A contemporary ethical architecture requires that we draw vast, overlapping boundaries about the obligations of the architect. It is these obligations that require discovery across time and obviate the relevance of the quick sketch. The swift solution to what the eye can see - what architects used to refer to as context - only traces the surface of the problem, leaving vast realms of ethical obligation unexplored. Our conception of place is not bounded narrowly by immediate adjacency. Nearby buildings, infrastructure and landscape, while important, no longer define the realm of relevant operation. Our obligation is to the position of architecture, infrastructure and landscape in an ever ascending magnitude of large scale natural and man made systems. All aspects of architectural form participate in these larger scale systems. The physical form of our architecture, when coupled to an ethical obligation to assume responsibility for all that we interact with - not just all that we create - gives rise to an ethical aesthetic that has always been at the core of our architecture. This ethical aesthetic at first appears unfamiliar.
A contemporary ethical architecture requires that we draw vast, overlapping boundaries about the obligations of the architect. It is these obligations that require discovery across time and obviate the relevance of the quick sketch. The swift solution to what the eye can see - what architects used to refer to as context - only traces the surface of the problem, leaving vast realms of ethical obligation unexplored. Our conception of place is not bounded narrowly by immediate adjacency. Nearby buildings, infrastructure and landscape, while important, no longer define the realm of relevant operation. Our obligation is to the position of architecture, infrastructure and landscape in an ever ascending magnitude of large scale natural and man made systems. All aspects of architectural form participate in these larger scale systems. The physical form of our architecture, when coupled to an ethical obligation to assume responsibility for all that we interact with - not just all that we create - gives rise to an ethical aesthetic that has always been at the core of our architecture. This ethical aesthetic at first appears unfamiliar.
Like much that is new or foreign, there is at first intrigue, but no recognition of beauty. Beauty is acquired in part through cycles of repetition and refinement that ultimately become comfortable and familiar - a prerequisite to widespread acceptance as aesthetic. This has not yet happened for a fully ethical aesthetic - an aesthetic that is based upon holistic responsibility for all that passes through and about our architecture. Landscapes about our buildings that are not closely cropped and manicured are still often read as unkempt rather than as beautiful. Material choices for institutional building exteriors that are fully renewable, such as wood, are often seen as inappropriate to the use and therefore not beautiful. Patterns, sizes and shading of windows that vary from façade to façade based upon solar and urban orientation rather than just urban hierarchy seem strange and therefore not beautiful. All these and countless other examples belie an as yet unformed aesthetic that is critical to the long term success of an ethical architecture. To be successful, what is ethical must also become aesthetic.
What are the beliefs that underlie the practice of an ethical aesthetic? The first is that beauty is as much derived from within as from without. That is, we need to explore the deep internal structures that give substance to an ethical relationship with the physical and natural worlds, and then give shape and form to this substance as a wholly formed aesthetic. This ethical aesthetic cannot be added to an already formed building. Green by addition is how most architecture with seemingly environmental agendas is formed today - by adding to familiar form rather than through fundamental conception that probes the full depth of our relationship to the natural and manmade. It is only through the holistic remaking of architecture from its depths to its outermost surfaces that an ethical aesthetic can form. Beauty can be attained by subtraction, by editing down to the substantive core formed about a fully ethical relationship with the larger world.
There are two overarching beliefs that guide us and inform our aesthetic response within practice: regeneration and filtration. Regeneration describes all natural systems. There are six such systems that are relevant to architecture: water, air, energy, earth, materials, and human beings. Architecture exists to shelter human beings by managing these natural systems through the medium of materials. In essence, we use materials, the physical substance of architecture, as filters to enhance the comfort - and ultimately elevate the souls - of the humans and activities that we shelter. Each of these systems has a cycle and each of the cycles filters, cleans and purifies before it returns each element for re-use in a repetitive cycle of regeneration through filtration. This view sees architecture as part of rather than as distinct from the natural world. Natural systems and processes including water, air and energy course through the manmade world just as surely as they do through nature. The objectives of an ethical aesthetic lie in the substantive restoration of a holistic relationship to these resources and in the rendering of this restoration as an aesthetic event. While architecture is making important strides in the former realm, the rendering of a regenerative relationship to the natural world is equally if not more important.
