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FROM AUTONOMY TO PRAGMATISM: 
OBJECTS MADE MORAL

PAULINE LEFEBVRE

INTRODUCTION
This paper departs from a problem that 

architects often face: do they really have to choose 
between their interest in the production of  built 
objects (in their shape, their spatiality, etc.) and 
their commitment to broader social concerns? 
Must architects focus on social concerns at the 
expense of  the built object in order to be morally 
responsible? These questions touch on the relations 
between autonomy and criticality which have been 
fiercely debated in recent architectural theory: does 
criticality rest on autonomy? After introducing 
these controversies and disentangling the notion of  
autonomy at their center, I propose to look into the 
philosophical tradition of  pragmatism as offering 
a way out. Following some recent interpretations 
of  pragmatism, this paper addresses the possibility 
of  an immanent critique, the reconciliation of  
ethics and aesthetics, the way ethnographies show 
architectural objects as active participants in design 
practice, and investigates how a pragmatist view of  
ecology invites sensitivity to objects’ moral claims.

1. “ENGAGING AUTONOMY”: OBJECTHOOD AND RESPONSIBILITY

Responsibility is acquainted with everything but 
the object: its relations, its origins, its use, life and 
context. A focus on the building and its objecthood 
and certainly on its form is simply irresponsible.1 

Sarah Whiting used these words to introduce a 
lecture entitled “Engaging Autonomy,” which she 
gave at SCI-Arc in Fall 2013. She presented her talk 
as “a plea to acknowledging the importance of  the 

Must 
architects 

focus on social 
concerns at 
the expense 
of the built 

object in order 
to be morally 

responsible? 

“

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object, for them not to be thrown out in the name of  responsibility.”2 Her 
words demonstrate a real concern regarding architecture’s autonomy and 
its relation to responsibility; she wonders how to maintain architecture’s 
definition as a specific practice, with specific concerns and skills (designing 
space and objects), without being dismissed as indifferent to larger moral 
and social concerns.

Whiting is worried about what she calls the “context-object opposition,” 
which tends to polarize two opposed postures: the autonomous architect 
concerned with the production of  objects versus the social architect 
immersed in moral negotiations. These two poles define a scale on which 
it would be possible to situate every architectural practice, a scale between 
the object and the context, between forms and procedures,3 between 
autonomy and engagement, but also between aesthetics and ethics (Figure 
1). This scale represents the frequently discussed “intractable conflict 
between an aesthetically autonomous architecture […] and an ambitious 
social agenda for the built environment.”4

By introducing her position as one that is “engaging autonomy,” 
Whiting attempts to bridge the extremes: she articulates an ambition at 
the level of  the object’s singularity and at the level of  its context. However, 
by assembling such a contradictory pair of  terms, Whiting does not really 
escape the opposition she tries to tackle between the autonomy of  the 
object and the architects’ responsibility to engage with its consequences. 
When looking at Whiting’s own architectural projects, one can see that 
they are highly formal and conceptual, using disciplinary games based on 
historical references (e.g., the X House based on a distortion of  Palladio’s 
plan, Figure 2)5 or geometrical variations (e.g., the Golden House based on 
the development of  the box-like volume of  the entrance hall) (Figure 
3).6 One can thus wonder with what context these objects are engaged at 
all. Whiting’s assessment does keep the object well to one side, and “its 
relations, origins, use, life and context” to the other.

Yet, Whiting’s concern needs to be considered seriously: how to maintain 
objects at the center of  architects’ preoccupations without isolating them 
from moral concerns? Opting for a pragmatist perspective, this paper will 
challenge Whiting’s assertion by the following programmatic proposition: 
responsibility is acquainted with the object only as far as that object is 

FIGURE 1: DIAGRAM OF CONTEXT-OBJECT OPPOSITION.



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FIGURE 2: X HOUSE, (UNBUILT).

FIGURE 3: Golden House, 2010, Princeton, New Jersey.



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dependent on its relations, origins, use, life, and context. Actually, dealing 
with this problem pragmatically implies that we care for the consequences 
of  our propositions. Therefore, this issue will not just require that we 
expand our definition of  built objects; it will also rely on a redefinition 
of  the ‘moral’, shifting our understanding of  the term from a delineated 
domain in which (built) objects are occasionally and graciously included, 
and often are not.

