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Sharing Sense: or, how ethics 
might be the subject matter of 
architectural aesthetics
David Leatherbarrow

Posing a productive question about ethics 
and aesthetics in architecture is no easy matter, for 
these subjects raise whole clusters of  problems, 
not simple or single questions. That observation 
is not new; these complexities were apparent two 
millennia ago when the terms were first introduced. 
Aristotle wrote not one but three books on ethics; as 
for aesthetics, also three, if  you count the Poetics, the 
lost book on Comedy, and the Rhetoric. After centuries 
of  successive translations and interpretations, 
through semantic and conceptual innovations, 
as well as substitutions, alterations and forgeries, 
we have an exceedingly wide range of  issues and 
meanings from which we borrow and select, always 
partially, sometimes uncritically. In our search for 
non-trivial form-making in architecture we have 
been invited to suppose that ethical considerations 
will help us imagine aesthetic approaches that are 
not limited to purely visual concerns. In the terms 
of  a title frequently cited in discussions of  both 
ethics and aesthetics, this question would ask how 
the beautiful might be relevant.1 An implied corollary 
is that ethical understanding in architecture can be 
made tangible through aesthetic creativity.

Although these premises are suggestive, 
I believe that progress along these lines will not 
be straightforward. The realities of  professional 
practice in our time present a serious challenge 
to any aesthetics-substantiated-by-ethics thesis. Like 
it or not, architectural work today is largely a 
matter of  business, in which project making is 
hurried and abbreviated by cost-cutting measures: 
mostly we ‘fast-track’ design development, reuse 



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details that worked well in previous projects, specify familiar products, 
have specialists take responsibility for fragments of  designs rather than 
allow single individuals to develop projects in full, and so on. These 
measures are meant to save time and assure outcomes. There have been 
business-minded changes in the ways architects work with builders, too. 
Building construction, a practice that traditionally involved both skill and 
innovation is now seen as the sort of  labor that requires regulation by 
the various instruments of  managerial science. Today’s design business 
also constrains the sorts of  collaborations that have historically enriched 
projects—collaborations among architects, builders, clients, critics, and 
members of  the public. Today we govern collaboration through contract 
administration. Design as planning and construction as management not 
only save money but allow confident investment. 

These comments are not meant as a complaint, only an observation 
that conditions are no longer what they once were; that the sense of  the 
discipline possessed by academics and critics is often out of  step with the 
realities of  practice. If  reflection is to illuminate action, if  the word is to 
render a service to the work—something I believe—then the divergence I 
have described must be taken into account.2

As in most types of  business, moral issues rarely obtrude 
themselves into contemporary design practice; except, of  course, in the 
sorts of  arguments that lead to legal proceedings. Architects tend to think 
that ethics is an academic subject, which indeed it is, with linkages to other 
scholarly pursuits: philology, hermeneutics, decision theory, and so on. 
The bearing of  these on the architecture trade is far from obvious. The 
old idea that theory is unrelated to practice provides a historical context 
for the incompatibilities we sense. More significantly, architecture has 
been absorbed into a broader framework of  technological thought and 
production, a kind of  thought that emancipates design from place and 
functional purpose. Why? Because technical knowledge allows one to 
do again what has been done before, regardless of  context. Nothing in 
work that is essentially technical acknowledges territorial obligations.3 
This is one of  the reasons why technological objects enjoy world-wide 
distribution. Ethical action is just the reverse; its deliberations and decisions 
are always bound to concrete circumstances and ways of  living, without 
which they lose their sense of  urgency, difficulty, and criteria of  relevance. 
Less positively, calls for ethical behavior sometimes lead to localism and 
insularity. In these cases the agreements that structure communities are 
buttressed by practices of  exclusion.4

Faced with this dichotomy, one might think that reciprocal 
support is the answer, that techniques could give concrete form to 



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ethical understanding and that judgments about 
what is right in given circumstances could give 
instrumentality a sense of  what should—not only 
could—be done. This possibility is implied in a 
wonderful aphorism from Georg Simmel: “The 
richness of  form is that it can adopt an infinity 
of  contents—the richness of  content is that it 
can enter into an infinity of  forms. Where both 
infinities meet, the finite construct emerges. . .”5

