Talk

Architectural Ethics

Architecture and Freedom season

Monday 9 November 2015 6.30 - 8pm

The Geological Society, Piccadilly, London, W1

£12. Reductions £6. A limited number of tickets will be available on the door of the event.

Our panel consider what architecture’s responsibilities should be to the public good and whether it is time for architects to adopt a new code of ethics.

Architecture is at its heart fundamentally a public art. It sits on the threshold between the private interests – and money – of the client, and the public impact and effect of buildings: visual, programmatic and environmental. One of Modernism's chief aspirations was to extend this inherent public-ness into an essentially moral position, conceiving architecture as an instrument of social progress – an argument which was repudiated by Postmodernism.

Today with architecture in thrall to private interests to a greater degree than perhaps ever before, it is time to reassess architects' responsibilities beyond those to the client, and to the broader public good. Do architecture and architects require a new code of ethics? If so, what should be the parameters and who should decide them?

Speakers:

Giles Fraser – priest-in-church, St Mary's Newington; columnist, The Guardian
Jane Hall – founding member, Assemble
Jonathan Meades – writer, journalist and broadcaster
Anna Minton – Reader in Architecture, University of East London; journalist and author of Ground Control
Christine Murray – Editor, Architectural Review (chair)
Francesco Sebregondi – Research Fellow, Forensic Architecture project, Goldsmiths