THE PHILOSOPHICAL FORUM

Volume XXXV, No. 2, Summer 2004

FREEDOM OF FORM: ETHICS AND AESTHETICS IN

DIGITAL ARCHITECTURE
MICHAEL J. OSTWALD

In this age of information overload what is significant is no longer freedom

of ideas but rather freedom of form. [. . .] The body is obsolete. We are at the
end of philosophy and human psychology. Human thought recedes into the
human past.
Stelarc1
In cyberspace the opportunity exists to create architecture that encourages
emancipation, equality, and social participation.2 Such digital architecture has the
capacity to support transcendent thinking and to dramatize the challenges facing
the political and natural environments of the physical world. For once architecture should be able to evoke the highest moral and spiritual values of society
without the constraints of gravity, materiality, or budget. Yet, instead of realizing
such possibilities, or even attempting to approach these issues, digital architecture has become a curiously nihilistic playground for many designers who are primarily concerned with the generation of new forms.3 This almost exclusive focus
is, in itself, regrettable, but as architecture is so closely associated with questions
of form it is neither unexpected nor innately problematic. However, it might be
anticipated that such forms would be aesthetically uplifting, inspiring, or numinousyet, in many widely published examples, this is not the case. Even those
I am grateful to Michael P. Levine and Bill Taylor for providing valuable advice and comments on
earlier versions of this paper.
1
Stelarc, Towards the Post Human: From Psycho-body to Cyber-system, Architectural Design:
Architects in Cyberspace 118 (1995) 91.
2
Michael Benedikt, Introduction, Cyberspace: First Steps, ed. Michael Benedikt (Cambridge: MIT
P, 1991) 125. Cyberspace here refers to the Internet, the World Wide Web, and all current and
developmental virtual technologies.
3
Architects call a buildings three-dimensional shape its form.

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few examples of digital architecture that are undeniably artistic or picturesque are
often jarring in their lack of connection to the real world.
This paper is concerned with the implicit and explicit characteristics of recent
digital architecture and the extent to which ethical considerations have shaped the
aesthetic character of these designs. The paper argues that the reaction evoked by
much digital architecture is a result of innate incoherence in the work that is
caused by the presence of an aesthetic defect; a defect that is propagated by the
neglect of ethical considerations.
The present paper adopts the theory of ethicism,4 which holds that a work
is aesthetically meritorious (or defective) insofar as it manifests ethically
admirable (or reprehensible) attitudes.5 In this context the word aesthetic is used
to refer to the existence of something beyond the simple visual and formal qualities of an object. This use occurs because architectural aesthetics are a reflection
of the attitudes and values of the designer and, as a result of this, necessarily
possess some latent capacity to be criticized from an ethical perspective. The
present analysis also accepts the associated position that ethical criticism of
architectural aesthetics is valid because architecture results from a wide range
of human and social considerations that are distilled in the complete aesthetic
response adopted by a design.
Ethicism relies on a broad and inclusive view of aesthetics that values the artistic or architectural merits of a structure that are personified in its appearance. Ethicism proposes that works of art, and by inference architecture, should first be
interpreted in their aesthetic totality and second in terms of their impact on the
viewer. In the first instance Berys Gaut explains; [a]ll that follows from ethicism
is that if a work manifests morally bad attitudes it is to that extent aesthetically
flawed, flawed as a work of art [or architecture]6 regardless of isolated proportional, harmonic, textural and stylistic achievements. In the second instance ethicism is concerned with a works manifestation of certain attitudes [. . .] in the
responses they proscribe in their audiences.7 Again the response must be viewed
in a broad context to ensure that it is about the architecture as a whole, rather
than a singular aspect of it. Fundamentally ethicism rejects the notion that readings of aesthetic issues should be divorced from their political, cultural, and social
contexts and that they must therefore ignore the manifestation of the designers
attitudes in the mind of the viewer. Ethicism does not conclude that something
that is aesthetically pleasing will necessarily be ethically admirable or that some4

5
6
7

Berys Gaut, The Ethical Criticism of Art,Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection, ed.
Jerrold Levinson (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001) 182203.
Gaut 182.
Gaut 182.
Gaut 192.

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FREEDOM OF FORM: ETHICS AND AESTHETICS IN DIGITAL ARCHITECTURE

thing that is ethically sound will result in a beautiful aesthetic response. In the
former category are some of architect Ricardo Bofills designs for housing in
Marne-la-Valle (near Paris), wherein the beautifully proportioned neoclassical
architectural forms hide a complex series of social problems. Or, in the latter category, the architect Aldo Rossis designs for public housing in the 1980s, which
began with laudable social and political aspirations and resulted in the production of desolate and often inhospitable spaces. Instead, ethicism affirms that the
aesthetic and the ethical are intertwined8 through neither is wholly dependent
on the other.
In the present paper it is argued that the ethical attitudes, or lack thereof,
embodied in digital architecture proscribe a particular kind of response in those
who attempt to view or experience the work. The actual response varies from
person to person and project to project but consists of a similar sense of disquiet,
unease or disturbance. Such responses are relatively common in works were
there is a strong disparity between aesthetic care and ethical consideration.
For example, Devereaux describes in detail her reaction to Leni Riefenstahls
Triumph of the Will suggesting that it is the conjunction of beauty and evil that
explains why the film is so disturbing.9 Gaut argues that such a disturbing, or
jarring as he calls it, response is the result of an internal incoherence in the
work10 that arises from an aesthetic defect. Gauts aesthetic defect is a flaw in
the greater expression of the work and of the values and attitudes it embodies. In
a related way, Taylor describes a similar reaction to architecture occurring as a
result of the lack of due attentiveness or care. 11 Here Taylor is arguing that
appropriate attention must be paid to all aspects of the design (its siting, detailing, life-span, flexibility, etc.) and that this level of responsibility, which is also
a form of ethical attitudes, can be expressed aesthetically. If these factors have
not had an appropriate level of care or responsibility taken, then a degree of
discomfort arises in the viewers mind. Such jarring reactions to aesthetic flaws
that are recorded by Gaut, Devereaux, and Taylor all occur as a result of morally
corrupt attitudes being embodied in a work or simply as a consequence of the
apparent neglect of social values.12 In either case, whether it is negligent or deliberately corrupt, the frame of reference for ethical criticism is defined by two concepts, the good and the just, both of which are outlined hereafter.
8
9

