Ethics & Aesthetics of Architecture & the Environment
11th-13th July 2012
School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape
Newcastle University, UK
ispaconference@gmail.com
D e a d l i n e / Early Registration / 30 April 2012
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• ETHICS & AESTHETICS OF ARCHITECTURE:
Keynote Speakers: Andrew Ballantyne, Newcastle University • Paul Guyer, University of Pennsylvania • David Leatherbarrow, University of Pennsylvania
The subject of aesthetics is often taken as dealing with questions of mere beauty, where the word ‘aesthetic’ is colloquially interchangeable with beauty and liking. Someone might, for instance, explain their liking the look of a particular object on the basis of its ‘aesthetics’. Interestingly, even within the specialised architecture discourse, the aesthetic is largely discussed on the basis of an object’s appearance. Yet, the aesthetic is not limited and should not be limited merely to the way things look. Any philosophically informed aesthetician will contest this limited view, saying something along the lines of ‘the aesthetic is everything’. The aim of this conference is therefore in part to address this discursive limitation in architecture and related subjects by broadening the aesthetic discourse beyond questions relating to purely visual phenomena in order to include those derived from all facets of human experience read more…
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• ETHICS & AESTHETICS OF LANDSCAPE:
Keynote Speakers: Emily Brady, University of Edinburgh • Ian Ground, Sunderland University • Simon James, Durham University
Philosophical aesthetics has traditionally been more concerned with the judgement of artworks and the experience of art than with the natural beauty or the qualities of designed landscapes – or the sorts of experiences which such places might provide. Similarly, traditional ethics assigned intrinsic value and moral standing to humans alone and seemed incapable of addressing the harm which humans were capable of doing to the environment. Over the last forty years, both aesthetics and ethics have expanded their outlook in response to the widespread sense of environmental crisis. Environmental ethicists have suggested that not just humans, but such things as animals, plants, species, habitats, islands, forests, ecosystems and the biosphere, might have intrinsic value and that we might thus have duties towards them. Aestheticians, meanwhile, have turned their attention to a wide range of landscapes, including wilderness, traditional and industrial farms, and designed landscapes such as parks, gardens and other forms of green space associated with the built environment. Environmental concerns have moved aesthetics away from an elite preoccupation with art, towards consideration of the quotidian, the everyday read more…
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• ETHICS & AESTHETICS OF PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE WORKSHOP
Keynote Speaker: Tom Spector, Oklahoma State University
A practical workshop meant to investigate the ethics of working as an architect today, instructed by Dr. Tom Spector. The workshop is based on lectures that Onora O’Neill gave in 2002 and at the ‘Architecture and its Ethical Dilemmas’ conference in Cambridge in 2004 read more…
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D e a d l i n e / Early Registration / 30 April 2012