Unfortunately, when today’s designers seek 
alternatives to technical reason they generally turn 
to purely formal operations—sometimes called 
“aesthetic” practices—and focus on geometric 
experimentation and innovation. We see a lot of  
it today. Obviously, there is nothing wrong with 
form; one cannot imagine a design without it. But, 
as with technical approaches, working with shape 
or geometry alone runs against the grain of  ethical 
understanding because modern aestheticizing 
accents not so much what is shared in society and 
culture, but what is unique to a designer’s personal 
technique and vision, an architect’s brand. Critics 
reinforce aestheticizing by praising experimentation 
in architecture in the ways they would less practical 
forms of  expression and authorship. We commonly 
identify architectural works with the name of  their 
designer: a Nouvel, Gehry, or Ando building, as 
if  an accommodation were nothing more than a 

We commonly 
identify 

architectural 
works with the 

name of their 
designer: a Nouvel, 

Gehry, or Ando 
building, as if an 
accommodation 

were nothing 
more than a 

representation, 
a paper menu the 

meal

“

”

Schreiner House: View towards garden



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representation, a paper menu the meal.
Despite these tendencies, one occasionally senses that there 

may still be some shared background for judgments about what makes a 
building good, even beautiful. This background is not so much what each 
of  us might state as our values, but a historically constituted and forceful 
ethos that shows itself  now and again in both the settings of  everyday life 
and works of  art. Obviously, the key question concerns the relationship 
between these two. 

How and when might this ethics-made-apparent-by-aesthetics come 
into being? I will begin my answer by citing an early modern architect, 
Adolf  Loos. Personalizing his avant garde polemic, he wistfully reminisced 
as follows:

I did not grow up, thank God, in a stylish home. At that time no one knew what 
it was yet. ... Here was the table, a totally crazy and intricate piece of  furniture 
...[with] a shocking bit of  work as a lock. But it was our table, ours! Can you 
understand what that means? Evenings, when I was a young boy and the lamp 
was burning, I was never able to tear myself  away from it. And there was the 
writing table. There was an ink stain on it, my sister Hermine had knocked over 
the inkwell when she was a little baby. And there was the picture of  my parents 
...[with] a hideous frame ... a wedding gift from the workers at my father’s shop. 
And that old-fashioned chair, a leftover from my grandmother’s household. Every 
piece of  furniture, everything, every object had a story to tell, a family history. The 
house was never finished; it grew along with us and we grew within it. Of  course 
it did not have any style to it. That means there was no strangeness, no age. But 
there was one style that our home did have—the style of  its occupants, the style 
of  our family.6

My opening suggestion is that the style Loos describes embodies an ethos. 
It was not a personal matter, such as the manner of  Henry van de Velde 
or Charles Renee Mackintosh, nor a set of  rules or objective values. Loos 
describes a framework that was formed out of  habits and shared practices, 
also conflicts, accidents and bad decisions. He does not say, but it would 
not be wrong to suppose, that some measure of  design intention was part 
of  it too, even if  non-professional. Such an ethos attains concreteness in the 
desired and recurring situations of  prosaic life, in the house of  course, but 
elsewhere too, in all manner of  situations, each with its own decorum and 
typical configuration. Ethical knowledge comes not just from the intimate 
but also from the public. It is acquired through encounter, meetings that 
are alternately familiar and challenging, assuring and conflictual. One 
title from Loos, Trotzdem, makes the difficulty of  ethical action apparent. 
Shared sense is key, for it is what distinguishes ethical understanding from 



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the various kinds of  technical knowledge possessed 
by individuals. Because it is teachable, technical 
knowledge individuates: a person taught to bake 
bread has a different contribution to a meal than a 
person who knows how to grow vegetables or play 
music. Architects know how to design, carpenters 
to construct. The living ethos Loos described is 
something different, neither taught nor possessed 
individually, but inherited in a given culture, 
modified slowly, and often taken for granted. Thus, 
there is a tension between the comparatively stable 
and shared ground of  ethical sense and productive 
and relatively autonomous character of  technical 
production. Negotiating this tension is the real 
work of  design (neither experimentation nor 
affirmation). 