10
11

12

Gaut 199.
Mary Devereaux, Beauty and Evil: The Case of Leni Riefenstahls Triumph of the Will Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection, ed. Jerrold Levinson (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
2001) 227.
Gaut 190.
Nigel Taylor, Ethical Arguments about the Aesthetics of Architecture, Ethics and the Built Environment, ed. Warwick Fox (London: Routledge, 2000) 195.
David Pole, Aesthetics, Form and Emotion (London: Duckworth, 1983).

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The origins of ethical thinking are conventionally traced to the connection

between the individual and the collective, or the body and the state, and the
systems of values that they have in common and which benefit both. Starting with
the arguments of Platos Socrates in The Republic, the definition of justice (what
is right) has become connected to the idea of the good (what is widely held to be
valuable). Although issues involving power and politics can and do potentially
complicate this definitionas ironically raised by Platos Thrasymachus and later
by Aristotlein the present architectural context the simpler definition will
suffice. Therefore, an ethical decision or action involves both a consideration of
what is just (or right) and what is good (or has some value) and in both cases
concepts of just and good must acknowledge some relativity to wider community concerns and expectations. These characteristics, the just, the good, and associated community mores, provide a foundation for ethical discourse that is useful
for decision making in the design process and for the evaluation of completed
architecture. In the present context it provides a means of investigating digital
architecture and asking why so much of it is unsatisfying or unsettling.
The present paper commences with a description of digital architecture and its
relationship to conventional architecture. This first section considers the difference between the representation of architecture and the construction of architecture and the types of responsibility and accountability implicit in each process.
This explanation leads to a close reading and analysis of several prominent examples of digital architecture that are disturbing or jarringthe sign of an internal
incoherence. In the following section a brief overview of ethical debates in architecture is provided before a series of examples of the application of ethicism to
architectural aesthetics. This provides an introduction to an analysis of whether
the jarring response noted in digital architecture occurs for the same reasons that
this response has been recognized as occurring in various films and works of art.
This analysis follows two threads; the first is focussed on the extent to which both
the body and community, important elements in the development of ethical discourse, are absent from virtual environments and digital architecture. The second
is concerned with the dominance of aesthetics in digital architecture. The paper
concludes that the jarring character of digital architecture is explained, at least in
part, as a result of an absence of consideration of both what is good (for people
and the environment) and what is just (in the eyes of the community).
I
To people who are not trained in design it may seem obvious that a building is
architecture while a drawing, sculpture, or painting is not. Yet, to the architect
the situation is more complicated and a range of drawings, models, and other forms
of representation are as much architecture, if not more so, than many buildings.
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FREEDOM OF FORM: ETHICS AND AESTHETICS IN DIGITAL ARCHITECTURE

This connection between the physical construction of an object and its representation in other media is especially relevant in an analysis of digital architecture
where the relationship between the architects ideas, the mode of representation
of these ideas, and their potential realization in built form, is closely aligned.
The architectural historian Nicolas Pevsner famously contended that a cathedral is architecture while a shed is not. For Pevsner, who was writing in the early
part of the twentieth century, this is because the design of the cathedral represents the designers intention to fulfill functional, aesthetic, and cultural requirements, whereas the design of a shed is often accidental and rarely considers more
than practical concerns. While this argument is no longer taken seriously
because a shed can also be designed to function on a range of levels just like a
cathedral or palacethe underlying assumption, that architecture is about heightened responsibility, has remained. This suggests that architecture is defined by
intentionality and accountability not by building type. Thus, when a designer
approaches any problem of built form from an educated perspective that takes
responsibility for aesthetic, social, cultural, and functional needs, then architecture is being produced; this is true regardless of whether the design is for a courthouse, a factory, or a brothel.
This shift in thinking about whether it is a building type, or designers intention, that constitutes architecture is mirrored in twentieth-century architectural
criticism. As Gusevich notes, in the early part of the century the architectural
canon was defined exclusively in elite termsit spoke Latin, the language
of the Church and the court13 and it consisted almost entirely of monuments
(churches and palaces). In the late twentieth century the architectural canon
shifted to include banks, insurance companies, stock exchanges, museums,
universities, schools, and hospitals.14 Contrary to first impressions, this shift is
regarded as constituting the formation of a new elite rather than a serious broadening of the basis for architectural recognition. Yet, despite these debates about
whether or not a structure is necessarily architecture in both the early twentiethcentury writings and in the writings that followed, it was tacitly assumed that representations of architecture signalled the designers intentions in much the same
way that a completed building actualized these intentions. Moreover, the representation of architecture was often seen as a more authentic instance of the architects purpose than the completed building, which was frequently subject to a
range of external forces that reduce the impact of the original vision. This valuing
of the representation over the actualization exists because architects do not
produce buildings but designs of buildings that are delineated through drawings,
13

14

Miriam Gusevich, The Architecture of Criticism: A Question of Autonomy, Drawing Building

Text, ed. Andrea Kahn (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1991) 9.
Gusevich 9.

