In his Ten Books on Architecture, Vitruvius creates a portrait of the architect as a person of broad learning and various talents. He defines the expectation of architects ‘’Durability, convenience, and beauty,’’ in Latin, firmitas, utilitas, and venustas.
Are there limits to an architect’s ethical or legal responsibilities in a building process where architecture plays an increasingly smaller role? Is preservation a moral imperative? Can an architect works with international clients living within the boundaries of repressive or aggressive regimes? Where does an architect draw the line between his responsibilities to the client and to the community served?
Immanuel Kant asked: Have we treated others as ends in themselves or simply as a means
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Standard 3 encourage architects to promote their professional services in a truthful and responsible manner in complying with the codes and principles applying to advertising generally. And Standard 5 encourage architects to consider the wider impact of their work; whilst their primary responsibility is to their clients, they should take into account the environmental impact of their professional activities.
We notice that the ARB codes are broad and they do not tackle specifically the impact of their work on the built environment.
The two organisations are very different in their objectives and character. However, some of their roles, including education and discipline, overlap. This sometimes leads to friction. In other EU states, by contrast, only one body, the professional members’ organisation, controls entry to the profession and administers the Architects’ Directive.
The RIBA’s remit is wider than the ARB’s: to promote architecture as well as uphold the standards of the profession. Its vision is to be a ‘champion for architecture and for a better
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However, some of their roles, including education and discipline, overlap. This sometimes leads to friction.
It is important to note that the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct is prescribtive and composed of 6 canons. The first five canons exist in order of scale, starting with the most general and continuing to those that affect the greatest number of people, the public, to the fewest number, colleagues and co-workers. The sixth canon, a newcomer, addresses the environment, which covers the broadest scale of all, that of the entire planet.
The AIA’s code encompasses all four approaches to ethics. Its canons invoke virtue ethics to urge architects to ‘’maintain ad advance their knowledge…’’ Contract ethics appears in such statements as ‘’members should embrace the spirit and letter of the law….’’ Duty ethics emerges in line like ‘’members should exercise learned and uncompromised professional judgement…’’ Finally, we hear a utilitarian focus on consequences when we read that members should ‘’thoughtfully consider the social and environmental impact of their professional
By giving the biographies of architects Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander, Hines does nothing to remedy his aimless writing. He writes that Neutra had a variety of experience as an archi...
“The architect’s role and their intellectual responsibility is to fight to maintain their vision and little bits get chopped off all the time, but if they’re only little bits, it’s not too bad.’’
The book, Towards A New Architecture by Le Corbusier is not at all what one would expect. Thinking that the great master architect would limit himself t...
People naturally pursue the good things in life and avoid the bad. Kant argues that these good things are either means to a further end or good ends in and of themselves. Next, Kant says that means can be good as means to one end, yet bad in a different end.
The success of architects is defined not so much by the problems they face as the act of their creative and practical responses.
For instance, highly populous and famous cities such as Oslo, New York, Alexandria, and San Francisco hold some of the important architecture projects that have shaped individuals’ lives. Reporter David Owen, in his New Yorker article “Psychology of Space”, argues how the architecture firm Snøhetta utilizes their magic through their projects to build people’s moods, shape their relationships with cities, buildings and other individuals, and create illusions with exhilarating effects. The author’s argument is rhetorically compelling because his arrangement of ideas, selection of words, and supporting evidence maintain his public engaged in the magic of architecture and persuade anyone reading his article that architecture plays a critical role in their lives in numerous
Architecture is such a wide thing when we talk about buildings and projects. Architecture is defined as the art or practice of designing and constructing buildings. One of the Renaissance man who not only define...
True architects are needed to create architectural beauty and they do so by using “elements which are capable of affecting our senses, and of rewarding the desire of our eyes...the sight of them affects us immediately” (16). Le Corbusier’s says that we must standardize architecture with respect to function so that we can mass produce it until we perfect its aesthetic through competition and innovation. Le Corbusier believed that Architecture schools weren’t teaching students correctly and that engineers would be the ones who save architecture. Architecture is a thing of plastic emotion. “It should use elements capable of striking our senses, of satisfying our visual desires…arranging them in a way that the sight of them clearly affects
Simon Unwin, the author of the book ‘Analysing Architecture’ says that the ‘the purpose of architecture is to design buildings’ is an unsatisfactory definition because the definition limits architecture to just the design of buildings. He feels that architecture involves more than just designing buildings. He also believes that the definition fails to explain the real purpose of architecture and transfers the problem of comprehending the word ‘architecture’ to the word ‘building’. This definition doesn’t go in-depth to analyze and understand the essence of architecture in our everyday lives. It fails to relate human life and needs to the buildings built.
