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Does there exist an ethics of architecture and
engineering? This question has long troubled
theorists,
1
ever since architects saw themselves
as entrusted with a social mission – independent
of any concept of social responsibility. This idea
goes relatively far back in time, as Françoise
Choay,
2
Henry van de Velde, David Watkin and the
lion’s share of the modernists from the 1920s
have shown. The followers of the French utopian
socialist philosopher, Charles Fourier, had already
articulated the connection between how dwellings
are laid out and general social progress, at the end
of the eighteenth century.
Is the discourse of architecture too complex to be left
to architects? This is what Philippe Boudon
3
and Hilde
Heynen
4
would have us believe, particularly Heynen,
who freely resorts to philosophical texts unaffected by
the inherent contradiction of theory and practice. This
book has been written by an architect with the goal
of commenting on (without any ulterior hagiographic
motives) the works and thoughts of an architect,
engineer, urban planner and designer, and functions
within its own particular framework. Although today’s
architects and engineers are confronted with new
techniques, the corresponding ethical constructs are
ultimately relatively constant. Ever since builders were
freed from serving the king, the church or the aristoc-
racy, their responsibility has been to conceptualise a
framework – on an emotional as well as a technical
level – for housing our fleeting human existence. I have
always been struck by the idea that when a mason
began work on a cathedral, he could be reasonably
CONCLUSION
01-310
Renovation and restoration
of the former Lamot brewery,
Klein Willebroek, 1993-1995