I have used the English words ethics and ethos 
interchangeably. To explain my usage I need to take 
a detour into word origins. Two terms interest me, 
ethics and ecology. I will say why shortly.

Of  the word ecology’s two-parts I will discuss 
only the first. Despite the fact that this compound 
was introduced in the nineteenth-century, the 
two-parts are ancient. The eco of  ecology derives 
from the Greek word oikos, meaning household 
or estate—something larger and more inclusive 
than a single building. A faint echo of  this origin 
survives in the grade-school subject ‘home 
economics,’ but that term is essentially redundant. 
Our modern sense of  economics narrows the 
ancient meaning, which embraced all the tasks 
and understandings of  domestic stewardship. 
Xenophon’s famous Oeconomicus described a well-
run house, farm, or extended family domain. 
As a treatise on estate management, it addresses 
topics such as the arrangement and storage of  
furnishings and supplies, the hiring of  slaves, 
the cultivation of  soils, and the management of  
one’s family. His architectural topics included the 
building’s placement and orientation, with respect 
to times, seasons, weather patterns, and natural 

In our search 
for non-trivial 
form-making in 

architecture 
we have 

been invited 
to suppose 

that ethical 
considerations 

will help 
us imagine 
aesthetic 

approaches 
that are not 

limited to 
purely visual 

concerns

“

”



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resources, as well as existing buildings and settlements. Further, his 
account presents a play of  analogies between the building, body, and 
world, as well as practical advice on forms of  cooperation, achieving 
health, undertaking simple and teachable forms of  work, and living an 
honorable life. Here the ethical is linked to the ecological. Discussions 
of  ethics addressed what is required for a good life, as the opening pages 
of  Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics make clear. Local interests were at issue, 
but also involvements with outsiders. What involvement was to Aristotle 
orientation was to Xenophon. With respect to buildings, the latter’s basic 
premise—one I think we should restore to current thinking—is that the 
sources of  architectural order are partly external to the work itself. For my 
part, I call this architecture oriented otherwise.7 One way of  making the work’s 
involvements clear is to repeat the fact that Xenophon describes an estate 
not a house. Much later, in sixteenth-century usage—Palladian theory and 
practice—this meant attention to the form and life of  the entire villa, 
not only the casa. Pre-modern economics, then, was the discipline that 
allowed a person or family to keep a well-ordered residence, given limited 
means, energy, and time. Because oikos also pertained to an individual’s 
relationships with others, ethical considerations were key to ideas about 
the house. Economics involved good housekeeping for one’s family and 
for others as both groups existed together in the natural world. This style 
of  thinking joins together two terms and two sciences—economics and 
ethics.

Can we equate this early sense of ethos with our current sense of  
ethics? Yes and no. No, especially if  we assume the original term meant 
something like morals or a code of  conduct meant to guide everyone’s 
behavior. Conduct was signified by the ancient word, but it meant a more 
particular and less objectified sense of  behavior than our sense of  ethics 
typically implies. A good comparison is with health, for the knowledge one 
has of  one’s own heath can be distinguished from the account presented 
in scientific description. That’s why good doctors always ask patients how 
they themselves feel, regardless of  what the thermometer says.8 Ethos was 
also constituted culturally and apparent in patterns of  behavior that were, 
in turn, subtended by the belief  that they were good. The best translation 
of  ethos I can propose is habit of  dwelling. This usage accords with ancient 
usage and can work in modern understanding. Accordingly, habits are not 
only behaviors performed repeatedly but those that are right in specific 
instances. Dwelling habits can be seen as ethical if  they embody the ways 
of  life individuals and others desire in particular circumstances. Decisions 
about what makes a setting good are the ethical aspects of  design.