2. CRITICAL OR NOT: DISENTANGLING AUTONOMY
Whiting developed the notion of  “engaging autonomy” as an answer 

to the criticisms she had to face after she had been involved in a vast 
debate about architects’ autonomy and responsibility. In 2002, Whiting 
co-authored with Robert E. Somol a provocative paper in an issue of  
the journal Perspecta entitled “Mining Autonomy.”7 The editors wanted 
the issue to “examine the evolving legacy of  architectural autonomy 
and its relationship to architecture’s potential to act as a critical agent.”8 
Whiting and Somol’s paper proposed to overthrow what was then called 
‘critical architecture’ in favor of  an alternative posture, which they named 
‘projective architecture’. Critical architects had chosen to act from within 
tight disciplinary limits and to take an oppositional posture to the rest of  
culture, a posture based on distance and negation. They founded their 
‘criticality’ on the autonomy of  the discipline, which allowed detachment 
from contemporary phenomena. Criticality, autonomy, and responsibility 
were tightly bound together. Instead, Whiting and Somol proposed to 
“shift the understanding of  disciplinarity as autonomy to disciplinarity as 
performance or practice.”9 More importantly, they refused to rely upon 
“oppositional strategy.”10

Because they rejected such forms of  ‘criticality’, their paper became 
the target of  fierce objections against what came to be known as 
the ‘postcritical’ generation.11 Those objections largely rested on the 
assumption that criticality is the only safeguard against irresponsibility and 
is inevitably bound to autonomy: if  deprived of  the necessary distance, 
architects end up driven by market-forces, vulnerable to the pressures 
of  contemporary society and unable to serve for better ends. Whiting 
and Somol were accused of  ‘compromising with the real.’12 Because they 
wanted to engage the contingencies of  actual situations, they were doomed 
to lose any criticality, which was bound up with distance and resistance. 
The detractors of  the postcritical were not ready to envision an alternative 
view on criticality itself; they refused to consider a responsible position 
which would not be based on autonomy.

Whiting uses her expression “engaging autonomy” to deny she has 
ever been ‘postcritical’: she reaffirms her rejection of  a distant posture 
(she wants to engage fully contemporary phenomena) while saving the 



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specifics of  the discipline and of  the objects 
produced there. Yet, her contradictory expression 
remains trapped within the dichotomy it tends 
to escape. A convincing way out of  this sterile 
opposition still needs to be worked out; this paper 
seeks to contribute to that issue.

The discussion above can only be fully grasped if  
two related ways of  understanding ‘autonomy’ are 

disentangled. First, autonomy relates to the strict 
delineation of  the field of  architecture. Second, 
autonomy relates to the distance and resistance 
that are considered to be necessary conditions 
for criticality. Both are fully modern conceptions, 
inherited from Kant: first, his notion of  arts’ 
disinterestedness; second, his view on morality as 
a capacity belonging to autonomous intentional 
beings facing moral laws. In this context, arts and 
morality are neatly separated domains: aesthetics on 
the one side, ethics on the other. But both rely on a 
certain understanding of  autonomy.13

Consequently, the scale between autonomy and 
engagement drafted earlier needs to now organize 
itself  around (at least) three poles instead of  two: 
autonomy of  the field, autonomy of  the critical 
subject, engagement with the context (Figure 3).

This triangular shape greatly helps to 
understand the positions taken in the debate: 
‘critical architecture’ builds its moral criticality on 
the autonomy of  the field; Whiting reasserts the 

objections 
largely rested 

on the assumption 
that criticality 

is the only 
safeguard 

against 
irresponsibility 

and is inevitably 
bound to 

autonomy

“

”

FIGURE 3: RE-ORGANIZATION OF CONTEXT-OBJECT OPPOSITION.



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specificity of  the field (as producing and caring about objects) but not 
its mission of  resistance; the objections against the postcritical (critical 
practice) reaffirm both the necessity to engage the context and to do so 
critically, meaning from a position of  moral autonomy. Yet criticality—and 
moral responsibility with it—remains bound to autonomy in either case, 
be it of  the field or of  the subject.

In order to take a position in these discussions about architecture’s 
autonomy and its relationship to criticality, this paper will examine ways in 
which some interpretations of  the philosophy of  pragmatism prove useful 
to overcome the dichotomies that remain.