What is architecture? Is it the practice of designing or rather the art of designing buildings? Is architecture the necessity of shelter? If so, then when did humanity transcend living in caves and progress on to communal living as seen in the remains of Catalhoyuk? Humanity did not stop the progression of architecture at communal living; architecture continued to evolve to accommodate the ever increasing needs of humanity. Has architecture existed since the days that humanity resided in caves and simply evolved with humans to become the modern day building method? These questions and many more have been asked and debated for centuries, and as architects we study the arguments and ideals of the greatest of the host who have asked: what is architecture?
Buildings reflect the values and ideas of society within periods. The role of architecture in shaping society and vice versa largely depends on the period in question and who or what affects first. The Enlightenment, and the subsequent period the Post-Enlightenment, reflect the biggest change for current ideas regarding architecture and society and current theories. At the same time, individual identities and understanding of society, progress and truth all follow a similar evolving path. It is during this dramatic shift in thinking that the role of architecture to society and the idea of progress and truth becomes a more complex relationship. How this relationship works and its implications is based on the theory that there is a direct link between the two. One cannot develop without the other. Who leads whom and to what extent they influence each other is evident in architectural trends and pioneering works by architects such as Robert Venturi, Frank Gehry amongst others.
When linking the concept of cultural relativism to architecture, one would realize that both these components depend on each other. One cannot exist without the other (Kohler, 2003). Kohler remarks that in order for architecture to be progressive, The transfer and acceptance of technologies and techniques has to be based on a sound knowledge of regional culture (Kohler, 2003). In other words, the existing architecture or urban environment has to distinguish the features of regional diversity. Cultural exchange must consider the environment. No clash exists between regional and environmental appropriate construction techniques (Kohler, 2003). This is so because traditional architecture has adopted economic and environmental solutions. Conflict can only exist if one considers the ‘international style’ that has popularized the modern era with its high resource consumption. Kohler (2003) also stresses that there should be no regional cultural boundaries in order for architecture to be progressive (Kohler, 2003:86)
The role of the architect is a question that evokes a spectrum of answers from Norman Foster’s definition; ‘Architect is an expression of values… the way we build is a reflection of the way we live.’ [Foster, cited in Tholl, 2014: Online] This debate of who and what an architect should be and do is not a recent one to emerge but has lead many architects and designers as far back as Vitruvius [15BC] to produce documentation on what they believed to be the make-up of an architect. In Vitruvius’ ‘The Ten Books On Architecture’ he quickly establishes two fragments that make an architect, the manual skill and the theory and scholarship.
“Architects plan, design, and observe construction of facilities used for human occupancy and of other structures” (The Top 100: The Fastest-Growing Careers for the 21st Century, Fifth Edition 27). In 2010, 2 percent of U.S employment, about 2.3 million people, possessed jobs in architecture and engineering. The majority of architects tend to be civil architects, with about 249,120 workers, followed by mechanical and industrial engineers (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2). Architects have to design buildings that satisfy their clients and protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public. Architects need to take aspects into consideration such as climate, soil, state building regulations, zoning laws, fire r...
Over the last four years of studying architecture, I have seen the power that it has to shape communities, shape lives, and to create new ways that people interact with each other. The way architecture can help enhance living and allow for creation of new interactions of people is one of the reasons I find the subject so interesting. The way architecture can shape a whole culture and the way that the culture then in turn shapes the architecture is fascinating to me. Architecture is also not a static subject, it is constantly evolving and adapting with time to take on new forms, create new spaces, and to provide commentary on the history of our time on Earth. The depth that architecture has, and the evolution of the subject is something I have fallen in love with through my study of it. However, when I first started out studying architecture, I had no idea of the depth that the subject had, and it was an incredibly daunting realization; however, it was as equally exciting. I have always had a love for learning and architecture has just fueled that fire. Even after completing my bachelors degree, the learning has not stopped. I get to learn something new about architecture daily, and getting to say that is an opportunity I am thankful to have. It is not just about the learning however, its