The Ethics of Architecture

The Ethics of Architecture offers a short and approachable scholarly introduction to a timely question: In a world of increasing population density, how does one construct habitable spaces that promote social goals like health, happiness, environmental friendliness, and justice? What are the special ethical obligations assumed by architects? Because their work creates the basic material conditions that make all other human activity possible, architects and their associates in building enjoy vast influence on how we all live, work, play, worship, and think. With this influence comes tremendous, and not always examined, responsibility. This book addresses the range of ethical issues that architects face, with a broad understanding of ethics. Beyond strictly professional duties—transparency, technical competence, fair trading—lie more profound issues that move into aesthetic, political, and existential realms. Does an architect have a duty to create art, if not always beautiful art? Should an architect feel obliged to serve a community and not simply the client? Is social justice a possible orientation for architectural practice? Is there such a thing as feeling compelled to “shelter being” in architectural work? By taking these usually abstract questions into the region of physical creation, the book attempts a concrete reformulation of “architectural ethics” as a matter of deep reflection on the architect’s role as both citizen and caretaker. Thinkers and makers discussed include Le Corbusier, Martin Heidegger, Lewis Mumford, Rem Koolhaas, Jane Jacobs, Arthur Danto, and John Rawls. An added preface addresses architectural issues arising during and after the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

The Zossima Principle as an ideal for media ecology praxis

This article develops the Zossima Principle as an ideal for the study of media ecology praxis. As such, I suggest that the Zossima Principle holds the potential to inform what we study as media ecologists and how we engage the world with practical responses to the exigencies and social issues arising from our analyses. I set the Zossima Principle in dialectical tension with Morris Berman’s (2000, 2013) articulation of the monastic option. I argue that Berman’s monastic option does not maintain the potential for substantive cultural rejuvenation. The Zossima Principle, based on the exhortations of Dostoyevsky’s elder monk from the novel The Brothers Karamazov, embraces a philosophy of existentialized love. This article demonstrates striking parallels between the ideas developed in the Zossima Principle and the writings of Lewis Mumford. I conclude with a series of pragmatic steps we can take as media ecologists, if we allow ourselves to take seriously the arguments underscoring this ideal.

The Alchemist Architect

This chapter focuses on the growing interest of many artists, architects, and designers regarding the exploration of handmade materials. Today, designers focus on gaining experience with new materials. These experimental material investigations for discovering the nature of the material can be placed in the intersection of homo faber, human production, and technology. The transition between alchemists, artisans and technicians has been expressed by Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford, and Jose Ortega y Gasset. What kind of transformation can these contemporary quests in design create and what experiences are involved in the practices and theoretical integration of the senses in material encounters and produced by haptic experience? The aim is to figure out the possible outcomes of this inquiry of designers through the act of making and how these experiences might contribute to future design pedagogies in architecture and interior design. Therefore, deriving from experimental approaches in working with unknown materials, this chapter explores the need for these experimental investigations.

URBAN CRISIS: Produk Kegagalan Urbanisasi di Indonesia

According to Lewis Mumford, "no one is satisfied with the current form of the city". This paper explains how crises occur in cities. The purpose of this study is to look at the crisis that is happening in urban areas using the method of study of literature. The theory used is the risk society of Ulrich Beck. The crisis that occurred in the city is not merely focus on economic problems, such as poverty, unemployment, homeless people and street children. Urban crises also include security, environmental, energy and social aspects. As for the factors causing the crisis, this paper sees it from an internal and external perspective. Internally, the urban crisis is caused by the developing of the city itself. A city that acts as a market has attracted producers and consumers to come. Producers approach the suburbs to reduce production costs because they are close to markets and human resources. Meanwhile, consumers come to the city because of the larger selection of goods and they also can get the best prices. Developing cities cause industrial estates to no longer be on the outskirts of cities, but many in the city center. Obviously, this causes problems and crises in the middle of a dense urban population. The crisis was also caused by external factors, namely relations with the village. The failure of development in the village caused by the choice of fragmented agricultural land due to the distribution of inheritance and agrarian violations so that land is owned by peasants. These conditions require villagers to urbanize. A city that has developed physically and has a population implicating in slum areas, squatters, green open space crises and low social sensitivity. Menurut Lewis Mumford, “tidak ada satu pun orang yang puas dengan wujud kota saat ini”. Penulis setuju dengan pernyataan tersebut, sehingga tulisan ini berusaha menjelaskan bagaimana krisis terjadi di perkotaan. Daya tarik kota begitu menghipnotis masyarakat, hal tersebut tidak terlepas dari keberhasilan pembangunan kota. Akan tetapi, di sisi lain kota mengalami yang disebut krisis. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah ini melihat krisis yang terjadi di perkotaan dengan menggunakan metode studi literatur-literatur. Adapun teori yang dipakai adalah masyarakat resiko dari Ulrich Beck. Krisis yang terjadi diperkotaan tidak hanya berbicara terkait masalah ekonomi, misal; kemiskinan, pengangguran, gelandangan dan anak jalanan. Krisis perkotaan juga meliputi krisis keamanan, lingkungan, energi dan sosial. Adapun faktor penyebab terjadinya krisis, dalam tulisan ini melihatnya pada sudut pandang internal dan eksternal. Pada faktor internal, krisis perkotaan disebabkan oleh kota itu sendiri yang berkembang. Kota yang berperan sebagai market, telah menarik produsen dan konsumen untuk datang. Produsen mendekat ke pinggiran kota untuk memperkecil biaya produksi karena dekat dengan pasar dan SDM. Sedangkan konsumen, datang ke kota karena banyak pilihan barang dan mendapatkan harga terbaik. Kota yang berkembang menyebabkan kawasan industri tidak lagi berada di pinggiran kota, akan tetapi banyak di pusat kota. Tentu ini menyebabkan masalah dan krisis di tengah penduduk kota yang padat. Krisis juga disebabkan oleh faktor eksternal, yakni relasi dengan desa. Kegagalan pembangunan di desa, kepemilihan lahan pertanian yang terfragmentasi akibat pembagian warisan dan pelanggaran-pelanggaran agrarian sehingga tanah dimiliki oleh petani berdasi. Kondisi tersebut menuntut penduduk desa untuk urbanisasi. Kota yang berkembang secara fisik dan jumlah penduduk berimplikasi slum area, penghuni-penghuni liar, krisis ruang terbuka hijau dan rendahnya kepekaan sosial.