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MICHAEL J. OSTWALD

models, and texts. Such forms of representation record the intentions of the design
and, regardless of whether a building is constructed or not, are typically described
as architecture. Another way of understanding this issue is to realize that architects produce designs, they do not make buildings; the latter function is the role
of carpenters, bricklayers, and similar craftspeople. A certain latent platonism
may also inform this conviction that the architects design, as expressed by the
architect in representational form, is closer to its perfected state than the version
(now at least twice removed from its inspiration) that is constructed.
A number of different modes of representation are conventionally regarded as
constituting architecture. For instance, there has been a long history of architectural competitions wherein architects submit design drawings to a jury who judge
each submission and determine which is the best solution for a new building. The
Parisian salons celebrated this approach to architecture in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries as a means of encouraging architectural debate. Often the
building was never intended to be constructed; rather the aim was to test architectural ideas in a learned forum. Thus paper architecture, as it was called,
shifted from being a derogatory description of a failed entry to a design competition to being a widely publicized, highly valued, and often richly polemical
proposition.
Another unconventional form of temporal, spatial representation is recognized
by architects under the heading of conceptual architecture. This description
refers to a range of architectural experiments that began to occur in the 1930s
(and gained momentum in the 1960s), which involved ephemeral means of defining enclosure, shape, or volume. Probably the most famous example of this type
of architecture is Albert Speers design, the Cathedral of Light, for Adolf Hitlers
1934 Nuremberg rally. This design used search-lights, aimed at the night sky, to
suggest a vast colonnade that spatially defined the limits of the event in much the
same way that an architectural colonnade circumscribes the perimeter of a space.
This design is also is an early example of a work of virtual architecture that, like
Riefenstahls film Triumph of the Will that features the Nuremberg rally, is both
undeniably evocative and morally disturbing. More recently various architects,
including Coop Himmelblau and John M. Johansen, have defined temporary
building envelopes through the use of fire, water, laser light, smoke, or mist.15
Unbuilt, paper or conceptual architecture continued to gain respectability in the
late twentieth century until in the 1980s and 1990s several architects (including
Peter Eisenman, Bernard Tschumi, Daniel Libeskind, Lebbeus Woods, and John
Hejduk) achieved substantial fame and recognition before completing a major
15

Anthony Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely (Cambridge, MA:
MIT P, 1992); Aaron Betsky and Erik Adigard, Architecture Must Burn: A Manifesto for an Architecture Beyond Building (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000).

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commission. Such paper designs were often discursive in their propositions;

seeking to destabilize the dominant architectural orthodoxy by proposing buildings that uncover hidden, often conservative, political tendencies. Digital architecture is an extension of this paper architectural tradition insofar as the design
process and its result, as expressed through various representational media, is
often considered the final product. Another similarity is that many of the new
digital architects (who were often trained in the firms of the paper architects)
espouse similar, if less consistent and sustained, polemical agendas. Despite these
superficial similarities, the digital architects celebrate an unprecedented degree
of individual design freedom (as a result of the representational capacity of the
computer), yet tend to ignore the increased responsibility and accountability that
comes with this autonomy.
In digital architecture generic computer files (typically comprising enough
three dimensional points, vectors, and surfaces to describe a design) replace both
conventional drawings and models. Such files are used to generate technical drawings, photo-realistic renderings and simulations of a buildings environmental performance. Most importantly, these files are also capable of being used to construct
the physical components of the finished building. For example, Frank Gehrys
Experience Music Project in Seattle was modeled in a computer program and then
that computer model was used to control the process of manufacturing the component parts of the buildings cladding and structure, which were in turn transported to site and fitted together. For this reason many digital architects see the
computer providing a previously unprecedented degree of control to the process
of translating their designs into reality. While the proposition is debateable, if it
is true, then digital architecture appears to offer one way of closing the gap that
separates the architects intentions from their realization. However, by potentially
closing this gap digital architecture necessarily takes greater responsibility for its
outcomes. Whereas in the past different types of architectural representation were
translated by a team of others into the completed building, with the development
of digital technology the power of the others to shape architecture is reduced
and the accountability of the digital architect is reciprocally increased. While the
increased power of the architect has been celebrated, the associated heightened
responsibility has gone largely unnoticed. One reason for this omission is that
digital architecture has, to date, been almost exclusively focused on formal, or
aesthetic, experimentation.
In the last decade a number of architects have begun to use the computer to
design architectural forms that have previously been difficult, if not impossible,
to visualize or construct.16 These architects are using the protean capacity of the
16

Christian Pongratz and Maria Rita Perbellini, Natural Born CAA Designers: Young American Architects (Basel: Birkhauser, 2000).

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MICHAEL J. OSTWALD

computer to extrapolate or evolve, complex (and often convoluted) shapes, spatial

functions, and design processes. Through the application of previously unavailable computer hardware and software architects are now able to employ mathematical tools including topographic mapping, fractal geometry, non-Euclidean
surface structures, and parametric modelling, for the creation of architectural
forms. Typically, the digital designs that are produced in this way have an architectural expression that is overtly fluid, biological, or biomechanical. For example,
Marcus Novaks architecture often looks fluid or viscous and he argues that digital
architecture should become liquid17 because it can, in the virtual world at least,
flow and change in responsive and interactive ways. Similarly, other architects
propose designs that look like bodies or organs18 and have argued that instead
of architecture existing in any one fixed state it can and should exist in an alien
third condition that merges different aesthetic and functional roles in previously
unforseen ways.19 Despite such poetic arguments, the biomorphic architectural
expression is characteristic of much digital architecture precisely because the computer is able to handle complex forms with relative ease. In contrast, the traditional architectural toolsthe drawing board and the set square that have been
dominant since the Renaissance and the development of stereometryhave not
been able to work with these geometries with such apparent ease or finesse.20
Only a relatively small number of digital architectural designs have been successfully constructed. Among the major buildings produced in this way are Renzo
Pianos Kansai International Airport (completed 1995), Frank Gehrys Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (completed in 1997), and LABs Federation Square in
Melbourne (completed in 2002). All of these designs have answered their clients
needs and the latter two at least fulfill important social and civic functions. A
small number of other digital designs have been created for the purposes of investigation and restoration. For example, Mark Burrys work on Antonio Gaudis
famous unfinished church, La Sagrada Famiglia, in Barcelona, fits into this category. Burrys work is concerned with the completion of a complex and culturally significant building. However, completed projects, and those with a practical
focus, are decidedly rare in digital architecture and for this reason the focus of
17