Here, then, is a definition of  architecture that acknowledges these 



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terms and builds on the premises they establish: 
built works give durable dimension and legible 
expression to the habits of  residing that are 
commonly understood to be good. In ancient 
thought a single principle governed the design 
and construction of  works of  this kind: decorum in 
Latin, prepon in Greek.9 For Vitruvius décor was the 
principle that allowed one to judge that the form 
of  a building was appropriate for its cultural value, 
use, and location. In rhetoric the term indicated the 
style suitable for the subject; gravity for funerals, for 
example. In everyday life anything or any act could 
be considered with respect to its appropriateness or 
fit: celebration is an appropriate response to victory, 
repayment to debt; likewise, fabric is a fitting choice 
for shirts, leather for shoes, and so on. The key is 
this: decisions of  suitability were made concretely, 
in view of  existing circumstances, seen as variations 
on a norm; in architecture, a cultural norm. Today, 
the word decorum sounds a bit stuffy or dusty. 
Our equivalents are character and atmosphere: a 
spatial setting has the right atmosphere when its 
dimensions, forms, and materials are appropriate for 
and express a given event or situation. Indefinite but 
unmistakable, the many types of  spatial character 
or atmosphere allow a range of  embodiments and 
encourage interpretation.

I have said that decisions about suitability 
are partly determined by conditions external to 
the work, but only partly. Good arrangements also 
depend on relationships among elements internal 
to the work. Since antiquity the term that named 
the right relationships between a work’s component 
parts has been proportion. Our English word derives 
from Latin, which translated the Greek word for 
symmetry. That coupling sounds puzzling when the 
bilateral sense of  the latter term comes to mind. For 
the Greeks symmetry resulted from commensurate 
relationships, as indicated etymologically: sym-metron 
meant ‘of  like measure.’ One way to distinguish the 
Greek and Latin words is to see symmetry as norm-

The best 
translation 

of ethos I can 
propose is habit 

of dwelling

“
”



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definition and proportion as norm-realization, the first quantitative, the 
second qualitative. Unfortunately, this simple distinction was complicated 
by Vitruvius’ introduction of  a third term, analogy. Symmetry arises from 
proportion and the Greeks called this analogia.10 This last word was not 
explained by Vitruvius but the authors on whom he relied, Varro and 
Cicero, did provide definitions. Varro, in Lingua Latina, introduced both 
terms in his discussion of  regularity, relation, and ratio in the inflection 
of  terms. For relation or ratio Varro read pro portione, by proportionate 
likeness, which was in his opinion the same thing as the Greek analogia, 
that is, according to logos.11 

The word symmetria also appeared in the famous Canon of  
Polyclitus, a treatise on sculpture. The Canon’s importance is attested 
by many sources, most clear and instructive for us is a passage from 
the medical writer Galen: “beauty, says Polyclitus, resides not in the 
commensurability of  the [the elements of  the human body], but in the 
commensurability of  [its members], finger to finger ... these to the forearm 
… [and finally] everything to everything.”12 Galen’s distinction between 
elements and members defines the former as the “hot, cold, dry and wet” 
parts of  the body and the latter as fingers, hands, arms, and so on. The 
commensurability of  elements leads to health, that of  members to beauty. 

Thus for the doctor, proportionality could be discovered among 
the body’s warm and wet aspects; the balanced co-ordination—symmetry 
and proportionality—of  the four elements defined good health, an 
ethos of  suitable, known relationships. Widening the horizon, but 
earlier, the philosopher Empedocles argued that the qualities that enter 
into combination in the body are akin to those that make up the wider 
environment: the air we breathe is the air of  the heavens, at the supper table 
our bodies incorporate the yield of  the land.13 Again we see a connection 
between ethos and oikos, ethics and what would come to be called ecology. 
Earlier, still, in the Hippocratic texts, the connections between character 
and place demonstrated the same set of  interconnections or continuities. 
The symmetry of  elements, in both the body and the world, structures 
action and life. The key point is that these actions may appear to be 
beautiful in a metric or formal sense. When they do, in a well-proportioned 
plan, for example, the work is both suitable and beautiful; which is to say 
ethical and aesthetic.

