Dilemmas of teaching professional ethics in the times of architecture of liquid modernity

Konrad Kucza-Kuczyński

Abstract

The subject of this volume regards ethics in architectural practice: that is correct because indeed its practical application is the goal. We can say that it is an inseparable element of architectural skills. I presented such an approach in the title of my first paper on ethics of the architect’s profession – unfinished postdoctoral dissertation: unfinished due to fears of my “postdoctoral” advisors who claimed then at the beginning of the 1980s that this dangerously borders on the field of science of architecture [6]… That incident convinced me even more that professional ethics is not a natavistic moral conviction or the Decalogue – as many architects still believe today – but it is specific knowledge which is necessary in architectural practice. And the first step in its direction is didactics at a university level. When in 1982 I began to give regular lectures on that subject, first at the Technical University in Białystok and then since 1985 until today in Warsaw, sometimes as a visiting lecturer in Łódź, the times to teach that subject were morally favourable, but materially and mentally difficult. The martial law provided a clear black or white background and against that background it was easier to look for proper attitudes and values. It was easier to draw from Lech Niemojewski and his sometimes almost naive but actually true interpretations of the relation between ethics and architecture equally evident in its true message.

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