Morality in Architecture

 

When people think about housing or buildings around them that they see, it’s not really a thought of why it was put where it was or even what kind of energy sufficiency the building has. Nobody really seems to even care, but architects and designers have a responsibility to make efficient structures and one to the community.

In many cases when making a new building, there is already a community or other buildings around. The project may even require tearing down already standing buildings or even houses. Property doesn’t come cheap either. An obvious solution is to buy cheap property, and in these cases people that are poor or have less money lose their homes. Even in a case where the family isn’t poor and does have money, they may not even want to move, but in some cases families are made to move. For St. Louis University High School there has been a similar situation. SLUH has needed to expand, in its Vision 2000, but houses stood in its way, which had to be bought out in order to have the land and space needed to expand in the best way that the school needed. In cases like these architects or anyone who has the idea, faces a moral dilemma of a needed construction but at the same time you are going to effect other peoples lives in doing so, causing them to have to choose what is more important.

Looking at the new stadium being built for the St. Louis Cardinals, anyone can see that the costs are in the millions of dollars. The stadium is going to be beautiful and bring even more life to the downtown area, and will make a ton of money by it being there, or at least that is the idea. Sure it’s great that we want to give a breath of new life and bring in money for the city, but what about the other things that this money that the tax payers are paying could it all be going to? One thing that comes to mind is the less fortunate and poorer people. Rather than spending our money one the stadium, which we could do without, considering the stadium is only 40 years old compared to stadiums like Fenway in Boston and Wrigley in Chicago, it could be spent on something like public housing around the city. If people really care about the city and how well it does based on money and this is the reason they are making the stadium, why then not instead lift up the people that are “bringing the city down,” raise their worth through help and new resources, and building the city stronger as a whole, rather than just for these people that can attend the baseball games at the new stadium, but of course the money flows in from a stadium rather than a housing project. This is a question many architectural companies have to deal with, whether or not they are helping out with what benefits them the best, money-wise obviously, or whether they help the community as a whole all around them.

Lastly, how a building is built can be very important, especially when it comes to energy use. Most buildings of course as always are plugged into the stream of electricity run by a plant, and yes it is costly, especially big ones just like the stadium, not only money-wise, but at the same time we are using up resources. One company that has shown a way of doing things, a quite successfully, is the Alberici Company who is saving energy in their new headquarters. The building faces south the get maximum heat from the sun, solar panels, a windmill, and saves rainwater. We have the technology to use these things all the time, but these decisions fall in the hands of the architects who design the buildings of today, who face the moral question of whether they are helping the earth and its energy or if the are just using earth and using it as part of the project.

Architects face many moral decisions in their job though many people wouldn’t think so, and frighteningly some architects don’t either. Are they exploiting the poorer people for land, spending money in places when others need it more, or mistreating the earth and its resources when there are alternative ways to go about designing? These are the questions they need to raise in their daily jobs and ones that we a citizens need to raise in bad cases and to make sure they are doing their jobs as morally sound as they should be.

 

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