Customer Reviews

The Ethical Function of Architecture

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This is simply one of the best books I have ever read.

On one level it is a critique of contemporary thinking about architecture. In the first part of the book Harries argues that the aesthetic approach to art doesn't do justice to the meaning and power of architecture. In the second part he argues that the semiotic approach to architecture is based on a model of language that cannot fully grasp and illuminate the symbolic dimension of architecture. In the third and fourth parts Harries tries to show that questions of architecture are ultimately questions of dwelling (broadly conceived), that questions of dwelling are irreducibly ethical and political, and that architecture thus has an irreducible ethical and political function.

On a deeper level the book is a critique of modern philosophies of art. Harries follows thinkers such as Heidegger, Gadamer, and Agamben in criticizing the aesthetic approach to art (which regards artworks simply as beautiful or interesting objects) and theoretical approaches to art (which regard artworks as the expression or illustration of ideas that can best be grasped and articulated with philosophical concepts). Harries argues that artworks have the power to illuminate the world and to call us back to what really matters, and that art is a (nontheoretical) way of responding to basic questions of human existence (How should we live? What does it mean to be human?)

Unlike Heidegger, Gadamer, and Agamben, however, Harries develops his arguments with a great number of specific, concrete examples drawn from the whole history of Western architecture and art. So while the book is philosophically ambitious, it is also exceptionally clear, sober, and down to earth.

Finally, I should note that the writing itself is beautiful--it is simple, precise, and conveys a sense of deep concentration and wonder.

The Ethical Function of Architecture won the American Institute of Architects 8th Annual International Architecture Book Award for Criticism. But it is about more than architecture. I recommend it very, very highly to anyone interested in Heidegger, phenomenology, aesthetics, ethics, poetry, literary theory, modernity and modernism, and the history and philosophy of art.

Harries, a professor of philosophy at Yale, has a long-standing interest in architecture. (Disclosure- I took his course on the Philosophy of Architecture while a grad student in the early 80's.) Himself a student of Heidegger, Harries's work in architecture has largely been a reassessment and continuation of Heidegger's thought on technology and dwelling. The book under review is a summary of Harries's thinking on architecture. The "ethical function" referred to in the title concerns architecture's ability to express the ethos of the society that produces it. Harries effectively demolishes the esthetic and functional approaches to architecture and makes a convincing argument that what distinguishes architecture from mere building is its ethical function.

this is a 'must' reading for anybody interested in architectural theory and philosophy ... but it goes way beyond, connecting ethics and aesthetics within a contemporary discourse that transcend post-modern, post-structuralist and phenomenologist biases. This is my third copy and i required it as a reading to all my students in architecture theory.