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Like the inaugural issue last summer, 
the present issue owes the lion’s share of  its 
contributions to an international conference 
held by the International Society for the Philosophy 
of  Architecture, the society behind Architecture 
Philosophy. Entitled ‘Autonomy Reconsidered’, 
the conference raised a host of  questions to 
both disciplines, indeed calling the disciplines 
to join their efforts in answering them:

Contemporary philosophy and architecture 
discourse alike marginalize the ethical dimension 
of  architecture.  Yet, it seems that the ethical 
dimension in both architecture and philosophy 
has been compromised because both disciplines 
have not established a clear interdisciplinary 
understanding of  autonomy. Together, and in 
service to both fields of  study, we must reconsider 
what autonomy means for both architecture and 
philosophy, or rather, for architecture philosophy.

Without consideration to design intent, societal 
(at times, utopian) agendas and programs, 
architecture is still largely deemed to be ethically 
‘neutral’ or silent. But is architecture ethically 
neutral? Is it ethically silent? Can ethical 
evaluation of  designs and built objects operate 
autonomously from evaluation of  the human 
agents that create them? Can a designer’s activity 
be considered autonomous, and hence allow for 
questions of  attribution and responsibility? 
Once we isolate the architectural, landscape, or 
urban designer from outside pressures, and only 
focus on her core métier – to what extent is 

Philosophy 
and architecture 

discourse alike 
marginalize the 

ethical dimension of 
architecture

“

”

AUTONOMY RECONSIDERED

CAROLYN FAHEY, STEFAN KOLLER & TOM SPECTOR



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that isolated activity autonomous? And if  an architect’s actions cannot 
be autonomous, would architecture stop having to answer to itself ?

Philosophical ethics has opened its purview beyond human action to 
animal ethics and environmental ethics, but has not yet found a way 
to expand its existing reflections to designed objects, particularly built 
ones. Perhaps in parallel to ethics, contemporary aesthetics discusses 
the moral repercussions of  art works with clear representational 
content – socially critical novels, figurative paintings – but has not paid 
closer attention to architecture. Is the lack of  attention in aesthetics 
due to architecture’s representational content being elusive, or because 
architecture’s aesthetic appraisal is taken to proceed autonomously from 
moral considerations? How would architecture be considered otherwise? 

1 

The conference’s call went on to, “invit[e] papers which probe these 
questions, or re-draw the assumptions behind them.” 

2 It is in that 
spirit that we present to readers the opening contribution, a keynote 
at that conference. In “The Myth of  Autonomy,” Nathaniel Coleman 
exposes and dissects foundational myths that, he argues, drive 
various autonomy projects in architecture to this day. Such projects, 
Coleman argues, operate on assumptions that cannot be upheld, and 
presuppose the unavailability of  architecture’s live relation to the 
social and the ethical. That unavailability comes into stark question 
once architecture’s relation to utopia is reconsidered: not autonomy, 
but its great other, merits reconsideration if  we are to redraw present 
day assumptions. Coleman’s authoritative tour de force across the 
prominent figures in today’s autonomy debates in architecture sets the 
stage for the journal issue more widely. Its claim that philosophers’ 
(especially Kantian) notions of  ‘autonomy’ are of  limited use in 
such concerns should certainly not stand unanswered for long.

Tackling the call for papers’ challenges to the philosophical 
community head-on, Noël Carroll and Christoph Baumberger 
also argue against the self-insulation of  architecture from ethical 
considerations, as Coleman does. Yet, they appear more conservative 
about the means required to get us there, while disagreeing between 
themselves on those means – thus inaugurating the proliferation of  
viewpoints and arguments this journal seeks to promote. Carroll and 
Baumberger’s implicit disagreements are delicate precisely because 
both authors are driven to a similar position: ‘moderate moralism’. 
Moderate moralism is a position Carroll himself  coined and 
developed for various art forms, but never before for architecture. 
The position’s validity – especially its claim to an internal relation 



137

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of  architecture to ethical values – both 
authors remind us, has vast consequences 
for how we build and design. Autonomism, 
once again, is found to be unsupportable. 
Will no one stand up for its defense?

This brings us to the papers of  Mark Jensen 
and Felipe Loureiro. Jensen considers autonomy 
from a different point of  departure. What, he 
asks, if  autonomy were primarily concerned, not 
with the status of  the object, but with the status 
of  its producers? Could their relative autonomy 
be an important determinant of  the quality 
of  the built environment? To consider these 
questions, Jensen draws from Aristotle’s ethics 
as a framework. Felipe Loureiro’s essay on the 
applicability of  philosopher of  media Vilém 
Flusser’s ideas to architectural images engages 
the topic of  autonomy indirectly by examining 
the increasing opaqueness of  the means of  
architectural image production – from hand 
drawing, to photography, computer images, 
and now protoyping – in contemporary times. 
While the means of  image generation becomes 
increasingly abstract, the decreasing distance 
between conception and production is blurring 
the distinction between design and craft. Could 
this development be bringing the modern-day 
designer’s unhappy choice between irrelevant 
celebrity or embedded anonymity back into 
some sense of  real control and significance? 

If  the journal’s inaugural issue introduced 
features not often encountered in an academic 
journal – follow up questions posed to authors 
or their targets, an interview, room for sidebar 
notes – the present issue inaugurates a further 
such feature central to the journal’s concept: 
the continuing of  conversations previously left 
open, as befits philosophical reflection. The 
second part of  Paul Guyer’s essay on monism 
and pluralism, and the interview with Andrew 
Ballantyne both take off  where we left them in 

Will NO ONE 
STAND UP FOR 

[AUTONOMY”S] 
DEFENSE?

“
”



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the previous issue. With both conversations having run their course 
thus far, we look to readers to pen questions of  their own – whether to 
join conversations already begun, or to start a fresh thread of  exchange. 

Endnotes

1. Fahey, Carolyn, and Stefan Koller, June 27, 2013, “Autonomy 
Reconsidered,” International Society for the Philosophy of  Architecture, 
http://isparchitecture.com/events/call-for-papers/


