106th ACSA Annual Meeting

Product / Process:  Balancing the Deliverables in Academic Design/Build   
Topic Chair: Chad Schwartz, Kansas State University

Ecological Ethics (and the Role of the Architect)
Topic Chairs: Michael A. McClure, University of Louisiana – Lafayette & Ursula Emery McClure, Louisiana State University

“…in making war with nature, there was risk of loss in winning” – John McPhee

Some of the most pressing ‘ethical challenges of architecture in a world in flux’ might be those surrounding the role of the built environment in climate change.  Architects have historically been primarily involved in the design and construction for human occupation. Our presumption has been that humans are the primary occupants.  The field of environmental ethics has allowed us to extend the scope of our ethical considerations to non-human inhabitants and systems.  Sometimes, we might offer the most effective solution to humanity when the primary occupant or operation of our design is not human.  With this expanded understanding, we have been able to operate more effectively in our ‘world in flux’

‘Climate change is one of the major challenges of our time. From shifting weather patterns that threaten food production, to rising sea levels that increase the risk of catastrophic flooding, the impacts of climate change are global in scope and unprecedented in scale’  United Nations Global Issues Overview, (http://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/global-issues-overview/)

An ecological ethic is one that considers the inter relationship of all organisms to their environment.  If “in practicing architecture, an architect’s primary duty is to protect the public’s health, safety, and welfare” (Rule 1, NCARB Rules of Conduct) then what are the ethical boundaries of design when the human public is not the primary user? What is the architect’s responsibility when the most effective solution to a human social cultural issue is to engage a broader inclusive ecology?  What is the architect’s responsibility to natural systems and ecologies as ‘clients’?  How does the architect (human) engage and serve a client (non-human) that has no voice or means to communicate needs? Is it unethical for an architect to have a non-human client, in other words, is it best left to others, ecologists, wildlife management, scientists, civil engineers, etc.?

“…The environment is therefore not a system in which to dissolve architecture. On the contrary, it is the most important material from which to develop the project.” Vittorio Gregotti

This session invites papers and projects that discuss and help us expand the role of ecological ethics in architecture on our pedagogies, histories, practices, and designs.

Ethics, Development and Donald Trump 
Topic Chair: Thomas Fisher, University of Minnesota

Ethics has rarely received as much attention in the press and as much discussion among the public as it has with the 2016 election and the activities of the new administration. This has happened, in part, because Donald Trump, as both a developer and now as the U.S. president, has triggered many ethical conflicts ranging from his not paying the designers and contractors of his development projects to his retaining ownership of his organization, which stands to profit from his being in the White House.

Trump’s example highlights the ethical dilemmas that surround architectural practice, having to do with virtues such as fairness, courage, and honesty. His rise to power raises ethical questions surrounding the social contract, relating to the responsibilities of the state to citizens and vice versa. And his policies beg questions about utilitarian ethics, often focusing on the good of a few rather than on the greatest number of people.

What does Trump’s presidency bode for architecture and cities, for housing and urban development? What does his development practices suggest for how we teach ethics in architectural education? And what can the architectural community do to address the ethical challenges that Trump’s organization and his administration continue to generate?

Behind all such questions lies an overarching one: how political should architecture be? Should architecture remain politically neutral, focusing on the technical aspects of design and buildings, or should architecture, by virtue of its social, economic, and environmental affects, embody and engage political – and ethical – dilemmas.

This session will explore these and related topics. It will seek papers and projects that address the various ways that faculty have dealt with political and ethical controversies, have handled disagreements over what to do with those problems, and have explored political and ethical questions as part of coursework.

