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This is the second entry Architects talk about ethics, an advice column designed to discuss the values that architects embody, or should embody. It is designed to answer real-world ethical questions asked by architects, designers, students, and professors.
As the three original authors of this column, we believe Profession It lags far behind in resolving ethical issues. We believe architects should explore our own ethics, as other fields have long done.
In our teaching, we sense that students are eager to talk about ethics. The “ethical turn” in our profession has a lot to do with equity and environmental responsibility, but a typical course might have a lecture on ethics during a professional practice course. The time and attention we devote to ethics in schools and professions is not commensurate with its importance. Perhaps, through this column, we can stimulate more interest.
What is the professional ethics of an architect? What questions do you have about ethics and architecture? What ethical dilemmas do you face or have faced or expect to face?
Our second involves taking on construction work that people disagree with. We approach this problem from three vantage points.
Send your questions to ethics@archpaper.com for consideration in a future column.
What do you do when you are asked to participate on a committee with which you disagree?
There are at least three ways to answer this question. You can accept it and keep your disagreement, accept it but try to change or improve what you disagree with, or refuse to address it and accept the consequences. However, if you are a government-licensed professional with a license to protect the public, you cannot actually put your client’s interests ahead of those of the public. So the first question you should ask yourself in this situation is: Is this in the public interest?
In answer to the original question, you might have a different answer if you were a partner deciding whether to accept a commission or an employee deciding to accept an assignment. As a partner, your decisions impact the financial well-being of your company’s employees. Like most moral dilemmas, pros and cons are not always black and white. You should discuss these issues with your colleagues and start discussing the complexities of ambiguous ethical situations, as we do in this column.
The Hancock Building provides a good example for corporate partners to address this issue. According to the City of Boston, the scale of the project is illegal, and the American Institute of Architects considers its impact on Copley Square to be highly unethical. In fact, I.M. Pei abandoned the commission, but his partner Henry Cobb was willing to accept it because he was worried that other architects who cared less about Boston would accept the commission and do less than his firm work.
Many architects have a similar thought: “If I refuse the commission, someone else will do it anyway, so I might as well try to make it the best I can.” This rationale, while common, is highly problematic, and It only makes sense if you think the goal of the architecture is to be better than the competition. If we think differently and have ongoing, lively conversations about ethical issues, as a profession we can have a greater social impact. But we don’t have a coherent profession with clear principles. If Cobb knew no one else would accept the commission, he might refuse.
In comparison, we can look at how the California medical community handles the death penalty. When the state planned executions, no doctors were willing to use the chemicals, so they had to suspend the entire law, and there have been no executions in California since. This is a perfect example of collective action, not in the sense of organized action, but as a contract between colleagues that then produces collective action.
After years of hard work, the Association of Architects, Designers, and Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) convinced the AIA to ban its members from designing solitary confinement, torture, or execution facilities. But our industry as a whole has yet to reach agreement on these important human rights issues. Our lack of an institution or organization to sponsor these conversations and collective action is problematic and critical to the issues we raise in this column.
If you could imagine a system where architects all agreed that there were things we shouldn’t do, then all clients would know that they had to be consistent with the values of the profession in order to design and build something. It is reminiscent of what the sociologist Talcott Parsons wrote, who said that the role of the profession is not to give clients what they want but to act as a buffer between the client’s wishes and the interests of society By. Architects have an obligation to act as buffers: to educate clients and raise their aspirations for what constitutes a beautiful and just built environment.
For employees, the problem is different: on the one hand, it is simpler because of the removal of responsibility for company finances; but it is more difficult because of the personal instability of salaried (or contract) workers. If a firm’s partner takes on a morally or ethically ambiguous project and her employees all say, “No, I’m not involved in this project,” then that’s likely to be the response the partner has to give to the client. The people doing the actual work in the company have the power in this ethical debate!
One example was an architect who accepted a commission from the Middle East and his client refused to work with women on the design team because of their interpretation of Islam. When the architect discussed the issue with his staff, the men and women in the office said they would not follow the rules, so the partners rejected the commission. A Middle Eastern firm ultimately completed the project, so the challenge of rejecting the commission is that architecture, as a global practice, has architects from all over the world for clients to choose from. Although this protest failed, it did not go unnoticed. It changes the conversation about withheld labor in our industry. Immediate failure does not mean or mean long-term failure; change happens slowly and dialectically. When that architect discussed with his staff what to do, it was morally right.
Most ethics are best achieved through dialogue with colleagues and as many different voices as possible. Without collective dialogue, ethics does not exist. If you were the only person on the planet, you wouldn’t do anything immoral. While ethics is not consensus, it begins with hard and honest group conversations—conversations we seek to further in our profession with this column.
Which brings us back to the original question: it’s not just about accepting or undertaking a commission that you personally disagree with, but, ideally, also about what professionals think we should or shouldn’t do. These complex choices should not be made alone but with the help of professional ethical guidelines that deal with such socially significant issues. Likewise, this column serves as a reminder to the American Institute of Architects (the AIA’s Code of Ethics has evolved over time in dialogue with its members but still fails to address social issues affecting the public) or other organizations to take this action.
At the same time, while professional codes of ethics can be helpful, and we think they are necessary, the worst thing you can do is work in a job that separates you from yourself and from what you feel you are here to do on this earth. Anything your profession tells you to do that you don’t believe is untenable, if not unethical.
Send your questions to ethics@archpaper.com for consideration in a future column.
Victoria Beach is a faculty member at Harvard University’s Ethics Center and wrote the textbook for GSD’s first ethics course. She has owned her own architectural practice for nearly 30 years and was recently elected to public office in California.
Peggy Deamer is Professor Emeritus at the Yale School of Architecture and a founding member of the Architecture Lobby.She has been working in construction for 45 years and is the author construction and labor.
Tom Fisher is a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Design and director of the Minnesota Design Center. He served as the dean of the college and also served as the ” progressive architecture magazine for 14 years.
The views of our authors do not necessarily reflect the views of our staff or consultants architect’s newspaper.
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