3. PRAGMATISM 1: SOMA-AESTHETICS FOR AN IMMANENT CRITIQUE
Interestingly, this much-commented controversy about criticality in 

architecture has become associated with pragmatism. At some point, the 
‘postcritical’ position and its propositions were indeed grouped under 
the label “A New Architectural Pragmatism.”14 This expression relates 
to pragmatism in the common sense of  the word: the young architects 
involved were reasserting practice over theory and were eager to realize 
actual buildings. But—more surprisingly perhaps—the ‘postcritical’ has 
also become associated with American pragmatism, i.e., the philosophical 
tradition initiated by Peirce, James, and Dewey in the late nineteenth 
century and recently revived in various fields of  academia. Indeed, a few 
years before Somol and Whiting’s provocative paper, a major conference 
was organized in New York, which built propositions for architecture 
upon the philosophical tradition of  pragmatism.15 As this initiative shared 
a number of  the same people and the same issues with the postcritical 
discussion, it is sometimes considered as a precedent.16

Richard Shusterman, one of  the contemporary pragmatist philosophers 
invited to the conference, took part in the debate for the very reason that it 
had been associated with pragmatism. Shusterman’s work takes over from 
Dewey’s aesthetic philosophy. Shusterman’s position is interesting for the 
present discussion because he is one among those who picked up Dewey’s 
legacy in order to reconcile ethics and aesthetics. For him, pragmatism has 
the advantage of  opposing the Kantian legacy by negating both the idea 
that aesthetic judgment is disinterested and that ethics is based on general 
rules of  behavior. Shusterman considers that art and aesthetic judgment 
should not be seen as totally distinct from ethical considerations and 
sociopolitical factors.17 At the conference on architecture and pragmatism, 
he explains how a pragmatist aesthetics inherited from Dewey is closer 
to the experience of  art and how it does not restrict itself  to abstract 
arguments formulated outside of  this actual experience. Shusterman calls 
the field that he develops from these assumptions “soma-aesthetics.”

Nine years later, for a conference at the Bauhaus, he elaborates on 



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this claim and proposes what it could mean for 
architecture. He decides to address the postcritical 
controversy because he believes that a pragmatist 
insight might prove useful. His view is that Somol 
and Whiting’s projective proposition has been 
abusively called ‘postcritical’ due to the reductive 
idea that “a critical attitude is supposed to require 
an external and autonomous position—at the 
same time detached and disinterested.”18 Instead, 
Shusterman’s soma-aesthetics proposes “a model 
of  immanent critique in which our critical perspective 
does not require one to situate oneself  completely 
outside of  the situation at hand, but simply 
necessitates one to look reflexively at that situation 
without being absorbed by immediate feelings; this 
is a perspective where the posture is more decentered 
than external.”19 His definition of  critique is based 
on the capacity of  the body to discriminate among 
experiences: the body poses critical judgments. 
He applies this model of  “immanent critique” to 
architecture as he believes—along with the so-
called ‘postcritical’—that “[architects] cannot stand 
outside of  what entangles them in the world […] 
the architect can only be complicit and tangle with 
it.”20 Shusterman thus affirms that pragmatism is 
far from being incompatible with criticality: it offers 
a helpful alternative view on criticality.

In the same text, Shusterman attempts to 
defend a second aspect of  Somol and Whiting’s 
projective architecture: their emphasis on the 
atmospheric quality of  architectural production. 
For Shusterman, there is a critical potential in those 
qualities, which is rarely recognized: “Suspicion 
always weights on these dimensions, which are in 
principle considered as ungraspable and useless 
for exercising criticality.”21 This view echoes 
Whiting’s concern that what architects are dealing 
with (designing objects, spaces, atmospheres) is 
regrettably not associated with any moral or critical 
capacity. But Shusterman explains why he believes 
that atmospheric qualities and affective dimensions 
of  architecture do have a critical potential: our 
attention to these aspects can be practiced; they 

art and 
aesthetic 

judgment should 
not be seen as 

totally distinct 
from ethical 

considerations 
and 

sociopolitical 
factors

“

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can become the object of  conscious (critical) judgments. For Shusterman, 
the challenge of  criticality in architecture is in the development of  our 
sensibility to these somatic perceptions.

4. THE PROBLEMATIC CONFLATION OF ETHICS AND AESTHETICS
Such a reconciliation of  ethics and aesthetics features many promises 

but it still needs to overcome certain objections deriving from the fact 
that architects are more often accused of  confusing ethics and aesthetics 
than they are of  keeping them separated. They often pretend to deal with 
ethical issues directly through the aesthetic dimensions of  their oeuvre. 
They do this by assimilating good aesthetics with morality, by attributing 
moral virtues to tectonics and forms.