Architecture of the other 99%?  – Power, Economy, and the Dilemma of History 
Topic Chair: Ole W. Fischer, University of Utah

On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Instrumentality for Architecture 
Topic Chairs: Gary Huafan He & Skender Luarasi, Yale University

1. From the very beginning of their education architectural students are trained to use certain design instruments: sketching, orthographic and projective drawing, model making, and digital modeling and fabrication. However, historically there has always been an ambivalent relationship and critical distance between technics and its emphasis in architectural production. It is well known that “only ten days or so after distributing the Modulor tape measures to his assistants, Le Corbusier forbade their use.” On at least one occasion he stated: “Le Modulor, je m’en fiche (I don’t give a damn about the Modulor.”) Do traces of such ambivalence still exist in the contemporary architect’s relationship to technics? Should such ambivalence exist? And if yes, how should it exist given today’s historically unprecedented advances in digital speed?
2. In his seminal “Toward a Critique of Architectural Ideology” in 1968 Manfredo Tafuri sketched two possibilities for architectural form: it could either become an “instrument of social equilibrium” or a “science of sensations.” This ‘pessimistic’ reading grants architecture only two roads – to turn inward toward a tragic ‘autonomy’, or become an unresisting instrument of capital. Though much has changed since Tafuri’s critical essay, it is worth asking again today in what ways architecture indeed acts as an instrument in our society? How does such instrument function in a global milieu and in our experiences of it? How does the change in the modes of (architectural) production – more specifically the aesthetics or politics of software as distinct from that of standardization and factory machines – challenge (or update) Tafuri’s either/or hegemony?
3. These two questions (or modalities) lead to a third: what is the instrumentality of the architect? What powers still remain with the architect to critically affect the world given the speed of architectural production enabled by new technologies and the shift in scale of design projects from that of singular buildings to entire cities? What new abilities does the architect gain from new instruments, and to what degree might such abilities become themselves instrumentalized by others?

We seek papers that critically investigate the power as well as pitfalls of instrumentality. The questions posited above aim to encourage critical reflections on our own technological, economic and social milieu today. How does an unbridled digitalization of technique and increasing globalization of economy bear on our own discipline – architecture – and how might it be contributing to an ecology of instrumentalization, which has thus far been accepted uncritically, or simply overlooked. The contributions could be historiographical, theoretical, or design oriented.

 Educating for Hubris or Humility?
Topic Chair: Kevin Mitchell, American University of Sharjah

Canon I of The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct state that members should, “[…] respect and help conserve their natural and cultural heritage while striving to improve the environment and the quality of life within it” and “[…] uphold human rights in all their professional endeavors.” Few would likely oppose these ambitions, but many may be at a loss when trying to translate the obligations into concrete action. When architects practice in contexts that are not “theirs” the tensions inherent in the obligations become apparent, as do the implicit assumptions that all practice remains local. Stating that architects should help conserve “their” cultural heritage is limiting if the cultural context is not the architect’s own, and the compulsion to “uphold” human rights is a rather slippery formulation, especially without an explicit reference to documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Next Digital Turn: Identifying Inequalities 
Topic Chairs: Nicholas Senske & Shelby Elizabeth Doyle, Iowa State University

“These (computational) developments are either extolled as ‘exciting’, ‘new’ and ‘full of new freedoms and possibilities’ (by those most blissfully unconcerned that what is being so celebrated is but an extension of all that is oldest and most repressive in our political and corporeal history), or these are seen a posing an unavoidable or even welcome challenge to an already weakened or near-obsolete domain of cultural practice, namely the slow, grave, viscous world of matter.” – Sanford Kwinter, The Computational Fallacy, Thresholds

If we accept Mario Carpo’s dating of the digital turn as the year 1992 then there are barely twenty-five years of ‘digital’ and ‘computational’ pedagogy and practice upon which to reflect.  The effects of these developments are still being negotiated and understood but, for the most part, this has been a movement cast as uplifting and empowering. But is the digital turn missing a critical ethical narrative? Particularly in architecture, access to technology and knowledge about technology continue to be unevenly distributed, which can result in the perpetuation and intensification of existing inequalities in the discipline and in the built environment. The representation of those who create technology (as opposed to those who consume it) is recognized as a critical issue in STEM fields. It is also an issue within architecture, although the scholarship in this area is limited. Technology can help produce equality, but only if access to, and participation, in technology are first measured, discussed, and theorized.

