Meaning in life, morality and built heritage

Abstract

When Machado articulated the need for an architectural theory on remodeling in 1976 or, more recently, when Anderson (2021) defined ‘traces’, which can be described as marks or remnants left in place by cultural life that can be embodied in emotions, events, memories or meanings, they emphasized that architectural intervention should be understood as an interpretative and meaning-constitutive act. Both Anderson’s view and Machado’s metaphor of the palimpsest conceptually enclose the past as a repository with a certain weight and meaning that requires encompassing degrees of interpreting, opposing or transforming the old into the new. This implies that our architectural interventions are ‘morally pregnant’ since architectural decisions about conservation and reuse will affect those ‘traces’ and meanings. Put differently, through architecture we communicate about what is important or relevant. Hence, it is unsurprising that architecture in general and the treatment of built heritage, i.e. its preservation and reuse, frequently involves a kind of moral condemnation (such as in Belgium recently Het Steen, AfkrikaMuseum, St. Anna church Ghent) and that leading architectural awards (e.g. Pritzker, Aga Khan) refer to ethical concepts in their jury reports. The question is what a reflection about this ethical layer can bring to architectural theory and practice, especially with regard to questions about built heritage and reuse. In this paper the suggestion is that we can explore this moral nature of architectural interventions by a threefold reflection. (1) Although it may be questioned whether it is truly architecture, the description of and reflection on memorial architecture as a symbolic practice provides us with an understanding of its symbolic (i.e. involving meaning) and ethical nature, the related difficulties in memorial design and the frequently reoccurring moral criticism. (2) Against this background, it becomes clear why questions about contaminated or difficult heritage are ‘morally pregnant’. In those cases, we explicitly have to deal with meaningfulness and to deliberate about what, how and to whom we speak through our architectural interventions and what we consider to be valuable. (3) Hence, there is no reason to suppose that questions about built heritage and reuse will become less morally loaded. Heritage inherently represent values and attachments of different kinds and thus is balancing them out a difficult enterprise. Notwithstanding this difficulty, the architectural result of this sought-for balance will strengthen if our reflective and deliberative understanding and moral awareness improve (both in architectural practice and education).

Chris Bessemans wrote his PhD in philosophy (Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven) on phenomenological value ethics and moral conflicts and has been teaching (part-time) at the Faculty of Architecture and Arts at the UHasselt since 2020. Currently, he is developing his research (at TRACE, ARK, UHasselt) in architectural ethics and in particular he works on the ethical dimension of meaning (in life) in architecture and built heritage.

Meaning in life, morality and built heritage.