18

19
20

Marcus Novak, Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace, Cyberspace: First Steps, ed. Michael
Benedikt (Cambridge: MIT P, 1991) 22554.
Maria Luisa Palumbo, New Wombs: Electronic Bodies and Architectural Disorders (Basel:
Birkhauser, 2000).
Peter Zellner, Hybrid Space: New Forms in Digital Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1999) 128.
Luca Galofaro, Digital Eisenman: An Office of the Electronic Era (Basel: Birkhauser, 1999). This
is not to suggest that organic, irregular, or biomorphic buildings have never been constructed, but
rather that they have, in the past, been rare. Architects like Antonio Gaudi and Friedensreich Hundertwasser successfully completed structures of this ilk long before computer programs became
available for this purpose.

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the present paper is the many unbuilt digital designs that have been widely published and are often only able to be visited and experienced on the World
Wide Web. While some of these designs were once intended to be realized in the
physical word, increasingly this digital architecture is never intended to be built
and is constructed digitally for inhabitation only in cyberspace.21
What is interesting about much of this latter category of digital architecture is
that, regardless of whether it has been designed for the physical world or simply
for the world of cyberspace, it possesses a peculiarly unsettling or jarring character. Peter Zellner portrays the results of the digital design process as strangely
beautiful yet uneasy; not spaces geared for popular consumption.22 Aaron
Betsky describes digital architecture as very strangea strangeness that
reflects the challenges of an increasingly complex world.23 Betsky argues that the
new digital architecture revels in the unhomely and macabre dimensions of
the modern world; [t]he unhomely is the staple of horror storiesand the effect
of the best architecture.24 Much of the paper architecture of the 1980s and 1990s
is also described as uncanny, disturbing, strange, disfigured, and morselated.25
Greg Lynn calls his own digital architecture alien26 and for Kolatin and
Macdonald their architecture is potentially monst[rous] and chimerical.27
Many of these descriptions are attempts to capture the simultaneously exciting
and unnerving character of digital architecture; the designers themselves openly
acknowledging that a fine line exists between pleasing and ominous results. This
fine line is particularly evident in a close examination of the widely published
digital visions of architects Stephen Perrella, Kas Oosterhuis, Ammar Eloueini,
Marcus Novak, and Lars Spuybroek. Projects from each of these architects are
described hereafter as examples of digital architecture and the impressions these
designs evoke, or the responses they proscribe. Through these descriptions a range
of issues are raised that are considered in the remainder of the paper.
Stephen Perrellas design, the Institute for Electronic Clothing, resembles a
frozen, metallic tornado. Its dark, swirling forms are intended to avoid the creation of conventional architectural meaning through a calculated rejection of the
21

22
23
24
25
26

27

This latter dimension partially differentiates digital architecture from the more conventional unbuilt
tradition, which involves designs produced on paper for polemical rather than phenomenological
purposes.
Zellner 134.
Betsky and Adigard, sec. 2.6, n.p.
Betsky and Adigard, sec. 2.6, n.p.
Vidler.
Greg Lynn, Predator, Architectural Design: Contemporary Techniques in Architecture 72 (2002):
66.
Solan Kolatin and Bill Macdonald, Excursus Chimera? Architectural Design: Contemporary
Processes in Architecture 70 (2000): 7177.

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MICHAEL J. OSTWALD

idea that architecture results from the controlled production of space with appropriate shape, scale, and decoration. According to Perrella, the architecture of the
Institute for Electronic Clothing is weakly determined because [i]ntention does
not control the development of the form28 rather the architectural shape is generated from a range of largely random factors. To further undermine the semiotic
or cultural capacity of the architecture to convey meaning, Perrellas design has
also been grafted, or surfaced, with spreadsheet data through an invented strategy called whether conditions. 29 Perrella uses the homonym whether/weather
to evoke the unpredictability (whether) and power of natural systems (weather)
when applied to architectural form.
Just as Perrellas digital design recalls a vast and dangerous storm, architect
Kas Oosterhuiss Trans-ports project resembles an alien invertebrate. The images
of the Trans-ports project show its glistening digital forms looming over awestruck visitors as if it is intent on devouring them. Oosterhuis explains that the
project is designed to evolve by feeding on the redundant meta-language information flow that exists as a result of human presence in real and virtual environments.30 Another example of this unsettling character is found in architect
Ammar Eloueinis digital design for the new Sarajevo Concert Hall, the images
of which resemble a razor wire enclosure for a prison. This is curious given that
the form of the project is derived from the process of applying musical and white
noise patterns to the buildings internal and external surfaces. Yet in the computer
these musical patterns are enlarged, abstracted, rendered in stark silver and grey,
and subjected to a complex layering process until the music has been lost and the
design has become a twisted fence-line of steel wire. This impression is, in part,
a deliberate commentary on the human tragedy that has occurred in Sarajevo, but
the form is sublime because of the way in which it has been created in the computer and is read by the mind, not as a result of its context. The character of the
design is heightened through its proposed siting, and it may be appropriate for
this reason, yet this does not explain why the character is evoked in the first place.
Marcus Novaks Data Driven Forms, a design for a cyberspace structure, is
similarly layered with spikes, cages and punctured, fleshy surfaces. Novak
describes the project as being derived from biomathematical algorithms that
produce a space that is no longer innocent31 but in which nomads can alter

28

29
30

31

Stephen Perrella, Institute for Electronic Clothing, Cyberspace: The World of Digital Architecture, ed. Mark Burry (Melbourne: Images, 2001) 102.
Perrella, Institute for Electronic Clothing 102.
Kas Oosterhuis, Trans-ports, Cyberspace: The World of Digital Architecture, ed. Mark Burry
(Melbourne: Images, 2001) 88.
Marcus Novak, Next Babylon, Soft Babylon, Architectural Design: Architects in Cyberspace II
68 (1998): 26.

