There is much to indicate that ethics is an important field of inquiry for contemporary architects; and yet there is little evidence that this field has been defined in a way that will support ongoing academic and practical inquiry. One impediment to the formation of such a field is the divergence between disciplinary and interdisciplinary understandings of ethics and architecture. Does the conversation on ethics and architecture reflect an interdisciplinary movement? Or is ethical theory already intrinsic to architectural theory? This short essay takes up two antithetical positions in order to initiate a line of questioning critical of both. These positions include, on the one hand, the survival/revival of virtue ethics within the phenomenological school of architectural thinking, identified herein with the architectural theorists Joseph Rykwert and Dalibor Vesely, and on the other hand, the interdisciplinary arguments of architect William Taylor and moral philosopher Michael Levine.
is an ambitious attempt to trace the transformation of the modern hospital-from a place of salubriousness and charitable care to a system of rationally organized health and welfare-as a "global phenomenon." The architectural history of health and well-being is a rapidly growing field, and this book makes a thoughtful contribution with new content and an alternative framework for interpretation. The authors' claim of a "genuinely global architectural history of these hospitals" is raised early and is well-supported by a broad review of publications circulated internationally in the early 20th century, such as Nosokomeion, the official journal of the International Hospital Association, published in Stuttgart with articles in German, French, English, Italian, and Spanish; The Modern Hospital, a journal on hospital care and management published out of Chicago; and countless other volumes from hospital architects and specialists. These publications record a vibrant network of discourse, an idea that was first outlined by Logan and Willis in an article on the Australian connections, "International Travel as Medical Research" (2010) but has been expanded here to include its development across Australia, Europe, and North America, roughly between 1918 and 1968.
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