In a book that takes the form of  a pamphlet against architecture’s 
autonomy, Jeremy Till denounces this fact because “ethics are thus 
detached from their essential condition of  being worked out through 
shared negotiation and instead are situated in a very controlled environment 
that positions the architect as arbiter.”22 Till denies that ethical properties 
may be attributed to materials or objects or configurations themselves. He 
denounces the claim that if  a brick wall is carefully built, it is not only a 
source of  aesthetic pleasure or technical mastery but also becomes morally 
valuable. This critique thus brings us back to the ‘object’. Till notes that 
such a conflation of  aesthetics and ethics can only happen “in the parallel 
universe where morals are attached to objects.”23 And he believes that it is 
a very dangerous conflation, as architects absolve themselves of  a part of  
their responsibility regarding other humans just because they have been 
faithful to the tectonic properties of  the bricks. Or even worse, the bricks 
are made responsible for the consequences rather than those who designed 
them. That is what happened with modernist social housing, accused on 
its own of  all social troubles, as if  the buildings could be detached from 
those who decide for them, design and maintain them, live in them. Till is 
radical on this topic: “To put it simply: a brick has no morals.”24 He firmly 
stands on the side of  those who upset Whiting by stating that “a focus 
on the building and its objecthood and certainly on its form is simply 
irresponsible.”25

Actually, Till’s problem is not with architectural objects in general but 
with the way they are considered as isolated from their social setting and 
from their consequences on the human beings affected. The problem 
with “objecthood” is when it is all about static objects, produced from the 
inside of  an autonomous field of  practice, as if  they were independent of  
external matters. What is needed might then just be, as Stefan Koller notes, 
“a proper ontology of  architecture [which] will individuate architectural 
entities in a way that accommodates social relations.”26 The question is 
thus not just about the possible reconciliation of  aesthetics and ethics but 



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about the way architectural entities are considered. 
To readdress our moral relationship to objects, we 
must reconsider the ontological weight we attribute 
to them.

5. PRAGMATISM 2: ETHNOGRAPHY OF ARCHITECTURAL ‘THINGS’
In the face of  that question, yet another 

pragmatist thread in architecture might be traced. 
This one appeared under the form of  ethnographic 
accounts of  architectural practices. Such work 
consists in attentive depictions of  architects at work. 
Ethnographic accounts borrow their methods from 
similar works conducted in Science and Technology 
Studies (STS), and their views from the Actor-
Network Theory (ANT).27 The main exponent of  
this thread is Albena Yaneva, whose first major 
publication is subtitled “A Pragmatist Approch to 
Architecture.”28

These ethnographic descriptions of  architectural 
‘objects’—architecture’s so-called products and 
tools: buildings, plans, models, etc.—show how far 
such objects are from being static. By observing 
how they are mobilized and circulate in a given 
situation, the ethnographer can point to the fact 
that objects are acting upon people; they are not 
only being used. Some of  these studies focus on the 
devices used by architects (models, plans, sketches) 
and depict such devices as active participants in the 
design process instead of  as mere passive tools.29 
Others show how a building in the making—which 
has not been built yet and may not be built—does 
already have a (moral) life of  its own as it gathers 
lots of  concerns around it: 

Following the proactive powers of  architectural 
projects to mobilize heterogeneous actors, convincing, 
persuading or deterring them, buildings will be tackled 
here as becoming social (instead of  hiding behind or 
serving the social), as active participants in society.30 
These ethnographies show how poorly architects 

are armed to understand the situations they are in 
and which involve humans as well as nonhumans, in 
strangely symmetrical ways. Usually, nonhumans are 
neatly separated from humans: they are considered 

To readdress 
our moral 

relationship to 
objects, we must 

reconsider the
ontological 

weight we 
attribute to 

them.