Architecture’s disciplinary struggle for the ideal of equity – class, race, gender – is intrinsically tied to contemporary social, political, and economic milieus. The promise of technology as a medium is that it can allow an individual to be empowered in ways that are not pre-ordained by an institution – the state, the university, the discipline – and as such creates space for a multiplicity of voices to resonate within architectural discourse. This session asks: what actions, and by which actors, are necessary to redefine, redistribute, and rethink technological ethics in architecture, and in pursuit of a more just built environment?

Defining technological exclusions in architecture, providing theoretical rigor and context, and proposing methods for redistributing technological equity in pedagogy and practice are the goals of this session. This session does not endeavor to produce solutions, rather it aims to create and position the discourse necessary to ask precise questions about computational ethics and inequalities. The next digital turn, defined by inclusiveness and equity, begins here.

A Discipline Adrift? Teaching Architectural Ethics in Today’s World 
Topic Chairs: Paul W. Long & Chris L. Cosper, Ferris State University

Following the 2016 presidential election, Robert Ivy, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Executive Vice President and CEO, released a statement on behalf of the AIA and its membership pledging to work with the President Elect on his infrastructure goals for the country. This statement led to a swift and negative response from AIA members, and within a week, the AIA retracted its statement and apologized.

The controversy over this statement followed a similarly contentious 2015 statement addressing the ethics of designing spaces intended for killing; torture; or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The organization of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility had petitioned the AIA for more than two years, calling on the organization to enact a strict code of ethics to prohibit AIA members from designing buildings that violate human rights. The AIA responded in January 2015, saying it would take no action to address the participation of architects on projects intended to degrade, torture, or kill people. Instead, the AIA argued that its Code of Ethics already included the statement, “Members should uphold human rights in all their professional endeavors.”

Each of these statements raise questions concerning the nature of an architect’s ethical responsibility to the profession and society, but while these debates were held publically, they were limited to the ethics of practicing professionals and failed to address the ethical responsibility of the academy.

Pre-dating both statements, revisions to the NAAB Conditions for Accreditation from the previous (2009) version to the current (2014) version saw a notable change in the scope of ethical considerations required within accredited architecture degree programs. In the 2009 version, Student Performance Criteria (SPC) broadly considered an architect’s personal and professional ethical responsibility, and specifically covered “social, cultural, and political issues.” In addition to sound professional judgment, students were expected to demonstrate an understanding of their “community and social responsibility.”

In contrast, in the 2014 Conditions for Accreditation, the consideration of ethics is reduced to the context of the “exercise of professional judgment in architectural design and practice.” This narrows the realm of ethics in a way that may not be appropriate for the broader mission of the academy.

These changes, taken in the context of current political discourse and aforementioned AIA statements, raise questions regarding the ethical responsibility of the profession and responsibility of the academy to foster a broad understanding of ethics within architectural degree candidates.

This session seeks to stimulate a wide ranging discussion regarding architecture’s community, social, and professional responsibility. It more specifically asks what responsibility do educators have to promote a broad understanding of ethics. Does the AIA’s and NAAB’s narrowing of ethical considerations indicate that the discipline is morally adrift? And what, if anything, has architectural education given up by accepting a narrower definition of ethics?

This session invites essays, case studies, and projects that explore the role of ethics across an architectural curriculum and/or within a design pedagogy.

History and Theory as Methods of Ethical Engagement? 
Topic Chairs: Anna Gloria Goodman, Portland State University & Sharone Tomer, Virginia Tech

This panel will discuss how architectural history/theory coursework responds to ethical questions. In recent decades, questions of ethical engagement in architectural practice have been situated within architectural education primarily in two realms. First, professional practice coursework asks students to “do no harm” and to use legal tools to protect themselves and their clients from conflicts of interest, liability and risk. Second, design-build and community-focused studio courses allow students to engage with public clients and disadvantaged communities. In the first instance, ethical frameworks are applied to existing models of professional practice. In the latter, faculty ask students to experiment with project types and clients currently excluded from access to professional services. While both spheres of ethical education have their own potential and limits, in this session, we are interested in a realm of architectural education in which ethical questions have received relatively little (recent) attention: history/theory coursework.