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their environments at will.32 For Novak, digital architecture means that Le

Corbusiers (1927)33 axiom, architecture is a machine for living in, is no longer
valid. Instead Novak considers that perhaps architecture is an algorithm to play
in.34 Finally, and somewhat chillingly, Lars Spuybroek (of Nox Architects)
describes his visceral Softsite project as being like a melted down Manhattan,
where skyscrapers crawl on the ground and establish new connections.35 The
design imagery depicts an urban landscape merged with distended forms, like
human entrails. According to Spuybroek, the project asks why architecture must
separate body from building, wall from floor, elevation from floor plan, building from traffic, envelopment from event or even gravity.36 Spuybroek is not
alone in creating strangely prescient images that evoke the terrorist attacks on
landmark buildings that have occurred around the world in recent years. Another
digital architect, Greg Lynn, produced a design called Stranded Sears Tower in
1992 that similarly depicts a famous high-rise building, turned malleable and
rubbery, draped across the roofs of the surrounding city.37 While in both cases,
Spuybroek and Lynn, the intention is to use architecture to challenge the presumed authority of vertical (and hierarchal) networks as opposed to horizontal
(and allegedly rhizomorphous) ones; the result is equally disturbing, and not just
because it recalls recent events or challenges quotidian expectations.
These examples, from Perrella, Oosterhuis, Eloueini, Novak, and Spuybroek
are emblematic of the type of digital architecture that has been produced in recent
years. All five propose uneasy or disturbing forms despite an often-poetic explanation for how each is generated, if not why each one specifically looks the way
it does. Yet, while a number of writers have recognized the curiously jarring connotations of this architecture, few have stopped to ask why so much digital architecture seems to revel in disturbing and sublime imagery. Is it conscious, is it a
by-product of the software and hardware that is shaping architecture, or could it
be a consequence of the lack of consideration of what is good for people and the
environment and what the community accepts is just?
One explanation that is offered by people like Sandy Stone for the often disturbing emotions evoked by digital space, is that it has been created using
32
33

34

35

36
37

Novak, Next Babylon, Soft Babylon, 27.

Le Corbusier, Towards A New Architecture, Frederick Etchells, translator. (London, Architural
Press, Ltd, 1927) xix.
Novak eventually rejects this and settles on the more idiosyncratic axiom (trans)Architectures are
algorithms to play in, p. 27.
Lars Spuybroek [Nox Architects], Beachness, Architectural Design: Architects in Cyberspace II
68 (1998): 39.
Spuybroek 39.
Architect Raimund Abrahams 1979 Monument to Aviation actually depicts a large passenger aircraft speared through the stone wall of a tall building.

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technology that was initially developed for the military. Stone (1995) argues that
it is impossible to study the emergence of virtual systems without acknowledging the overwhelming influence exerted on the entire field of virtual technologies
research by the military.38 The software that is now being used by architects was
created for the design of stealth fighters and simulated battlefields. Certainly the
popular personification for so much of this early digital architecture was the
liquid metal man from James Camerons film Terminator 2 and the Predator
from John McTiernans film of the same namehardly socially sensitive ambassadors for a new architecture.39 Stone may be right in suggesting that any analysis of virtual space must take account of the origins of the technology, but this still
does not explain why many digital designs produce jarring or disturbing responses.
The following section provides an overview of ethics in architecture and the
application of ethicism. This prefaces the argument that the reaction proscribed
by many examples of digital architecture seen thus far is a result of the neglect
of ethical considerations producing a kind of incoherence in the workthe presence of an aesthetic defect.
II
Simon Longstaff in an analysis of architectural ethics reinforces the proposition that for ethical discourse to be useful, it must have a connection to contemporary community values and expectations. Longstaff argues that
[o]ne of the tasks of the professional is to seek the social good. It follows from this that one cannot
be a professional unless one has some sense of what the social good is [. . . yet] each professional
seeks the social good in a different form according to its particular expertise.40

Each profession has its own values and protocols that differentiate its mode of
practice from any other discipline and indeed from values and protocols in wider
society. This implies that, despite some common values, each professions definition of ethical reasoning is dependent on enculturation and training as much as
their participation in society itself. Cees Hamelinks response to this realization,
which follows Habermass similar argument, proposes that ethics can evolve in
a legitimate fashion only through the dialogue among all of those concerned.41
38

39

40

41

Allucqure Rosanne Stone, The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age
(Cambridge MA: MIT P, 1995) 27.
Stephen Perrella, Computer Imaging: Morphing and Architectural Representation, Architectural
Design: Folding Architecture 102 (1993): 90; Stephen Perrella and Mark Dippe, Terminator 2,
Architectural Design: Folding Architecture 102 (1993): 9193.
Simon Longstaff, Architects Ethics: Reviewing Professional Conduct, Architecture Australia
(November/December 1999): 91.
Cees J. Hamelink, The Ethics of Cyberspace (London: Sage, 2000) 5.