“

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as static and passive, they are at best useful, at worse constraining; and 
if  they show any traces of  activity at all, it is only in support of  humans’ 
projections. Together with Bruno Latour, Yaneva regrets that the object is 
always detached from the concerns it actively provokes: 

A building is always a ‘thing’ that is, etymologically, a contested gathering of  
many conflicting demands. […] And yet we either see the uncontested static object 
standing ‘out there,’ ready to be reinterpreted, or we hear about the conflicting 
human purposes, but are never able to picture the two together!31

These descriptions of  architectural practices offer a radical perspective 
on nonhumans and the way they engage moral problems posed to 
architects at work. The authors, however, do not suggest any form of  
programmatic ambition, except for a methodological agenda. Yet, new 
ways of  representing the practice ‘as it actually is’ can result in surprising 
accounts for practitioners themselves, who might have to reevaluate their 
practice. These precise (and potentially powerful) descriptions will hopefully 
nourish more conceptual (more philosophical) and more speculative 
works in architecture.32 Indeed, when ethnography starts to “repopulate” 
social sciences with nonhumans,33 it opens many philosophical and moral 
questions: let us admit these beings do play an active role; are they to be 
considered ‘moral’ as well? Once their claim to be taken as such is heard, 
the contours of  the moral itself  are redrawn, precisely along these claims.

6. PRAGMATISM 3: AN ECOLOGY OF THINGS
Several works in moral and political philosophy address these questions 

from a pragmatist perspective. Two of  them seem particularly relevant 
here: Emilie Hache’s “Propositions pour une écologie pragmatique” and 
Jane Bennett’s “A Political Ecology of  Things”. Both opt for a pragmatist 
approach departing from empirical descriptions of  problematic situations 
on which they then build their moral or political philosophy. Their 
approaches and concepts are based on a double pragmatist legacy: that 
of  the ‘founding fathers’ (mainly James’s moral philosophy and Dewey’s 
political theory) and that of  Bruno Latour (his pragmatist sociology 
as well as his pluralist empiricism). Although they are not dealing with 
architecture at all, they address our responsibility regarding ‘things’ when 
their ability to claim is recognized. They might thus serve as sources for 
further developments in architecture, regarding the problem addressed 
here.

Emilie Hache’s work provides a pragmatist account of  moral 
responsibility in the face of  the present ecological crisis. Hache opts for 
a version of  responsibility that is ‘heteronomous’. It is not based on the 
autonomy of  the moral subject who must be responsible for her actions. On 
the contrary, responsibility is understood as ‘responsiveness’, meaning that 
one has to respond to claims that are pronounced by others. And with the 



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ecological crisis, more and more things start to make 
claims. Also, things—which used to be mute—are 
much louder when their existence is threatened; 
humans also become more attentive when they 
understand that they are directly concerned. Hache 
borrows this idea from Latour’s work in political 
ecology, where he describes the ecological crisis as 
“a general revolt of  the means”34: more ‘objects’ or 
‘nonhumans’ require to be considered as ends; they 
impose themselves as such. Their claims impinge on 
human beings in the form of  concerns: glaciers are 
becoming moral, as they gather concerns around 
them. Opting for a pragmatist perspective, there 
is no point saying that glaciers are moral as such. 
For Dewey, values are not prior abstract principles; 
they are not definitely inscribed into things either; 
instead they manifest themselves in the way we 
care for things.35 Things thus become moral in 
situations, to the extent that moral concerns gather 
around them. But it is unfair to consider them as 
mere material stuff  unable to claim: they have their 
own path of  existence, which is now in danger, 
and which comes into calling for our attention. 
A pragmatist ‘heteronomous’ responsibility thus 
allows us to consider things as being made moral. 
But their morality is not imposed upon them—
projected on them—by human beings, who choose 
once and for all what can be declared moral or not. 
Instead, moral responsibility lies in the relationship 
one maintains with things. “The moral dimension 
comes from a certain way to be well treated by 
another, from the way one addresses another.”36 An 
idea of  morality built on pragmatist philosophy is 
thus relational: no one and no thing is moral on its 
own; the question is always about “becoming moral 
together.” Responsibility relies on the attribution 
of  unforeseen competences to another, forming 
attributes that did not preexist the relation. 

An answer to our initial problem starts to appear 
here: architects’ responsibility also depends on the 
attribution of  moral capacities to ‘objects’ as far as 
we interact with them. Also, it becomes clear that it 
is not a matter of  definitely inscribing ‘objects’ into 

architects’ 
responsibility 

also depends on 
the attribution 

of moral 
capacities to 

‘objects’

“

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the realm of  moral, even under certain conditions; the realm of  the moral 
itself  is redefined in a pragmatist way. As William James notes, there is no 
moral in vacuo and there can be no definition of  moral outside of  given 
situations where concerns emerge.37