The Ethics of Neo-Orientalist Architectural Production 
Topic Chair: Faysal Tabbarah, American University of Sharjah

Late 20th Century Western globalization is experiencing a rapid transformation. The vaulting into mainstream of a discourse around what a Post-Western condition means for geo-politics, socio-economics and nation-states has entered unchartered territory. In this Post-Everything condition, there seems to be one burning question: What next?

While these shifts signal geo-political and socio-economic changes, relevant architectural discourse is mostly absent in the West and elsewhere. In the non-Western world, it continues its centuries-old culturally violent status quo, characterized by either the reproduction of ill-fitting Western architectural practices that fail to acknowledge context or, to borrow from Gyan Prakash, propagate an essentialist pastiche. To overcome the problems arising from these attitudes, it is productive to look at contemporary architectural production in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) precisely because of the relationship between globalization and the economic shifts that propagated its rapid development.

Contemporary architectural production in MENA seems to propagate the two modes of production described above. This has increased with advances in technology, especially in digital design software and construction. These practices result in a wave of Neo-Orientalism that has re-emerged over the last thirty years. Edward Said, who coined the term Orientalism, described it as a pervasive European practice in the 18th and 19th centuries that aimed at othering and essentializing the Orient as a primitive object of control. The economic downturn of 2008 saw the export of Western practitioners across MENA, Asia, and South America. Coupling this influx with existing non-Western architectural modes of production that replaced a period of pioneering work during the mid-20th Century has resulted in the emergence of Neo-Orientalist architectural production. Examples of Neo-Orientalism in architecture include the reproductions of Umayyad minarets, domes, and the prevalence of Islamic patterns deployed on the facades of tall buildings, facilitated by the democratization of computational tools; images of desert dune formations have become the go-to inspiration on innumerable mood boards for nearly all contemporary curved structures in the Middle East.

These practices, coupled with the importing of Western curriculums, a dearth of historiography, and underfunded archiving threaten to erase decades of work by pioneering post-colonial architects. Thus, this session resists asking “what next?” but seeks to take a critical look at contemporary architectural production in the non-Western world vis-à-vis advances in technology to uncover an ethical way forward.

This session asks how do we ethically deploy Western digital design technologies and construction methodologies into non-Western contexts? What are possible ethical models of architectural education in non-Western societies? Is the propagation of Neo-Orientalist architectural production unethical, or must it be accepted as a byproduct of globalization? What new models of architectural production can arise from post-colonial societies resisting this wave of Neo-Orientalism? And because Neo-Orientalist architectural production is not unique to MENA, what similar struggles exist among other post-colonial architectural production?

This session invites projects, theoretical inquiries, teaching pedagogies, case-studies, historiographies and other forms of architectural production that seek to overcome essentialist attitudes and uncover ethical methodologies within the context of technology, vernacular material culture, and Neo-colonialism.

A Question of Leadership: The Citizen Architect and Public Interest Design 
Topic Chair: Kevin J. Singh, Louisiana Tech University

Samuel Mockbee defined the Citizen Architect as someone who focuses on the quality of life for all citizens. In his words: “The practice of architecture not only requires the active individual participation in the profession, but it also requires active civic engagement. The architect’s primary emotional connection should always be with place, and not just the superficial qualities of place, but the ethical responsibility of shaping the environment, of breaking up social complacency and energizing one’s community.” He sought to teach students values, that when practiced, would challenge the architecture profession with a deeper democratic purpose of inclusion.

The AIA defines the Citizen Architect as a practitioner that serves in public office or the civic realm. This architect serves the general public and the profession by advocating and supporting initiatives that enhance the quality of life in the communities they serve. In addition, the AIA made Public Interest Practices in architecture a priority by awarding the 2011 Latrobe Prize to further develop this research and provide a path for future practices.

