This will continue to make ethics a relevant issue for architects in the twenty-first century as the scope of professional activity expands to include responsibility for global populations and global climate disruption, and to address the resources, systems, and infrastructures that are all part of the built environment. This ethical turn may even lead to a redefinition of what it means to be an architect, attending to the health, safety, and welfare not just of clients and building users but also of other sentient beings, future generations, and diverse ecosystems, ultimately for the good of all. 18 Ethics and Professional Practice 1.3 PA R T 1 : T H E P R O F E S S I O N F or Mor e I nf o r m ati o n AIA Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct: www.aia.org/about/ethicsandbylaws. Ethics for Architects: Fifty Dilemmas of Professional Practice (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010) by Thomas Fisher. Architecture Design and Ethics: Tools for Survival (The Architectural Press, 2008) by Thomas Fisher. The Ethical Architect: The Dilemma of Contemporary Practice (Princeton Architectural Press, 2001) by Thomas Spector. Ethics and the Practice of Architecture (Wiley, 2000) by Barry Wasserman, Patrick Sullivan, and Gregory Palermo. Design Beyond Ethics Victoria Beach, AIA As with safe food, many actors contribute to the ethical project of safe shelter: inspectors, engineers, and more. Rather than compete with them, architects, like chefs, should seek their niche with aesthetics—not in the narrow sense of beauty but in the broad sense of understanding and shaping how humans interact with their surroundings. I NT ROD U C T I ON : TH E C H EF AR C H ITE C T We all experience architecture Expecting an architect to design a safe structure is like expecting a chef to cook a safe meal: It is at once a high ethical requirement and a very low expectation. Food and shelter, the raw materials that chefs and architects work with, are absolutely essential to human survival. Because of this, their quality (or lack thereof) rises to an ethical concern that society takes seriously, creating a great umbrella involving testing, codes, inspectors, and the like to protect the public from getting sick or injured. Obviously, anyone involved with things that can save or threaten lives is ethically mandated to uphold these protections. This mandate forms a foundation for professional ethics. American architects became subject to professional ethics fairly recently, when they formed a regulated profession in the twentieth century. A well-defined branch of applied moral philosophy, professional ethics pertains to all professionals, including doctors, lawyers, and engineers. But just as with chefs, the core, defining work of architects—the work that differentiates them from all the other contributors to the safety of the built environment— goes beyond ethics and into aesthetics. And just as there are many sources for a safe snack, many kinds of people (and even computers) can make a building firm, but it takes an architect to make one commodious and delightful. Currently the legal authority of architects rests with their licensure and their parallel commitment to professional ethics. But what if the raw, primal power of aesthetics could trump that of ethics? If so, aesthetics may be the key to unlocking the real authority of architects, and therefore of architecture, to shape society. before we have even heard the word. —Peter Zumthor, Architect Victoria Beach is the 2012 AIA National Ethics Council chair and was faculty fellow at the Center for Ethics at Harvard, where she taught design, history, theory, and ethics. An AIA Young Architect Award recipient, Beach is principal of her own practice and city council member for Carmel, California. 1.3 Design Beyond Ethics 19