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However, such a model of discursive ethics requires widespread and informed

debate for it to be valid and in architecture debate of this type is largely
absent.
In architecture ethical debate has tended to be associated with arguments about
truth or honesty in material expression, functionality, or representation (of the
spirit of a time or characteristics of a place) all three of which are essentially different approaches to architectural ethics. While various authors have supported
such arguments in architecture,42 they have also been criticized for the way in
which they have constructed their ethical and aesthetic arguments. The problem
with many of these arguments is that they rely on narrow definitions of ethics
that ignore wider issues associated with justice and community perceptions of
what is right. In such arguments ethics is presumed to be contingent on the efficacy (or consistency) of a design theory in relation to its practical, material, or
aesthetic outcomes. While such a connection between theory and aesthetic practice is admirable, and is widely used as the basis for architectural criticism, it is
not an innately ethical proposition.
One of the key problems with the historic arguments about architectural ethics
is that it is quite possible for an ethically flawed approach to architecture, say
one which discriminates against the disabled, encourages crime or promotes
voyeurism of children, to be carried out with great consistency or efficacy. For
example, the shopping centre designs of architect Victor Gruen were famous for
developing the model wherein visitors are lured into controlled spaces, bombarded with subliminal messages, and forced to walk past small, tempting,
speciality stores before reaching the main supermarket. Having completed the
grocery shopping the visitors find themselves in a space without obvious directional cues, little idea about how to leave the center and find their car, or even
how much time has passed. Gruen designed masterful architectural traps for the
consumer that used every spatial and phenomenological trick available to maximize financial return.43 Yet, if traditional architectural ethical models were used
to criticize the shopping center design, they might praise the consistency of application of the design principles. They would probably then condemn a range of
minor decorative features on the grounds that they are simply applied, overtly
historicist, or lacking suitable environmental or regional expression. Such forms
of criticism would completely miss the overarching moral defect in the design.

42

43

John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture ([1849] London: George Allen, 1904); Siegfried
Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture, 5th ed. (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1974); Karsten Harries,
The Ethical Function of Architecture (Cambridge: MIT P, 1997); Isis Brook, Can Spirit of Place
Be a Guide to Ethical Building? Ethics and the Built Environment, ed. Warwick Fox (London:
Routledge, 2000) 13951.
Michael J. Ostwald, Virtual Urban Space, Transition 43 (1993): 424, 6465.

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This is because these forms of criticism consider the architecture in isolation from
the needs and values of the user and the community. Conversely, if the theory of
ethicism (which is adopted in the present paper) was applied to the shopping
center it would ignore the small-scale decorative features and focus on the way
in which spatial aesthetics (the architectural tools used to proscribe reactions) are
deployed to achieve unethical ends.
If the theory of ethicism is further directed at a range of common architectural examples then those projects that are often praised for ethical reasons
may be seen in a different light. For example, buildings that are commended
for their regional character are typically being rewarded for their appearance
more than any serious use of local and sustainable trades, materials, and customs.
Many well-known examples of environmental architecture are prominent precisely because they look environmental, whereas they are no more environmental than similar, cheaper, and more understated constructions. For this reason
Woolley talks about the importance of differentiating between greenwash
something that looks environmentaland actual sustainable materials and
designs.44 This differentiation is important because the gap between buildings
that appear to be environmental and those that are environmental can be substantial. A case in point is found in parts of Australia and North America
where a curious trend is observable in project home design that results in the
solar hot water and water retention systems being mounted on the front of the
house, regardless of whether it is the right orientation, as a sign to the neighborhood of the owners environmental sensitivity. Sunscreens and sunhoods over
windows in hot climates are also fast becoming part of a stylistic trend regardless of whether they serve any environmental function. In such examples the
message (the environmental aesthetic) is more important than saving the environment (the environmental ethic). That many of these examples of environmental design occur in gated or wealthy communities is even more disturbing
from an ethical perspective. Similarly, some of the lauded examples of regional
architecture have been built in poverty-stricken communities using imported labor
and materials with only token regional engagement. These examples demonstrate
that in the real world, if the suitably broad reading of architectural aesthetics
that is promoted in ethicism is utilized, then ethical criticism of built form is
possible.
With this background to conventional ethical criticism of architecture and the
examples of the application of ethicism with its broad definition of aesthetics, it
is time to consider ethics in cyberspace in general and in digital architecture in
particular.
44

Tom Woolley, Green Building: Establishing Principles, in Ethics and the Built Environment, ed.
Warwick Fox (London: Routledge, 2000) 44.

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III
Two descriptions of cyberspace which signal the ethical problems associated
with digital architecture are found in the writings of Barlow and Stelarc. John
Perry Barlows declaration of independence for cyberspace argues that the human
body is absent from the new digital frontier and that this in turn encourages a
more moral and ethical approach to governance. For Barlow, the Internet is the
new home of the mind and for this reason physical coercion does not work in
cyberspace because the body cannot be threatened, injured or constrained.45 This
is a peculiar argument because the threat of violence can be as powerful, if not
more so, than actual violence, and Barlow concludes, somewhat confusingly, that
in cyberspace from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonwealth, our
governance will emerge. The performance artist Stelarc similarly celebrates this
new digital era as representing the rise of a society that is not constrained by the
limits of the human body. For the artist, this is a time when [t]echnology invades
and functions within the body not as a prosthetic replacement but as an aesthetic
adornment46 Even more dramatically, Stelarc proposes that in the posthuman
world of digital space [o]utmoded metaphysical distinctions of soul-body or
mind-brain are superseded.47 The difficulty with Barlows position and, to a
lesser extent, Stelarcs is, as Hamelink observes, that in cyberspace
all those moral issues that confront us in daily realities are again on the agenda. All the immoralities of physical life occur in virtual reality: censorship, lust for power, treason, stalking, lying,
gossiping, peeping, stealing, cheating, seducing, breaking promises, insulting, and being unfaithful, unreliable, uncivilized or abusive.48

This is why, from an ethical and ontological viewpoint, cyberspace and digital
architecture are both exciting and perplexing. If we accept Barlows argument
then cyberspace has the potential to liberate the mind, to resist political oppression, and to promote enlightened learning and debate; but cyberspace is fast being
dominated by the same moral, social, and economic concerns faced in the real
world.
Another difficulty with Barlows and Stelarcs argument is that the same separation of the mind and the body that they celebrate is the primary catalyst for
the problems that beset virtual space. Without the body, individual identity is fragmented or diluted, which serves to reduce a persons stake in any transaction or

45
46
47
48

John Perry Barlow, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 1996, http://www.eff/barlow.

