Victoria Beach has published an interesting essay in Architect magazine, where she asserts that architects’ primary moral authority (and responsibility) is aesthetic, not public safety.
http://www.architectmagazine.com/architects/an-ethical-inquiry-part-iii.aspx
While Ms. Beach is quite right to connect aesthetics with morality (two subjects that have been unfortunately uncoupled in the modern era), some critics have read her essay as a call for the architectural profession to abdicate, or at least delegate, its responsibility for building safety to engineers and code officials.
We didn’t read it that way. In the same way (using her metaphor) that a chef is responsible for a meal being safe and pleasing to the eye/nose/palette, architects are responsible for buildings being both safe and beautiful. If safety was the end of our responsibility, we could job the whole thing out to engineers. (Sorry, engineers).
We think the point Ms. Beach is making is an important one: that aesthetics is inextricably linked to ethics, morality, goodness, and the way things ought to be. And that these are where the architect’s highest responsibility lies.
Sacred Space Smackdown
Founder David Greusel enters the fray in an online debate between Alan Jacobs and Aaron M. Renn on the presence or absence of sacred space in suburbs.
http://www.cardus.ca/blog/2013/07/sacred-space-smackdown