Jane Bennett’s work follows arguments close to Hache’s and she is very 
explicit on the agenda this entails. She affirms that “the ethical task at hand 
here is to cultivate the ability to discern nonhuman vitality, to become 
perceptually open to it.”38 Despite of  all the similarities with Hache’s 
pragmatist moral philosophy, Bennett’s appeal to “vital materialism” 
introduces more than a difference of  vocabulary. By insisting on things’ 
vitality or vibrancy, vital materialism tends to attribute to things a certain 
degree of  life which is independent from their relation with humans. Yet, 
Bennett situates our ethical responsibility in the “assemblages in which 
we find ourselves participating,”39 and thus also insists on the relational 
aspect of  responsibility. By defining ethics as “a cultivated discernment 
of  the web of  agentic capacities,”40 she insists on the responsibility which 
a pragmatist moral philosophy imposes on every practitioner: an inquiry 
on all beings concerned, characterized by an increased attention to their 
demands to be heard, and followed by the obligation to respond to them.

7. CONCLUSION: CONSIDERING OBJECTS OTHERWISE
All these pragmatist insights provide a promising answer to the 

issue raised by Whiting’s concern that “responsibility is acquainted with 
everything but the object: its relations, origins, use, life and context”. This 
problem matters and requires a proper answer: can we care for objects 
and still be morally responsible? Would it be possible for architects not 
to be forced to choose among these concerns, not to consider them as 
mutually exclusive? As formulated, this problem may lead us to seek moral 
attributes in objects themselves, in order to include them in the definition 
of  a moral domain populated with moral beings. The question then 
becomes: under what conditions can an object be considered moral? But 
this question cannot be asked nor answered in general. It is not enough 
to reverse Whiting’s sentence and argue that ‘responsibility is acquainted 
with the object, only as far as it is dependent on its relations, origins, use, 
life and context.’

Responsibility is a matter of  considering objects otherwise,41 recognizing 
their agency, hearing their ability to claim, and acting in the face of  their 
consequences. But, opting for a pragmatist perspective, the aim is not to 
define objects as moral once and for all, to include them in the realm 
of  moral, while leaving the moral domain untouched. Indeed, following 
William James, the moral has nothing to with a delineated domain where 
some things are included while others are excluded. According to him, 
situations become moral as soon as claims emerge, because they imply 



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obligations to be dealt with. Thus, pragmatism does not allow philosophy 
to decide which objects are generally to be considered moral or not. Instead, 
morality is a matter of  situation; the philosopher can only inquire on ever 
more ways of  being moral, ways which are always situated. Consequently, 
morality requires those who are involved in a given situation (designers 
among others) to note how objects claim and to invent ways to make them 
matter. It is in this sense only that Whiting’s sentence can be reversed, and 
experimental answers can be tried with in architectural practice.

ENDNOTES
1. Sarah Whiting, “Engaging Autonomy,” SCI-Arc Media Archive 
(presentation, Public Lecture Series, SCI-Arc, Los Angeles, CA, November 
7, 2013), accessed August 23, 2013, http://sma.sciarc.edu/video/sarah-
whiting-engaging-autonomy-2.
2. Ibid.
3. Hashim Sarkis, “On the Line between Procedures and Aesthetics,” in 
The Pragmatist Imagination: Thinking about “Things in the Making”, ed. Joan 
Ockman (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000), 92–103.
4. Tom Spector, “Pragmatism for Architects,” Contemporary Pragmatism 1, 
no. 1 (2004): 133–149.
5. “X House,” WW Architecture, accessed August 23, 2013, http://
wwarchitecture.com/PROJECTS/X%20HOUSE/X%20HOUSE.html.
6. “Golden House,” WW Architecture, accessed August 23, 2013, 
http://wwarchitecture.com/PROJECTS/GOLDEN%20HOUSE/
GOLDEN%20HOUSE.html.
7. Robert Somol and Sarah Whiting, “Notes around the Doppler Effect 
and Other Moods of  Modernism,” Perspecta 33 (2002): 72-77.
8. Michael Osman et al., “Editor’s Statement,” Perspecta 33 (2002): 7.
9. Somol and Whiting, “Notes around the Doppler Effect,” 75.
10. Ibid.
11. Georges Baird, “‘Criticality’ and Its Discontents,” Harvard Design 
Magazine 21 (2004): 16–21.
12. Roemer van Toorn, “No More Dreams? The Passion of  Reality in 
Dutch Architecture...and Its Limitations,” Harvard Design Magazine 21 
(2004): 22–31; Reinhold Martin, “Critical or What? Toward a Utopian 
Realism,” Harvard Design Magazine 22 (2005): 104–109.
13. Cf. Nathaniel Coleman, “The Myth of  Autonomy,” ArchitecturePhilosophy 
1, no. 2 (2015): 157-178 for a more precise portrait of  the autonomist 
project in architecture. My own ‘disentanglement’ of  the senses of  
autonomy, however, differs from Coleman’s.
14. William S. Saunders, ed., The New Architectural Pragmatism: A Harvard 



