Do Architects have social Responsibility?

There are 100,000 trade and professional organizations in the U.S. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is one of them. Within AIA there are 264 regional and local "components" (chapters) with a total of 85,000 members. AIA is governed by a Board of Directors but there is also a Strategic Council, there are 21 Knowledge Communities, several Advocacy Leadership Teams and various ad-hoc groups on the national level and in most local components as well.  Not surprisingly, in such a complicated organizational structure it is hard to detect a clear mission. Non-architects typically have no clue what AIA stands for or what architects actually do, popular films with architects in leading roles notwithstanding. Only 2% of Americans ever sign a contract with an architect.

That reality of fragmentation and low impact can be juxtaposed with the reality that architects design a lot of stuff. About 41% of all energy in the US goes into buildings. Annually about 170,000

US Energy Information Administration

commercial buildings newly constructed (not counting renovations). The building industry represents a sizable element of the US economy and a large percentage of all commercial buildings have been designed by architects.  AIA leaders in Washington DC are trying to grapple with these two realities in a campaign they call "re-positioning" the organization. The goal of a larger public awareness of what architects do can only work if architects, in turn, exhibit more awareness of their public impact and, more importantly, of public needs.

Over the next twenty years, an area equal to a staggering 3.5 times the entire built environment of the U.S. will be redesigned, reshaped, and rebuilt globally.

Much of that work will come from architects. This volume alone makes it, indeed, plausible to assume that architects have a social responsibility.

Not many professional organizations, go back to 1857, but most consider it as their chief mission to care for their members. AIA has followed that tradition and over the decades has ensured that contracts aren't worded against architects' interests, that codes and regulations affecting buildings are reasonable, and that state licensing rules prevent non-architects from practicing architecture. In all of that AIA simply has the best interests of its flock in mind. 

But what about social responsibility? What about designing "a better world"?  AIA's activities in this arena are much less consistent and clear in spite of the 2030 Commitment (for more sustainable buildings).

The AIA 2030 Commitment is a growing national initiative that provides a consistent, national framework with simple metrics and a standardized reporting format to help firms evaluate the impact design decisions have on an individual project's energy performance. The profession can’t meet radical building energy use reduction targets one project at a time and architects are embracing the challenge at hand by thinking differently about sustainable design. (AIA website)

Independent of the policies of AIA, there always have been architects "on a mission" and not necessarily in the immature and egotistical way of Ayn Rand's "Fountainhead".  On a mission for good design, whatever that is, for access to good housing, for a healthy environment, for livable cities. With sustainability the mission only has become larger and wider in scale: Climate change, water shortage, social justice and universal access were added to the challenges.

It is easy to see how architects might be drawn to care about any of these topics, depending of their field of practice. An architect who designs hospitals may be drawn into matters that have to do with health care delivery, school architects have to know the pedagogy of whatever system they design for, urban designers care how cities function or to make delightful places. Sometimes the goals of the client is parallel with public interest, often not.

Not only if there is a conflict between client interest and public interest but also as a result of poor design and a lack of thinking beyond the immediate brief, even the smallest building can be an energy sink, a polluter and a blemish on the environment. As the architecture critic Aaron Betsky wrote in Architect:

I think the biggest, most overwhelming problem in architecture is how bad the vast majority of buildings—designed by licensed architects and constructed not just in this country, but also around the world—truly are. By bad, I mean that they are wasteful of our natural resources, both in their construction and their operation; that they imprison us in spaces that reinforce social separation and hierarchies and isolate us from the world; that they perpetuate existing power structures in everything from gender definitions to the uses of capital; that they make power, whether financial or political, real and difficult to tear down; and, finally, that they are ugly, numbing to the eye, mind, and soul.

Since clients and not architects call the shots, in most cases clients and not architects define the brief and the program and usually have the last word on design as well.  The question, then, remains how can architects be socially responsible?

If there were no conflict one would not need ethics. The issue of resolving conflicting interest in an ethical manner is familiar to many professions and in many professional curricula an excursion to Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinos, Hobbes and Kant is part of the professional education. Curiously, rarely so for architects.

“bad men... aim at getting more than their share of advantages, while in labor and public service they fall short of their share; and each man wishing for advantage to himself criticizes his neighbor and stands in his way; for if people do not watch it carefully the common weal is soon destroyed. The result is that they are in a state of faction, putting compulsion on each other but unwilling themselves to do what is just.” 
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

Most widely known may be the "Oath of Hippocrates" for physicians. Less known is another figure of antiquity, Vitruvius, who wrote "Ten Books about Architecture" (De Architectura).  What Hippocrates and Vetruvious have in common is that back in their times social sciences, natural sciences, theology and philosophy were all pretty much one package, and all were seen to have a strong social and ethical dimension.

