The Ethical Function of Architecture

Author: Karsten Harries
Year: 1997
Source type: book
Raw file: raw/books/harries-1997-ethical-function-of-architecture.md

Summary

Karsten Harries's major work of architectural philosophy argues that architecture's defining task is not aesthetic but ethical — where "ethical" derives from the Greek ethos (character, way of dwelling). Against the dominant "aesthetic approach" (Pevsner: architecture is building "designed with a view to aesthetic appeal"), Harries contends that the ethical function of architecture is "to help articulate a common ethos" — to help us find our place and dwell together in the modern world. Drawing on Kant, Nietzsche, and especially Heidegger, he proceeds from a critique of the "decorated shed" and the "interesting," through an account of the language and representation of architecture, to building-and-dwelling, and finally the grave, the monument, and community — including the labyrinth as a counter-model to utopia.

Key Claims

• The ethical function of architecture is to articulate a common ethos: "By the ethical function of architecture I mean its task to help articulate a common ethos." This is not "architectural ethics" in the professional sense; it concerns the way human beings exist and dwell in the world.
• Harries contests the aesthetic approach (architecture = functional building + aesthetic/decoration component), which underlies both modern orthodoxy and its postmodern "decorated shed" inheritances.
• Postmodernism is best understood not as a humanistic-ethical advance but often as a phenomenon of "the interesting" — the cultivation of novelty and fashion (Venturi's "less is a bore") rather than of meaning; "the interesting is essentially short-lived."
• Architecture must be freed from the aesthetic approach if it is to speak of how we should live; architecture has a hermeneutic/language function — it can interpret a way of life valid for our period (Giedion's imperative).
• Building is tied to the essence of dwelling (Heidegger): genuine architecture lets human beings dwell, not merely be housed; the problem of architecture is "only the other side of the problem of the individual" and cannot be divorced from community or the political.
• The grave and the monument (and, earlier, ornament as distinct from mere decoration) are treated as ethically essential: the ethical function of architecture "cannot finally be divorced from the political."
• The labyrinth is offered as a counter-model to dreams of utopia — a figure of an architecture that acknowledges disorientation and the absence of a totalizing ground rather than pretending to one.

Connections

Concepts: Dwelling · Everyday Life · Critical Architecture · Atmosphere
Authors: Karsten Harries · Martin Heidegger · Christian Norberg-Schulz · Juhani Pallasmaa
Debates: Critical vs. Projective — Harries's ethical-function claim gives a normative-critical standard against the projective/post-critical turn
Related source notes: Building Dwelling Thinking (Heidegger) · Genius Loci (Norberg-Schulz) · The Everyday, Building, and Architecture (Haapala)

Direct Quotes

"By the ethical function of architecture I mean its task to help articulate a common ethos." (Introduction)

"The problem of architecture and the problem of community cannot finally be divorced."

"Since it depends for its effects on expectations that are likely to change, the interesting is essentially short-lived... should architecture strive to be interesting?" (Introduction)

"Repeated, what once was interesting will soon become boring. There is, to be sure, a more basic question: should architecture strive to be interesting?" (Introduction)

Open Questions

• How does Harries's ethical function bear on the spectacular/iconic architecture that dominates contemporary discourse — is the "enigmatic signifier" (Jencks) an example of the "interesting" Harries criticizes, or a genuine bearer of ethos?
• Can a "common ethos" be articulated in a plural, multicultural society, given Harries's own admission that any such articulation risks one-sidedness?