Abstract

Ethical issues of architecture arise relative to its processes of creation, its reception and use, and its maintenance and life cycle—all as a function of architecture’s aesthetic or artistic character and values, though not exclusively so. While autonomism and moralism in architecture are much debated, the focus is generally on architecture as art, to the neglect of architectural aesthetics beyond architecture as art. Moreover, as an artform deeply integrated with other, nonart pursuits and domains, architecture generates more complex ethical issues than do artforms that solely count as art. Harder ethical questions, then, include how—in light of such complexities—one may identify morally warranted conditions for architectural works and for gauging their propriety or relevant preferences and, as conceptually prior, what the nature is of moral agency, objects, actions, obligations, properties, virtues, and values in architecture.