Stelarc 94.
Stelarc 91.
Hamelink 33.

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communication.49 Certainly this is the liberating aspect of virtual interactions (sex

without consequence, actions without responsibility, assault without retaliation)
but it also questions the extent to which such relations are genuine, meaningful,
or are able to evoke common values in the virtual community. As Michael Heim
argues,
[i]n one sense [cyberspace] frees us from the restrictions imposed by our physical identity. We are
more equal on the net because we can either ignore or create the body that appears in cyberspace.
But, in another sense, the quality of the human encounter narrows. The secondary or stand-in body
reveals only as much of our selves as we mentally wish to reveal. Bodily contact becomes optional;
you need never stand face-to-face with other members of the virtual community. You can live your
own separate existence without ever physically meeting another person.50

While the lack of corporeality in virtual space is one of its attractions it also results
in the evolution of a hybrid form of group interaction that lacks conventional individual, social, and communal values.51 This occurs because true consensus is not
reached through modes of communication and interaction that separate responsibility and consequence from action and expression. Stelarc ironically praises the
virtual world for accelerating and promoting [e]volution by the individual for
the individual52 and, as far as ethical discourse and community value is concerned, this is precisely the problem.
Cyberspace is still, despite claims to the contrary, dominated by individuals,
many of whom are communicating and behaving in highly idiosyncratic or antisocial ways. The primary mode of interaction in virtual environments is essentially monadic.53 As Heim argues, the monad exists as an independent point of
vital willpower, a surging drive to achieve its own goals according to its own
internal dictates.54 The monad operates as if the world is centered on its own
immediate needs and desiresthe monad embodies innately selfish behavior that
is focussed on personal gratification. The popular web personas, the hacker, the
flneur, and the net-surfer are all monadic types and their proliferation signifies
that virtual society lacks sufficient connection to the real world to encourage
meaningful debate and the generation of ethical consensus.
49

50

51
52
53

54

Michael J. Ostwald, Identity Tourism, Virtuality and the Theme Park, Virtual Globalisation:
Virtual Spaces/Tourist Spaces, ed. David Holmes (London: Routledge, 2001) 192204.
Michael Heim, The Erotic Ontology of Cyberspace Cyberspace: First Steps, ed. Michael
Benedikt (Cambridge MA: MIT P, 1991) 74.
Ostwald Virtual Urban Space; Identity Tourism, Virtuality and the Theme Park.
Stelarc 91.
Michael J. Ostwald, Virtual Urban Futures, Virtual Politics: Identity and Community in Cyberspace, ed. David Holmes (London: Sage, 1997) 12544. Monadic comes from the Greek word
monas, which refers to singularitymonotheism, monomania, monograph, monorail, and so on.
Heim 97.

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Digital architecture also encourages monadic tendencies in part because the

experience of virtual architecture, even more than real architecture, is focused on
isolated personal responses. Much of this is a side-effect of the architecture available to be viewed only in books and on the Internetboth essentially solitary
experiences. Moreover, the published images of the digital design and the Internet movies and the interactive virtual reality views that have been provided by
the architect further restrict the possibility of an original experience of the design.
The overall effect is more akin to a carefully choreographed guided tour than the
experience of real architecture. Even if the digital design is intended to be able
to be modified by groups of people, as in Oosterhuiss Trans-ports project, feedback is still typically to the individual. Intriguingly in the Trans-ports project the
actions of multiple people interacting separately with the design are expressed in
changes in the skin of the structure. This gives form to different kinds of collective, if compartmentalized, interaction but not a communal voice or the ability of
an individual or group to take responsibility for shaping architecture. The result
is that, despite good intentions, the meaningful part of the experience remains
focused on the individual. Certainly any unbuilt architecture, which is experienced only though drawings and models must be, in part, an individual experience. However, most architectural drawings and models participate in the real
world insofar as they acknowledge or accept that the potential users of the designs
have some shared characteristics (scale, the need for shelter, the need to resist
gravity), which in turn provides a communal reading of the work. Digital architecture that is designed for cyberspace often has no common language of scale,
function, or materiality, which means that it remains especially isolated from
socially mediated meaning.
The monadic character of digital architecture is further attenuated through its
methods of production. In the physical world any construction project is a team
effort and it is contingent on planning regulations, council approvals, clients idiosyncrasies, community action groups, constrained budgets, and regular compromise
in order to achieve its goals. All of these groups and factors provide intermediate
evaluations of the proposed architecture and its performance from a variety of perspectives. Digital architecture is only contingent on software, bandwidth, and, in
some cases, the sponsorship of both. It typically has no budget, no site, no community, no regulations to conform to, and only a single designer. Significantly few, if
any, people attempt to evaluate digital architecture because such a process requires
a common language of space and form which digital architecture eschews. Tellingly
this means that the opportunities for monomania are exaggerated in virtual space
as evidenced by the plethora of elaborate personal home pages on the World Wide
Web and the proliferation of sites dedicated to generating personal fame and fortune.
Nevertheless, insofar as digital architecture is concerned, does being monadic signal
an ethical dilemma for its design and production?
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The monadic mode of much digital architecture, along with the absence of the
body, signals the presence of an ethical quandary. It is difficult to determine what
is just or what is good if the relativity of either of these concepts is divorced from
both the presence of a body and of community. Ultimately though, digital architectures supposed freedom from ethical considerations is more imagined than
actual. The dilemma for cyberspace designers is that most assume that their
actions in virtual space are entirely personal and impact on nothing else. Yet
cyberspace mirrors and attenuates the flaws of the real world. Cyberspace may
be free of gravity but it is not free of crime, victimization, or oppression, and it
is replete with propaganda, misinformation, and inequality. In the latter category,
inequity, it is worth remembering that less than 15% of the worlds people have
access to a telephone and less to the Internet, only a small percent of which are
female.55 Digital architecture is often problematic for the same reason that the
hacker is problematic; both possess an exclusively self-centered view of the world
and their role in it.
If ethics in digital architecture is lacking because of the absence of the body
and the community, then the digital architects veneration of aesthetics and formal
experimentation aggravates the problem. Since antiquity, the human body has
provided architecture with scale, it defines architectures function, orders its fenestration, and it necessitates the provision of shelter. In the earliest architectural
treatises this was simplified to suggest that a building fulfills three purposes; it
provides firmness, commodity, and delight.56 However, if the human body is
absent, as it is in cyberspace, then architecture no longer needs firmness (to
provide shelter) and the value of commodity is debateable as function has become
embodied in software interfaces rather than architectural spaces.57 Superficially
this suggests that of architectures three conventional roles, in the digital realm
only the need to evoke delight remains. Yet, according to the theory of ethicism,
when the aesthetics (or delight) of a work are not supported by appropriate ethical
attitudes (including firmness and commodity) the outcome is morally defective.
Remember that this is not an argument that the digital architecture lacks isolated,
or particular aesthetic, merit; rather that architecture has greater responsibility
than it is presently demonstrating.
A widely held view of architecture is that designers have an ethical duty to
heed social and environmental concerns and this understanding reveals the short-

