Dewey's pragmatist aesthetics attempts to reconcile the tension between public and private demands on the work of art that has troubled contemporary architecture since the passing of modernism. As a public philosophy of art it holds tremendous promise; but architects will likely find Dewey's characterization of the individual encounter with the work of art less satisfactory. This suggests that Dewey's pragmatism may have over-committed to a singular aesthetic interpretation of the world, lacking the philosophical distance sought by architects. However, pragmatism (...) might inform the reconciliation project as a helpful aesthetic outlook. (shrink)

The sustainability movement, currently gathering considerable attention from architects, derives much of its moral foundation from the theoretical initiatives of environmental ethics. How is the value of sustainability to mesh with architecture’s time-tested values? The idea that an ethic of sustainability might serve architects’ efforts to reground their practices in something that opposes consumer values of the marketplace has intuitive appeal and makes a certain amount of sense. However, it is far from obvious that the sustainability movement provides a strong (...) enough conceptual framework for an entire designphilosophy. This issue is complicated by two different sustainable design outlooks which parallel two conceptions of environmental ethics: the practical and the radical. Neverthleless, sustainability need not resort to the philosophical excess of its radical branch to help foster a new public-spiritedness. (shrink)

Dewey's pragmatist regard for the place of rules in moral deliberation occupies a middle ground between the rejection of rules found in Jonathan Dancy's moral particularism and full scale subsumptivism of actions to rules. Concerning the authority rules should play in one's moral thinking, however, Dewey is closely aligned with the particularists: he rejects their authority over individual cases. This essay takes Dewey's naturalistic approach to the derivation of rules to argue that in some cases it is ultimately beneficial to (...) allow rules to occupy a place of authority in moral thinking. (shrink)

Silos, mills, sheds, and refineries: Across most of Oklahoma’s gently rolling prairie countryside these artistically uninformed structures often provide the only vertical punctuation to a landscape otherwise made of mostly horizontal lines. One of the pleasures of teaching architecture here is to participate in the intellectual progress of students—many of whom hail from rural areas and have traveled little—as they eventually come to regard these structures with much the same admiration expressed for them some eighty years ago by Le Corbusier (...) in his rallying polemic against the arbitrariness of nineteenth-century architecture: Vers Une Architecture.1 Like Le Corbusier, many of my students would have their work .. (shrink)

We are living through a radicalized, unsettling moment in Western politics as what seemed the drift of history towards democracy, greater individual freedoms, increased fairness and greater international cooperation is at least temporarily reversed. As we finished production of this issue, ISPA was also concluding its 4th Biennial conference at a most overtly political venue— The United States Air Force Academy—which is simultaneously a Mecca for modern architecture lovers as well as an indisputable seat of the projection of American power. (...) This fact was underscored as our philosophical discussions were occasionally interrupted by fighter jets buzzing the campus. Thus, it should make sense that even in the slow-moving world of applied philosophy, the times would lead us to produce this most overtly political issue. This development was not by design but rather by accretion—but one we eventually embraced as a legitimate extension of the exploration of the conjunction of architecture and philosophy. (shrink)

The sustainability movement, currently gathering considerable attention from architects, derives much of its moral foundation from the theoretical initiatives of environmental ethics. How is the value of sustainability to mesh with architecture’s time-tested values? The idea that an ethic of sustainability might serve architects’ efforts to reground their practices in something that opposes consumer values of the marketplace has intuitive appeal and makes a certain amount of sense. However, it is far from obvious that the sustainability movement provides a strong (...) enough conceptual framework for an entire designphilosophy. This issue is complicated by two different sustainable design outlooks which parallel two conceptions of environmental ethics: the practical and the radical. Neverthleless, sustainability need not resort to the philosophical excess of its radical branch to help foster a new public-spiritedness. (shrink)

In a profile in the November, 2012 issue of the magazine Architect, activist-architect Raphael Sperry, a founder of the group Architects Planners & Designers for Social Responsibility discussed his petition to amend the AIA’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct to include a prohibition on “the design of spaces intended for long-term solitary isolation and execution.”1 This issue is both serious and timely. It deserves contemplative attention before any action is taken. The purpose of this letter is to provide the (...) the architecture profession a condensed analysis of the possible justification for taking the action Mr. Sperry advocates. After review and consideration, we are persuaded that Mr. Sperry’s proposal does merit action by the AIA. (shrink)