But eventually science, philosophy and applied sciences (engineering) all went their own ways and professionals were lulled by a sense of impartiality and value free science until modernity, the industrial revolution and especially the invention of the atom bomb and its specific moral conundrum shook scientists up. This was famously highlighted by J. Robert Oppenheimer who, before becoming a physicist, had attended years of Ethical Culture School.

Architects had discovered a broader public interest as part of the optimism that flowed from the technological revolution. Good mass housing became briefly a field of architectural exploration from Loos to Corbusier. (See Vienna social housing). After WWII came the decades of consumption, commodification and dispersal and the ethics conundrum of splitting the atom faded into the background. Specialists once again shrunk into their specialty niches where they were regarded more as a technical utility than anything philosophical. Architects were no exception. It was only with the growing awareness of a new global threat, climate change, that the morality of what we do moved once more into focus and professions dusted off their "codes of conduct."

AIA's  Code of Conduct explicitly spells out "public interest" and "the environment" as the architect's obligations. Today AIA organizes these obligations under the term "Advocacy". On the AIA website we see this reference to public interest obligations:

For more than 150 years, the members of the American Institute of Architects have worked to advance our quality of life through design. From designing the next generation of energy-saving buildings to making our communities healthier and more vibrant, from helping neighborhoods rebuild after disasters to exporting American design know-how to the rest of the world, architects turn dreams and aspirations into reality. (AIA website)

Architects are well equipped to consider the environment, man-made and natural. Architects think about the relationship of the two more than almost anybody. The smallest house needs to be placed carefully either in nature or against other structures. "Place making" is an important skill and can be applied to natural or man-made settings. The best works of architecture are those who create synergy in their setting by enhancing the surroundings and in turn being enhanced by them. Many good architects are doing a great job at maximizing public benefits while giving their clients what they need but too often architecture is a contributor to pollution, environmental degradation, energy waste and even outright ugliness. Or good architecture occurs in a bad society, posing an ethical conflict.

Rem Koolhaas offered an explicitly political rationale for his CCTV building in Beijing, claiming that what is, in effect, the ministry of propaganda (in a country without a free press) is actually a likely conduit to a more democratic flow of information, citing its broadcasts in English. While this disingenuous contention is typical Koolhaasian tightrope-walking naughtiness, it can be difficult to distinguish what pushes boundaries and what defends them. Are there societies in which one should never work? (from Architectural Record)

In the light of climate change, people around the world begin to ask themselves if the commodification of everything in the name of convenience, consumption and profit has come at too high a price. Ironically those who suffer the most from the consequences of pollution, resource depletion, droughts and energy waste participate the least in the conveniences. This is a fundamental ethics issue for everyone, not only architects. But architects are curious cogs in the bigger machinery with their relatively small number and obscure role on the one side and the huge amount of stuff they design on the other. Architects are good examples of the fact that knowledge and information alone will not make a better world unless there are ethics associated with it and better also some power.

AIA Code of  Ethics 2012

There is something special in the way architects participate in production that may present a special opportunity for ethical behavior to be possible. Architects are one of the very few professions in which the triangle of "independent" agents, specifically the client, designer and producer is still intact. Often this particular project by project coming together of these agents is seen as an anachronism that spells doom for the profession for the unlikeliness that this separation of design and production could survive in the world of buildings when it has been abolished almost everywhere else. Just note how industrial design and production is almost always owned by one entity who often is also the one who commissions a project and then puts it on the market. But for buildings it is still common that "owners", architects and builders are all independent entities that collaborate and contract on a case by case basis.

This small distance between the owner and architect may just be the space in which social responsibility can unfold no matter that the architect is obligated to the owner by contract. In fact, that there is a bit of daylight between owner and architect that puts the architect sometimes in a mitigating role more than an agent's role is also highlighted in the basic AIA contract language, especially for the phase of services during construction where an architect has to not only abide like any other profession by all the codes and regulations (presumably the codification of public interest) but has to also consider the contractor's interests.

This traditional somewhat old fashioned role of the architect may well be a harbinger of a postindustrial society in which traditional employment and industrial production diminish and where independent services and knowledge and information production outpace material production. The current economic order that tends to short-change public interest may indeed slowly shift towards an order in which the common good once again has a higher priority. Architects should be leaders in that trend.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
edited by Ben Groff, JD
Last updated 8/3/15   10:30h

The motivation to the article came from a two day conference in Denver where the AIA "Knowledge Communities" met (I chair the Regional and Urban design Community) to exchange strategies and experiences and discuss policy with the AIA Leadership.

Related articles on this blog:
What is the architect's Kodak Moment?


Other links
Architectural Record: The Architect's Dilemma: When to say No
AIA Policy Document