 When the balance between the body’s elements has been 
disturbed by disease the ancient doctor’s task was to devise a regime 
that would restore the correct proportion of  the hot, cold, dry, and moist 
elements. A synonym for healthy is well-tempered, for sick, ill-tempered. 
The intemperate among us are characterized by asymmetry. This is what 



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Aristotle’s successor, Theophrastus, described 
in his famous book on character, which was the 
ancient source of  later architectural theories 
about a building’s character (Boffrand, Blondel, 
Boullee, Quatremere, and Loos). Again, while this 
symmetry of  qualities defines good health, it is not 
always apparent; Cosmetic arts—lip painting, hair 
coloring—fabricate attractive appearances that can 
cover disease and sickness. Yet symmetry is not 
only a matter of  appearances. Cicero wrote that 
while the beauty of  the body is attractive to the 
eyes because of  the fit composure, proportion and 
harmony of  its members, the order, consistency 
and regularity of  words and actions, the proportions 
of  conduct can also be judged beautiful.14 There is 
a similitude between physicality and attitude. Can 
the same be true of  a building, or must architects 
make a choice between the measures that define the 
building’s physical body and the patterns of  life the 
work is meant to accommodate. If  not, what might 
illustrate their conjunction?

A common event—a shared meal—may 
provide an answer. Defined prosaically, a meal is a 
division and sharing of  consumables. Often, though 
not always, one person is charged with the task of  
dividing the whole into the portions or shares that 
will be distributed to the group. As if  the plate of  
food were akin to the plan of  a building, two acts are 
essential in the work of  apportioning: division and 
distribution (or disposition, dispositio, L., or diathesis, 
Gk.). Each act assumes a good sense of  measure, 
of  the dish and the desires of  the diners. Here is 
how table-top proportioning works: obviously, no 
one is given a piece that’s too big or too small, but a 
fair share is not necessarily an equal one, a person’s 
rank or status—a house guest, for example—may 
entitle them to a larger or preferred portion, also a 
person’s hunger or size. Inequality is not only fair 
in dining but required. When the meal unfolds as 
it should, when the child and adult, family member 
and guest are given their due, the event can be said 

The key point is 
that these actions 

may appear to be 
beautiful in a metric 

or formal sense.  
When they do, in a 

well-proportioned 
plan, for example, 

the work is both 
suitable and 

beautiful; which is 
to say ethical and 

aesthetic

“

”



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to be properly portioned or well-proportioned. Our current sense of  a 
balanced diet derives from but abbreviates this idea, neglecting issues 
of  social rank and expressions of  generosity. Nevertheless, table-top 
economy presents a fairly good portrait of  a group’s social structure and 
internal relationships and ethics. By portrait I mean legible appearance, 
which sometimes can be beautiful.

Edward Hopper’s Table for Ladies shows a man and a woman at a 
restaurant table, sharing some beverage, white wine is what I would like to 
think. His desire for a drink seems to have been interrupted by something 
she has said. They are not alone, or will not be for long, additional tables 
have been prepared for others; there is also a woman in black behind a 
countertop and register; and a waitress or cook dressed in white, grasping a 
basket placed among other items on display—I can’t tell if  she is removing 
or returning it to where it belongs. With respect to the setting’s economy, 
emblems of  excess and restraint have their place in the scene. On the one 
hand a principle of  tacit serviceability governs many of  the elements we 
see: the expanse of  glass we are looking through, the chalkboard of  prices, 
the plain wooden cladding, the mirrors, and black and white floor tiles all 
express modest and purposeful urbanity. Restraint seems to be the theme 
of  the figure in black: looking down, curled into her work, concentrated 
and concentric, she is fully absorbed in collecting and counting, also limited 
by her work station, which is itself  equipped with containers of  various 
sorts—the cash register, toothpick dispenser, and vitrine. The figure in 
white shows something completely different, not limitation but outward 
reach, suggesting a range of  involvements, or spread of  interests: clearly 
she’s more concerned about something on the street than the basket of  
fruit—if  only for the precise moment Hopper brings before us—but her 
apron links her back to the kitchen; her shadow in the first mirror gives 
her a place among the diners, and her reach ties her to the consumables on 
show. The line-up of  fruit, meat, and greens says no one—at least the two 
at the table—will go hungry, or even thirsty for that matter, as the bottles 
below the server’s right elbow are clearly within reach. 