In recent years, Public Interest Design practices have offered architecture graduates new ways to serve the public and place them in positions of initial decision to improve communities. This work is on the periphery of practice, but is migrating to the center of discourse in schools and leading firms. Public Interest Design harnesses the potential and energy of these graduates with the collaborative spirit of practitioners in allied fields who advocate for social, economic, and environmental design that addresses the collective public. The emergence of Public Interest Designers in relationship with the profession (including Citizen Architects) raises many questions for educators, emerging professionals, and practitioners:

• What are architecture schools currently doing to address social, economic, and environmental issues and prepare the future leaders of the profession?
• What methods and praxis are used to explore Public Interest Design in relationship with community needs?
• What new skills are needed to practice in the future, and how must the education of architecture students change to address these?
• What is the expanding role of the future architect? How do Citizen Architects align?
• How do we democratize design and serve all publics?

This session invites papers that focus on programs, practices, and projects that address these questions and expound upon current Public Interest Design/Citizen Architect pedagogical approaches in architecture schools and practices today and their speculative future impacts. Processes and methods, the integration of external research/data, and the impact of allied and discordant fields are of primary interest.

States of Disrepair / Acts of Repair 
Topic Chair: Sabir Khan, Georgia Institute of Technology

Neither Form Nor Place: The Case for Space 
Topic Chair: Thomas Forget, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Post-critical practitioners and educators strive to engage the lived-reality of the built environment, typically foregrounding performance and technology over form and ideology. This panel confronts a potential (and preventable) consequence of that aspiration: a deficit of spatial thinking applied to matters of organization and connectivity. The post-critical agenda privileges interdisciplinary engagement over disciplinary autonomy, and protagonists of the agenda tend to disparage “composition” as a tool of ideological formalism, often failing to reclaim modes of spatial composition with great potential for ethical and social engagement. Because the relationship between form and space is both causal and dialectical – because form and space, in a sense, create and limit each other – space may become a casualty of the turn against form.

The discourse on “place” further complicates the role of spatial composition in contemporary practice, as it contends that places belong to a privileged subset of spaces, and thereby implies that space in itself is lacking. In some instances, the distinction between place and space is merely semantic, as the design of place involves the calibration of spatial parameters; however, placemaking is more commonly aligned with the aestheticization of phenomenology and the instrumentalization of social science data, neither of which foregrounds spatial organization as a tool of engaged design.

The field of geography posits space as a socially produced environment that transcends built form, even as it acknowledges that space is inextricably regulated by form. According to Edward Soja, for example, an inherent “socio-spatial dialectic” orchestrates interactions between material and cultural systems. Looking beyond how our built environments look and perform, and beyond the methods that generate and fabricate them, geographers strive to uncover the ghosts in the machines – the spatial systems that catalyze and mediate, among other cultural forces, social justice and ethical awareness and behavior.

To discern how spatial thinking in that vein is compatible with the scale of architecture is perfectly suited to the post-critical agenda. As contemporary practitioners expand the traditional boundaries of design agency, there arises an opportunity to reconsider the form-space dialectic in a manner that lessens the import of form and upholds the value of composition as an organization strategy, as opposed to an aesthetic ideology. Composition understood as such becomes a political act, with the potential to grant designers newfound influence over the implementation and mediation of the power structures that regulate the built environment. According to Soja, a “spatial turn” is underway in a broad range of disciplines. This panel asks: how may the post-critical turn be understood as a parallel phenomenon that empowers the design professions, through their unique historical encounters with the form-space dialectic, to assume a more significant role in the production of the built environment?

The panel welcomes papers that address historical, theoretical, and/or practical perspectives on the role of ethically-informed spatial thinking in design education and practice. Especially welcome are papers that confront the scale of architectural design and/or blur the boundaries between the scales of architecture, urban design, and planning.

