c.

Environmental Issues
While perhaps always present in some measure, the ethical dimensions of architecture
have never been as public and as apropos to the civic and political climate as in the early
21st century. Warwick Fox sees this situation as mainly the result of increasing
environmental problems and a concern with the built environment as a heretofore
neglected aspect of environmental ethics (2000, 1–12). Fox is partly right, but to see the
relation between architecture and ethics exclusively in terms of environmental ethics, as
commonly understood, is too narrow. For one thing, drawing on forms of historical,
theoretical and practical (also professional) knowledge, architecture, more than most
other humanities disciplines, is concerned with multiple conceptions of and concerns for
the environment. Viewed as subjects of philosophical inquiry, distinctions between
“architecture” and the “built environment,” and between either of these terms and
“nature” or “the natural environment,” beg for ontological and epistemological
elucidation.
Many of the philosophical concerns about architecture may be seen as a subset or
variant of concerns for the built environment. They tend to arise in a cultural sphere,
bound by interpretative traditions, entailing the formative concepts, historicity and
rhetorical conventions, of the discipline. The primary function of the built environment
seems to be to provide for habitation and the requisites of life. The question thus arises
as to whether this primary function takes precedence over the aesthetic functions of
architecture, specifically expectations for its artistry or meaning. Should what seems to
be the primary function of the built environment to provide for habitation and the
requisites of life take precedence over the aesthetic functions of architecture, specifically
expectations for its artistry or meaning?

Moreover, the challenges architects and allied design professionals (particularly

planners and urban designers) face in responding to demands for environmentally
sustainable buildings with reduced energy consumption and lower carbon emissions,
and for cities with greater resilience to global climate change, raise additional
philosophical and ethical issues that Vitruvius and his annotators could hardly have
imagined. Many of these raise questions about the meaning and scope of sustainability.
Is it a matter of science and building technology or behavior—or both? Can buildings be
designed sustainably in societies geared for endless growth and consumption? Can a city
be made resilient to environmental disaster if this requires the pre-emptive destruction
of neighborhoods in vulnerable areas—and possibly worsened levels of social injustice
and inequality that may result?

While it may be assumed these concerns and issues have only appeared at the beginning
of the 21st century, there are broader, longstanding and overlapping conceptual and
practical contexts for locating them historically. In histories of ideas bearing on
philosophy and environment (also nature), for instance, (Pratt et al 1999), one learns of
the importance of arguments for the uniqueness of living species based on the
geographic regions and climates they inhabit. In this regard, today’s environmentalists
can be seen as developing thoughts expressed by natural theologians or geographers like
Alexander Humboldt (1769-1859) or systemic botanists like John Hutton Balfour (1808-
1884) who described life as a process emerging from interactions between living beings
and their surroundings.
Humboldt, Balfour, Darwin, and others contributed to the scientific formulation of
ecology as well as spatio-temporal frameworks whereby newly established facts of
biological existence could also be used to describe urban societies and environments.
Arguably, these frameworks contributed to interests in vernacular architecture and the
model of “the primitive hut” (Vidler 1987) as these were interpreted as manifesting links
between building forms, patterns of human settlement, and distinctive eras.
Advancements in building technology over the course of the 19 th and 20th centuries,
particularly in the areas of sanitation, illumination, heating, and ventilation, reinforced
a largely functionalist view of the interrelationship of building interiors, urban spaces
and human wellbeing.
According to one line of thinking, our scientific and technological orientation towards
control of the natural world is one contributing factor, not the solution, to
environmental crises. The logical conflict of different criteria available to measure a
building’s ecological sustainability, for instance (entailing its consumption of energy for
lighting and heating versus the energy embodied in its materials and construction),
demonstrates the limitations of conventional instrumental or practical reasoning.
However, it seems fanciful to anticipate that another philosophy of nature and the built
environment will appear—one that is more than merely functionalist and non-
individualistic or post-humanistic—to underscore effective environmental activism and
remediation.

The developments affecting architectural practices in the 21 st century arise from the
awareness of the link between the environment and human flourishing, though these
developments are reducible to no one single concept about the environment. These
include growing unease over hitherto unforeseen consequences of building technology
and concomitant processes of industrialism and urbanization. Issues range from local
ones such as “sick building syndrome,” pollution, and revelations of the toxicity of
building sites, to broader concerns arising from the global warming and the depletion of
natural resources, including energy resources. These developments have prompted new
movements among design practitioners. They include calls for “green architecture” with
its emphasis on sustainability and purportedly sustainable practices such as “cradle to
cradle” design where building materials are chosen with their life cycles and future
recyclability in mind. On a larger scale there is the move towards the “ecological
restoration” of natural and urban landscapes aimed at reversing the consequences of
environmental degradation or limiting the impacts of future flooding, bushfires and
other disasters.
These and other developments directed towards more complete awareness, preservation
or restoration of the environment have important subjective and ethical dimensions.
These are evident not only in obvious political or design movements, but in ascetic—self-
disciplining, restraining, and possibly abstaining—practices involving the design,
furnishing, and maintenance of the home, the water-wise planting, and rigorous
inspection of the suburban garden for invasive species and noxious weeds. What
emerges from such practices is a relationship between thought and experience mediated
by an understanding of environs, surrounds, spaces, and choice regarding possible ways
of living in them.