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Design Magazine Reader (Minneapolis, MN: University of  Minnesota Press, 
2007).
15. Joan Ockman, ed., The Pragmatist Imagination: Thinking about “Things in 
the Making” (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000).
16. A. Krista Sykes, Constructing a New Agenda: Architectural Theory 1993-
2009 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010).
17. Richard Shusterman, “The Convergence of  Ethics and Aesthetics: A 
Genealogical, Pragmatist Perspective,” in The Hand and the Soul: Aesthetics 
and Ethics in Architecture and Art, ed. Sanda Iliescu (Charlottesville: 
University of  Virginia Press, 2009).
18. Richard Shusterman, Soma-Esthétique et Architecture : Une Alternative 
Critique (Genève: Haute école d’art et de design, 2010), 35. (translated by 
the author)
19. Ibid., 36.
20. Ibid., 34.
21. Ibid., 46.
22. Jeremy Till, Architecture Depends (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 
2009), 176.
23. Ibid., 174.
24. Ibid., 177.
25. Whiting, “Engaging Autonomy.”
26. Stefan Koller, “Architects on Value: Reducing Ethics to Aesthetics?,” 
in Ethics, Design and Planning of  the Built Environment, eds. Claudia Basta and 
Stefano Moroni (New York: Springer, 2013), 61.
27. Albena Yaneva, “Understanding Architecture, Accounting Society,” 
Science Studies 21, no. 1 (2008): 3–7.
28. Albena Yaneva, The Making of  a Building: A Pragmatist Approach to 
Architecture (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009).2009
29. Sophie Houdart, “Des multiples manières d’être réel,” Terrain 46 (2010): 
107–122; Albena Yaneva, Made by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture: An 
Ethnography of  Design (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2009).
30. Yaneva, The Making of  a Building, 18.
31. Bruno Latour and Albena Yaneva, “Give Me a Gun and I Will Make 
All Buildings Move: An ANT’s View of  Architecture,” in Explorations in 
Architecture: Teaching, Design, Research, ed. Reto Geiser, (Basel, Switzerland: 
Birkhäuser, 2008), 86.
32. Bruno Latour’s work is exemplary of  such a continued enterprise: 
departing from a series of  ethnographic inquiries into modern practices 
(science, law, economics, etc.), the anthropologist lately turned into a 
philosopher: his Inquiry into Modes of  Existence turns the empirical material 
collected into the ontological project of  pluralizing modes of  existence. 



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See Bruno Latour, An Inquiry into Modes of  Existence: An Anthropology of  the 
Moderns, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 
2013).
33. Olivier Thiéry and Sophie Houdart, Humains, non humains: Comment 
repeupler les sciences sociales (Paris: La Découverte, 2011).
34. Bruno Latour, Politics of  Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy, 
trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).
35. John Dewey, La Formation Des Valeurs (Paris: Les Empêcheurs de penser 
en rond, 2011).
36. Emilie Hache, Ce à quoi nous tenons: propositions pour une écologie pragmatique 
(Paris: Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2011), 32. (translated by the 
author)
37. William James, “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” International 
Journal of  Ethics (1891), reprinted in William James, The Will to Believe (New 
York: Longmans, Green & Company 1897).
38. Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of  Things (Durham and 
London: Duke University Press, 2010), 14.
39. Ibid., 37.
40. Ibid., 38.
41. In a way, my proposition follows David Leatherbarrow’s when he proposes 
an “architecture oriented otherwise,” an architecture “oriented beyond itself,” 
which would accommodate forces beyond the architect’s control. But only in 
a way, because Leatherbarrow’s notion of  orientation focuses more on the 
way architectural objects inscribe themselves or distinguish themselves from 
their physical surroundings, and less on the way the physical environment can 
be taken into account and thereby be made moral. See David Leatherbarrow, 
Architecture Oriented Otherwise (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008).


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