This little scene, like any other, has its own internal coherence. 
The objects make the room all-of-a-piece. All that’s required for public 
dining is there, nothing missing, nothing unnecessary. The room’s 
geometries argue the same point, unbroken patterns, clear horizons, and 
repetitions bring all of  the parts into coherence. But to say that the room 
is well-defined, that its parts are commensurate, does not mean it is insular. 
Topographically, the setting and events reach back to the kitchen, forward 
to the street, and upward. The diner’s hats and coat recall the weather and 
the town, the latter is also the server’s focus. More abstractly, or formally 



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the prominent diagonals (her back and its shadow 
line, the row of  grapefruits, the window frame, 
and the hand rail) open the enclosure to settings 
beyond its ostensible limits. Just as the renaissance 
villa coordinated the internal structures of  the casa 
with the external opportunities of  the location—
according to the principle of  orientation and the rule 
of  “ecology”—this setting’s character, temperature, 
or ethos result from the interplay between interior 
and exterior orders. The proportionality Hopper 
has constructed, the similitude of  ratios that stages 
a possible meal, not only accommodates a way of  
life but also paints a portrait; in this case one of  
considerable beauty.

To end I would like to describe something 
similar in the works of  the great Norwegian architect 
Sverre Fehn. Fehn lectured often but wrote little, 

to say that the 
room is well-
defined, that 

its parts are 
commensurate, 

does not mean it 
is insular

“

”

Schreiner House: fireplace



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just one essay, which is really a gloss on his visits to Moroccan villages.15 His 
account begins ecologically and ends ethically: furthest out from the village 
center, at the threshold of  the desert, he found covered stalls that protected 
the livestock. Closer in were small storerooms for animal fodder, which were 
necessary because grazing was impossible in the parched environment. Still 
closer to the heart of  the village were the dwellings, ringing its center. The 
center itself, however, shifted in dimension and configuration, by virtue of  
changes in the perimeter rings, as if  by some reversal of  the laws of  physics 
ripples of  land and building form converged on the center in order to shape 
it. About this central space Fehn had little to say, his description abruptly 
turned at this point to the dwelling itself, seen in section.  

He began with a workplace, observing that the cool temperature and 
deep shade that result from its lower position are congenial to housework 
when the summer heat and light are too fierce for work of  any other kind. 
Just as the sectional position of  these rooms reduces heat gain, so does the 
thickness of  the house’s walls. Above the ground level is the floor for food 
preparation, above that the level for sleeping and living. Little furniture gives 
a trace of  these activities, but there seems to be no uncertainty about uses 
to which these rooms are put, for their long history makes these practices 
strikingly stable, contrasting domestic topography with the shifting sands 
outdoors. And these uses are not only the kind we might call functional, the 
ethos they express is also symbolic: the instance Fehn gives of  the latter is the 
removal of  shoes before a meal. Enabling the meal also is a mat or carpet on 
which one sits, and the table around which people gather. While Fehn does 
not elaborate the analogy, he implies that a ratio or symmetry governs the use 
and meaning of  these architectural elements: what the mat is to the dwelling 
floor the table is to the village center, both serving as gathering places 
that give orientation to a “round dance” that ties together the settings that 
make up the perimeter, the very same ones that accommodate the dance’s 
functional patterns. As if  they were capable of  performing this dance, the 
several pieces of  furniture in the house are “mobile.” This movement of  
people and their accommodations, Fehn explains, is a remnant of  nomadic 
culture, the steps and shoes of  which still carry ancient sands into the house, 
challenging the distinction between inside and outside just observed. With 
this entire structure in mind—from livestock stalls to the central carpet—
Fehn’s approach can be called cultural ecology, or an aesthetics of  ethical life.

There are two aspects of  this account I want to hold onto: the 
rings of  distance that encircle the house, giving its settings and events their 
orientation and limits, and the coupling of  the practical and representational 
aspects of  architectural elements, as if  ways of  living and of  showing, ethics 
and aesthetics can, indeed, be linked together.