55
56

57

Hamelink 81.
Hanno Walter Kruft, A History of Architectural Theory from Vitruvius to the Present, trans.
R. Taylor, E. Callander, and A. Wood (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994).
Michael J. Ostwald, The Instruction of Myth: Searching for Architecture and Community in
Cyberspace, Re-Framing Architecture: Theory Science and Myth, ed. Michael J. Ostwald and
R. John Moore (Sydney: Archadia, 2000) 16374.

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coming of digital architecture. For attentive observers the unsettling character

of much digital architecture is a result of its disregard for the problems of the
physical world and its mistaken belief that these are irrelevant in the virtual world;
this defect is essentially ethical in nature. Taylor, Gaut, Pope, and Devereaux all
share a common belief that creative works embody moral and ethical attitudes in
their aesthetic disposition and that these attitudes proscribe viewer reactions. A
lack of ethical consideration in a work results in a jarring or disturbing reaction.
This is essentially the reaction seen in the previously described projects by
Perrella, Oosterhuis, Eloueini, Novak, and Spuybroek all of which, in different
ways, neglect the importance of the people and communities of the real world.
IV
It might be imagined that, from an ethical standpoint, architecture must have
some responsibility for promoting human well-being and environmental sustainability, but digital architecture seems to be concerned with neither of these roles,
believing that both are irrelevant in the virtual world. Digital architecture gleefully argues that the lack of the human body and of a natural environment in
cyberspace means that it is not only free of gravity but also of ethical consideration. This is not the case. Despite the desires of many in cyberspace, the decisions made in virtual worlds are critical to the success of ecology, humanity, and
the physical world. Thus, just because cyberspace can attempt to ignore such challenges does not mean that it should.
Ultimately digital architecture must develop and sustain a serious connection
to the real world, and to wider community values, if it is to have any meaning.
For example, a project by the present author set out to dramatize some of the
regrettable side affects of the growth in cyberspace communities.58 This sardonic
project proposes that virtual reflections are constructed on the Internet of the
worlds major public parks and spaces. The parks in the real world are then thermally monitored and if their level of use falls below a certain point, then the
virtual reflection is deleted from the World Wide Web as a sign that another public
space has ceased to function. In this project the aesthetic issues are secondary to
the central concept, which seeks to dramatize the problems of the modern world
in a way that connects real and virtual space. A far better example, where the aesthetic attitudes of the digital designer set out to proscribe a degree of political
awareness, is Jessica Lynchs Inverted Landscape project. Lynchs design for a
public space in the Australian capital city Canberra is unbuilt and like many
digital designs exists only in images and animations. The public space was
58

Michael J. Ostwald, Temporal Civic Zone, Cyberspace: The World of Digital Architecture, ed.
Mark Burry (Melbourne: Images, 2001) 17475.

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intended to celebrate the federation of states into a political unity.59 The design
weaves together aesthetically and formally a range of political symbols in both
an informative and a potentially subversive manner. The native plants of each
state and significant star formations recorded on the national flag are animated to
delineate a new landscape that is then inverted and undermined with gendered
images. Instead of allowing the collage of found objects to simply clash together
in a meaningless array (a common technique in digital architecture) the project
positions these elements in careful and considered ways. This design generated
moans and gasps of delight60 when presented, rather than the more conventional
shock and awe inspired by much of the digital architecture previously described
in this paper. Despite this, neither of these two examples is ultimately ethically
satisfying either, but each at least signals the possibility that digital architecture
is capable of much more.
Digital architecture has a responsibility to draw connections to the real world
in order to provide comment, provoke informed debate, raise awareness, and
encourage inclusion. In much the same way that architecture, correctly conceived,
has always had such a responsibility. When digital architecture finally accepts the
ethical concerns of the real world it may transform the current virtual playground
into an even more exciting space for revolution and reform.

59

60

Pia Ednie-Brown, The Will to Animation, Architectural Design: Architecture + Animation 71

(2001): 70.
Ednie-Brown 71.

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