The motivation to make architecture is simple. Water, air and energy are the primary reasons why humans sought shelter in the first primitive hut, and they continue to motivate. While each element is a prerequisite to life, each can also be a source of discomfort- an element to be managed to ensure conditions necessary for comfort and in extreme cases, even existence. Architecture manages these natural elements through the stuff of our trade - the manmade elements of roofs, walls and floors, supported by structure, tied to the earth by foundations and serviced by systems. For nearly the entire history of architecture until the past century, roofs and walls were filters, not the membranes so common today that segregate rather than filter. Filters are complex management systems. They let some materials through and keep others out. Segregators are simple, indiscriminate management systems. They keep everything out. Increasingly across most of the past century the architect's focus was largely on segregation. In many temperate environments the consequence of greater segregation of the interior environment from the outdoors is a disproportionate increase in the total imported energy required to support living conditions within. The more our walls and roofs become simple, opaque membranes to separate us from natural elements, the greater the energy we need to expend to approximate optimal work and living environments. Roofs and walls became membranes through which the ideal of the complete separation of an interior world from the exterior world arose - the fabrication of an artificial world as an alternative to the natural world. Along with the metaphor and fact of the membrane came a belief in the otherness of the natural world, cultural philosophy tracked through belief about appropriate roofs and skins for our architecture.
With regard to materials, a regenerative relationship suggests material selections based upon their renewal capacity and low fabrication or embodied energy. More importantly, a regenerative relationship to materials suggests a design that manages the passage of time. Time is reflected in cycles. In the natural world these cycles include conception, growth, maturity, decline and death. In the material world of architecture, these cycles begin typically with the harvesting of materials, such as timber, or the mining of material from the earth, then their transformation into a building product and installation in architecture, followed by decline and ultimately demolition and removal from the architecture. There are three aspects to a regenerative relationship with the materials of architecture across time. First, there is the selection of a material that can be regenerated through renewal and ultimately replacement with the same or a comparable material that is harvested anew from replacement stock. Second, there is the objective to lengthen the life cycle so as to minimize the total amount of material required across time. Lastly, there is the necessity to develop systems of relationships between materials that allow them to be removed without having to demolish other materials that may still have useful longevity. All of these issues have aesthetic consequences. The first biases our new material choices toward those that are renewable, that is toward materials that grow and can be grown again rather than toward finite resources drawn from the earth, and secondarily toward reclaimed or recycled materials that already exist. The second suggests that we develop ways to detail and protect our materials that enhance their longevity. Less frequent replacement equates to less total material and energy expended. This too is an aesthetic event.
Materials that reveal their natural characteristics are often those with which we ultimately develop strong emotional connections. Emotional connections are important. They form a basis for longevity in the material world just as surely as they do in the world of human relationships. If human beings do not become attached to architecture across generations of use then their architecture is not likely to be cared for, will fall into disuse, neglect, and will ultimately be demolished. Finishes such as painting are not only initially toxic to our air quality but they are toxic again and again - as frequently as every five years across the life cycle of a building. With each successive layer of finish - an act intended to extend longevity - the seeds of the system's ultimate failure are spread further. With the build-up of layer upon layer, the finish ultimately is unable to accept additional coatings and the entire history of coating must be stripped or the material must be replaced. We seek an aesthetic based upon choices that extend life rather than initiate demise.
Design is not only about assembly but disassembly. It begins from a belief that buildings, like natural systems, should be able to readily regenerate themselves. Since components and systems have differing life spans and architecture does not die at a single time - it instead dies many small deaths - then it follows that an ethical architecture should be assembled so each component can be disassembled - removed and replaced at its death - independently of the others. This ethical impetus to optimize the longevity of material in turn becomes an aesthetic. The parts can all be read within the whole, with few totally subsumed within others. Each system becomes legible. Each becomes a participant in a woven aesthetic that traces time in independent strands as it weaves its way, in an ethical dialogue, the sign of which is an aesthetic conversation between the elements of architecture organized by time.
read more