Re-Reading the Machine Age: The ‘Audacious Modernity’ of the Techno-Bathetic Avant-Gardes

Chapter 2 explores how the proto-Dada artists of New York City proposed new ways of reading Machine Age America. Rather than invoking the power and efficiency of its machines and infrastructure, it argues that these vanguardists emphasised their delicacy, intricacy and fragility. Sections one and two detail the divergent aesthetics of two key modernist formations: the technological sublime of Alfred Stieglitz and his ‘Young American’ literary acolytes (including Waldo Frank and Lewis Mumford); and the techno-bathetic proto-Dadaists of the magazine 291, exemplified by Francis Picabia. The third section analyses the techno-bathetic practices of Marcel Duchamp in his New York Dada phase, as well as crucial responses to that work by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Mina Loy and William Carlos Williams. The fourth section focuses on the work of the Baroness, who interrogated the implications of socio-technics for problems of sex, gender and nationality. Finally, section five focuses on Loy’s poetry, fashion designs, inventions, and technicities; for the first time, it unveils her invention ‘verrovoile’, a translucent thermoplastic she profiled in a previously unknown 1929 newspaper article. The chapter argues that, through her poetry and inventions, Loy helped introduce the concept of the artist-engineer to transatlantic discourse in the mid-1920s.

Human and technology in the philosophy of Lewis Mumford

The subject of this research is the problem of technicalization of human nature studied in the works of an American historian, sociologists and philosopher of technology Lewis Mumford.  The Western philosophical tradition marks the existence of the traditional juxtaposition of technology and nature, technology and human. The impact of scientific and technological progress upon human mind and his corporeal nature is incontestable. However, the evolution of technology itself reflects the intentions of development of intellectual culture. Thus, technology is initially ambivalent with regards to human, producing disintegrating and organizing influence simultaneously. Technology separates human from nature and forms new subject and value systems. The article applies a descriptive method of research, gives characteristics to the most significant works of L. Mumford, as well as utilizes hermeneutic approach and method of structural analysis of his writings. The author’s main contribution consists in versatile analysis of L. Mumford’s interpretations of the philosophical problems of technology. Multiple existing research emphasize his negative evaluation of technology: he correlates process of technicalization with dehumanization, militarization and strengthening of totalitarian means of social organization. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that throughout his path, L. Mumford has substantially modified the context of studying technology: in his early work “Technology and Civilization (1934) Mumford optimistically determines the modern “neo-technological” type of social development. The conclusions are made on the sociocultural and socioeconomic meaning of technology, with focus on the anthropological problem of the impact of technology upon human nature.

Hacia una teoría crítica de la razón algorítmica

El artículo parte de la revisión teórica de la literatura sobre los algoritmos para trazar los ejes clave de una teoría crítica. En la dicotomía entre la descripción del mundo, por medio de los macrodatos, y la prescripción de comportamientos preestablecidos una vez analizados los big data, la razón algorítmica puede dar lugar a sistemas cerrados de comunicación que simplifiquen y estandaricen nuestras prácticas. Conforme a una metodología ensayística y filosófica que vincula forma y contenido de la crítica, las dimensiones para una teoría reflexiva sobre los algoritmos se corresponden con tres vertientes fundamentales: a) la abstracción, el cifrado matemático y el cálculo, b) la pasividad inducida ante algoritmos performativos y c) el poder invisible e impersonal. En consecuencia, la principal aportación del artículo radica en la discusión de las constricciones que nacen al abrigo de las tecnologías algorítmicas. El énfasis en una teoría crítica de la tecnología se hace tanto más pertinente a medida que los dispositivos digitales se normalizan como intermediadores en diferentes campos de la actividad humana. Se trata, pues, de problematizar la tecnología como base de comportamientos cotidianos y decisiones, desde una perspectiva teórica. En este sentido, el artículo pretende continuar el enjuiciamiento de la tecnología de autores tales como los pertenecientes a la Escuela de Frankfurt o, en el campo específico de la tecnología, Lewis Mumford y Jacques Ellul, así como críticos actuales del digitalismo, tales como Cathy O’neil, Evgeny Morozov o Nicholas Carr.