The First Hundred Days 
Topic Chair: Heather Flood, Woodbury University

“This was the Hundred Days; and in this period Franklin Roosevelt sent fifteen messages to Congress, guided fifteen major laws to enactment, delivered ten speeches, held press conferences and cabinet meetings twice a week, conducted talks with foreign heads of state, sponsored an international conference, made all the major decisions in domestic and foreign policy, and never displayed fright or panic and rarely even bad temper. His mastery astonished many who thought they had long since taken his measure.”  – Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Coming of the New Deal 1933-35

The first hundred days of Roosevelt’s presidency transformed the political landscape of the nation and the personal character of the president. The foundations of the New Deal were established and the urgency of the mission mandated vigorous action in leadership. The first hundred days are often the most productive days of a president’s time in office. Likewise, the first hundred days are potentially the most productive days of a student’s time in school. Uncertainty, not yet shaken-off through experience, breeds a willingness to think new thoughts. And optimism, not yet soured by defeat, breeds a willingness to try new things. The first semester of architecture school (14 weeks x 7 days = 98 days) has the capacity to transform the intellectual landscape and technical abilities of students at a rate that far exceeds all subsequent semesters.

For faculty, the uncontested atmosphere of the first hundred days is an ethical dilemma. At a time when the influence of the instructor is great and the power to dictate terms unquestioned, the knowledge imparted must be carefully considered.  This session seeks papers that explore the ethical dimension of foundation courses. In particular, this panel asks: Is the ‘foundation’ of architectural education technical or conceptual? What is the role of critical thinking for a disciplinary novice? What constitutes the foundation of architectural education outside of the studio context? Can the rare circumstances of foundation studies generate a new model for architectural education that can be applied to advanced studies? The objective of this session is to uncover models of teaching that engage the opportunities and challenges of beginning education with ethical precision. Historic and contemporary examples are welcome.

By Any Means Necessary 
Topic Chair: Britt Eversole, Syracuse University & Mireille Roddier, University of Michigan

Architectural ethics arises from a questionable presumption—that the obligations of the architect to the patron and, to a far lesser extent, the general public guide his or her decisions and actions. On the one hand, the instrumentalizing of means-end rationality under the client-based model of architectural ethics, which focuses on means rather than ends, absolves architects of ties to their clients: clients’ ends, actions, ethics, business ventures, policies, history, war crimes have little bearing on the architect’s ethics and practice. In this model, the architect has but one choice when faced with objectionable ends: to refuse to practice. On the other hand, by emphasizing means rather than ends, architectural ethics reify the present, no matter how objectionable it might be, as a condition to be accepted, negotiated and navigated. Moreover, they de facto obviate a myriad of activist actions that, even if they are effective, are clearly “unprofessional.” At the end of the day, architectural ethics tend to be far more focused on the insulation, maintenance and protection of the profession than on the consequences of architectural actions. In a culture of economic and racial inequity, environmental crises, community violence, religious exclusion and the erosion of civil rights, the problem of a pluralist, populist present isn’t a crisis of means—it’s a crisis of ends.

This session seeks papers that question the instrumental reasoning operative in architectural ethics. Rather than chart an ethics of disobedience—which would largely concern only minimizing the professional risk to the provocateur—we seek research papers that explore historical and contemporary examples of architectural activism that overturn means-end rationality by focusing on the consequences of actions rather than the actions themselves. Were the Situationists ethical in their pranks, stunts, vandalisms and plagiarisms? Were the Provos ethical when they subverted Amsterdam’s infrastructure? Was Raoul Wallenberg ethical when he violated domestic and international laws to forge identity papers for Jews to escape the Nazis? Were Columbia’s students ethical when they occupied campus buildings to stop the University’s opportunistic expansion into minority neighborhoods? Were architectural students ethical when they crashed the 1969 New England AIA Convention to protest the profession’s fuzzy ethics and to object to SOM’s projects in South Africa? Were Konrad Wachsmann and Antonin Raymond ethical when they designed German and Japanese houses to be built in the American desert in order to test the effectiveness of Allied bombs? Were the faculty of Yale ethical when they commissioned and forcibly gifted Claes Oldenberg’s Lipstick Ascending to the University? Or was the French Constitution of 1793 not ultimately most ethical in stating that, “When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people and for each portion of the people the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties?”