THE ETHICAL ARCHITECT

THE ETHICAL ARCHITECT

THE ETHICAL ARCHITECT

Architecture’s moral mission reached the nadir of its decline in the 1970s, after the critiques of modernism formulated by Jane Jacobs and Robert Venturi unleashed a thoroughgoing repudiation of the movement’s moral pretensions. The revolutionary ideal of solving societal problems through design that was so vehemently proclaimed by modernism’s proponents in the heroic age of the 1930s was exposed as hollow, and the
architecture profession fell into a state of ethical disarray. In 1979, when the mandatory code of ethics of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) was withdrawn under threat of anti-trust action by the Justice Department, the profession seemed little more than a self-serving business venture. Architecture’s failure to address the real problems faced by users of the built environment, as perceived from within and without, left its core design values in shambles.

tom spector