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Schreiner House: Plan

Schreiner House: Dining space



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In the Schreiner House, finished several years ago, Fehn indicates 
just this coupling, this double proportionality: forms to functions and 
house to environment. The corner of  the dining space, where the window 
and side walls meet will be my point of  focus. Reportedly, Fehn himself  
rather liked this position, especially during wintertime meals, when the brick 
bench on which the leather cushions sit radiated heat from the fireplace 
behind. I sat there just once, in summer, but could easily imagine the spot’s 
thermal sense. The social dimension of  a meal there benefited from the 
spatial dimension of  the situation, between the warm surround and the 
open prospect. Tectonically, this corner joins together the building’s two 
basic types of  enclosure, timber cladding and window walls. Using the 
term ‘wall’ for both the glazing and the cladding is perhaps incorrect for 
each is really a ‘partition,’ which is to say a non-load-bearing element that 
structures space, modulates natural forces, and confers character. When 
seated at the dining table, the view into the garden is unimpeded; the 
glazing extends from the floor to the ceiling and from one side to the 
other. An adjustable blind hangs from the top frame, ready to block any 
glare that might arrive from the late afternoon sun. The right hand edge 
of  the glass panel also operates in the milieu: a narrow louver that edges 
the glazing screens the interior against insects and admits fresh air through 
a full-height hinged panel. Turning to the timber cladding to the right 
of  the dining table, we find another well-proportioned ensemble: at eye 
height a cantilevered book case sets one level, the horizontal boarding 
extending the enclosure establishes another, and the clear story glazing that 
admits direct light to the depth of  the room defines still another horizon. 
Through these means the changing conditions outside the house—the 
environment’s constructive and corrosive forces—are modified to suit 
the interests and needs of  the interiors, preserving its quiet stability and 
warm intimacy, which is to say its character, atmosphere, or ethos. The 
atmosphere Fehn has made is both tangible and legible. Is it also beautiful? 
My answer is yes because its aesthetic shows nothing less than how we 
might share the sense of  the world it accommodates and expresses.

Endnotes
1. Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Relevance of  the Beautiful (Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1987) “Relevance” translates Gadamer’s Aktualität.
2. I borrow this phrase, “the word rendering service to the work,” from Paul 
Ricoeur; see: “Work and Word,” History and Truth (Evanston: Northwestern 
University Press, 1965), 197-222
3. The argument is developed in the concluding chapter to David Leatherbarrow 
and Mohsen Mostafavi, Surface Architecture (Cambridge, Mass.,: MIT, 2002), 215-



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242.
4. On this point see: Helmuth Plessner, Limits of  Community: a critique of  social radicalism 
(New York: Humanity Books, 1999).
5. Georg Simmel,”Life and Form,” in Rembrandt [1916] (London: Routledge, 2005). 
6. Adolf  Loos, “Interiors in the Rotunda,” [1898], in Spoken into the Void (Cambridge, 
Mass.: MIT Press, 1982), 22-27.
7. David Leatherbarrow, Architecture Oriented Otherwise (New York: Princeton 
Architectural Press, 2009).
8. This point is made clearly in Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Treatment and Dialogue,” 
The Enigma of  Health (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 125-140.
9. Although somewhat old, the best study of  this term in architecture remains Alste 
Horn-Oncken, Über das Sichliche (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967)
10. Vitruvius, On Architecture, 3.1.1 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 
1970), 159.
11. Varro, On the Latin Language, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 
10, 36-38.
12. Galen, On the Doctrines of  Hippocrates and Plato, 5.3.15 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 
1981)
13. See the unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation by Esra Sahin, Exchange of  Forces: 
environmental definition of  materials in the works of  Vitruvius, Alberti, Le Corbusier, and 
Peter Zumthor, University of  Pennsylvania, 2009: http://repository.upenn.edu/
edissertations/76
14. Cicero, On Duties, ch. 18 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1913)
15. Sverre Fehn, “Moroccan Primitive Architecture,” [1952] in The Poetry of  the Straight 
Line (Helsinki: Museum of  Finnish Architecture, 1992), 38-41


