Morality and Architecture

I featured a guest viewpoint contribution last September by Ujjval Vyas, Ph.D., J.D. At that time, I wrote about how he has challenged me to reassess my understanding of the proper role and duties of the architect, and the necessity of critical thinking in professional practice. The point was to bring to light how the architect’s belief structure can prejudice his or her work. As Ujjval explained, the architect bears a responsibility to think objectively and skeptically. This isn’t always easy given the tendency of my profession to invoke moral imperatives to validate the deep-seated biases it seeks to affirm or the aesthetic flavor of the day it chooses to promote. Ujjval will correct me if I’m mistaken but I understand his fundamental premise to be that architects have too often failed to recognize the inadequacies and inconsistencies of the principles they follow, while exhibiting a propensity for objective declarations of right or wrong despite an unstable rooting within the shifting sands of moral relativism.

To further our discussion, Ujjval suggested I read the book Morality and Architecture, written by British architectural historian David Watkin. At the time of its initial publication in 1977, the slender volume created quite a stir, challenging the notion of a zeitgeist as suitable justification for whatever style critics proclaim to be the most authentic and morally irreproachable. The object of Watkin’s critique was Modernism, and particularly its claims that traditional forms of architecture were ill-fitted and outdated in the context of a constantly evolving economic, social, and political environment. Many adherents of Modernism buttressed their polemic with an unwavering and sanctimonious belief in the inevitability of their position and the value of novelty. For the architectural profession then (and now), the orthodoxy of its avant-garde faction—particularly its reverence for all that is shiny and new—is powerful.

Watkin used as examples the proselytizing of the 19th century architect & theorist A.W.N. Pugin and 20th century architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner, who respectively argued religious truths should underlie the form of architecture and that a modern architecture must be a rational instrument of social policy. Both Pugin and Pevsner passionately believed in the certainty of a moral foundation for contemporary architecture, and yet what such architecture should look like to both was very different. For Pugin, the Gothic Revival style presented itself as superior and synonymous with “Christian architecture” and necessary for the work of Pugin’s time. For Pevsner (for whom Watkin was a pupil) it was the machine-like, ahistorical, and unadorned architecture of Modernism that exhibited moral fitness.

As Watkin would go on to explain, Pugin’s and Pevsner’s convictions stemmed from the evolutionary assumption that each new epoch compels architects to “express” the nascent spirit of the moment within which they work. Both Pugin and Pevsner trusted in the moral rightness of their position, each expertly asserting that which comported with his own preferences. A “historicist emphasis on progress and the necessary superiority of novelty,” Watkin said, “has come dangerously close to undermining, on the one hand, our appreciation of the imaginative genius of the individual and, on the other, the importance of artistic tradition.”

What constitutes good architecture shouldn’t be circumscribed by architectural critics and historians who promote whatever style they are most fond of, nor should it be defined without question by whatever culture happens to momentarily prevail within the profession. Good architecture may be expressed using the most vogueish of forms. It can be equally good and relevant when garbed more conventionally.

Watkin cited the work of Sir Edwin Lutyens, without question a brilliant architect, whose misfortune it was to be ignored by historians such as Pevsner and Henry-Russell Hitchcock and regarded as out-of-step with the spirit of the age in which he practiced. Ujjval has likewise written about how critics were baffled by Philip Johnson’s penchant for seemingly contradictory approaches to the design of his buildings.(1) Johnson was notorious for his propagandizing on behalf of a succession of architectural styles or movements, as well as for deprecatingly referring to himself as an architectural “whore.” Nevertheless, Johnson used his authority to initiate an increase in formal experimentation. He was, as Ujjval noted, “committed to increasing the possibility of elegant architecture in the world.” This possibility was devoid of any presumptions regarding the weight of morality upon our consideration of that architecture.

My takeaway from Morality and Architecture is Watkin’s advocacy for the autonomy of aesthetic merit and the value of an artistic tradition. He effectively rebukes a romantic and collectivist populism within which the architect has no imagination or free will of his or her own but instead designs buildings to reflect a moral consensus, such as the primacy of novelty for its own sake. The dogma of Modernism provided him with a convenient target, springing as it did from a volatile mixture of naïve moralizing and authoritarian principles (though I suspect his dislike of modern architecture contributed as much to his disdain for the movement as did the self-righteousness of its proponents). The book’s principal shortcoming is how dated Watkin’s anti-modernist argument seems today, written as it was during a time when the style was only beginning to relinquish its ascendancy. Much has changed since then; even so, its core message and assessment of relativism remain relevant.

I’m not entirely sure, but I believe Ujjval hoped by reading Morality and Architecture I would recognize the fallacy of arguments architects use to justify their work by asserting moral superiority, all while confusing certitude with certainty. As he is apt to say, it is easy to go along with stuff when it agrees with what you already believe. The challenge is to avoid confirmation bias—the tendency to interpret information in a way that validates one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. When you also consider the risks in applying ethical standards of judgment to architecture, the magnitude of that challenge is magnified. It’s very easy to seek affirmation within echo chambers rather than carefully examining what we think and why we do. My responsibility as an architect is to apply an intellectual rigor to my work and to possess enough self-awareness to know what I don’t know. 

(1)  Ujjval’s piece on Philip Johnson was his contribution to a collection of essays published by the Yale School of Architecture entitled Philip Johnson: The Constancy of Change. Other contributors to the book included Peter Eisenman, Kurt Forster, Charles Jencks, Phyllis Lambert, Vincent Scully, Michael Sorkin, and Mark Wigley.