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Value Systems: The Conceptual Basis of Building EthicsMustafa Pultar
Professor, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, Bilkent University, Bilkent, TR-06533 Ankara, Türkiye
Abstract
More so than knowledge and technology, it is individual, professional and societal value systems that essentially determine numerous aspects of the process and product of building. Such systems form the fundamental background of the ethical attitudes that parties involved in building assume. Despite their importance in the formation of building, however, there appears to be no well-established, coherent and systematic framework for analyses of value related issues in building.
This paper adresses the problem by examining the basic concepts that may be used in a discussion of values and interrelates them to form a conceptual framework. The introductory discussion attempts to explore and stress the place, importance and effect of value systems in the activities of designing, constructing and using buildings. How value systems may find their reflection in ethical considerations is also examined.
The concepts that form the elements of the proposed framework are based on a process model of describing the life-cycle of building. The relation of value systems held by planners, designers, builders and users to different stages of this process are illustrated through a graphical model. An attempt is made at defining such value-related concepts such as value, value judgement, value system, valuation and examining their interrelationship. The concepts discussed are illustrated through examples in building.
The paper concludes with suggestions for possible research topics, including problems of measurement, values surveys of building parties, temporal and spatial diffusion of value systems and cultural differences.
Keywords: Values, Value Systems, Building Theory
Introduction
The nature of building(s) and people’s attitudes regarding them are determined by two main types of factors: environmental and cultural. Among the latter, ethical predicates are probably the most influential. This is so not only because they determine how buildings are evaluated by people but also because they form the basic precepts through which professionals act in designing and constructing them and through which resources are allocated to it in competition with other socio-economic needs.
Ethical principles that dictate action have their origin in the values that people (professionals and users) hold. Despite this importance of values in the formation of ethical precepts, there appears to be no well-established, coherent and systematic framework for a discussion of value related issues in the analysis of building(s). The problem of value has received much attention in philosophy and in the behavioral sciences, where "[n]umerous books have been written on the subject, but [even there] often the reader comes away more confused than enlightened because the author has not defined his terms and has used the concept so loosely and broadly that his meaning cannot even be inferred" (Kilby, 31).
This paper addresses the problem by considering concepts that may be used in a discussion of values and interrelating them to form a framework. The discussion is based on the place and importance of value related concepts in the life-cycle of the building. Prost supports the same approach: “Rather than speak of architecture in a very general sense from the point of view of aesthetics and technology ... the focus [ should] be on architectural production ... Ethical inquiry in architecture cannot involve individual responsibility only but must consider all social actors and lead to social awareness and responsibility” (152). Although the model utilized appears to be founded on the conception of a professional, industrialized building process, some reflection will reveal how it can, in reality, be applied to many different instances of the building activity.
A Process Model of the Building
In a manner similar to that of a majority of human activities, the life-cycle of building consists a four stage process: problem formulation, problem solution, implementation and use. This process is cyclic; most building reaches the end of its useful life due to some reason or other and, thereby, leads to a repetition of the cycle in the form of renovation, remodeling, re-adaptation of use or new building. A graphical model of this process is shown in Figure 1, which displays one such cycle.
In formalized-professional (i.e. non-vernacular) building, the four stages correspond, respectively, planning and programming; design; construction; and use. Here, a misfit is recognized between the present state of building and some ideal conditions that are deemed to be desirable for that environment. The former is described in terms of building descriptors; the latter conditions express what kind or level of the pertinent building descriptors are acceptable or ideal. These conditions are obviously bound to people’s conceptions of what is good and ought to be preferred.
The misfit that underlies a problem may result, on the one hand, from an observed lack or deterioration over time of the conditions defined by the building descriptors. Alternatively, people's conception of the desirable conditions may change over time as would happen, for example, with changes in fashion or the socio-economic status of the occupants. The definition of the problem may take an explicit form or may be felt implicitly; in today's formalized construction, the problem is made explicit through an architectural brief or program.
During design, decisions are made as to how a projected state of building should be so that the misfit between the state descriptors and the desirable conditions shall be resolved. The product of design reflects the designer's interpretation of the problem, as well as his own convictions about the desirable conditions that he deems are preferable in that situation. These latter may be, and often are, quite different to those of the owner.
Construction involves a major transformation of materials, energy, finance and manpower into the building product. Characterized by an intense concentration of economic resources, construction necessarily reflects the interests of the parties concerned with it. What are now considered to be good and desirable are likely to be quite different to those of both the owner and the designer.
Use is that stage of the building life-cyle where the building’s impact extends not only to the users but also to the social and built-environment at large; and this for long periods of time. Very often the immediate users of and the people indirectly involved in building(s) have very little say in its formation until this stage. It may even be the case that they remain unknown until much later.
Building activity exists in interdependence with numerous environmental and cultural factors, with technology, knowledge and value systems forming the basic components of the latter. Neither environmental factors, nor knowledge and technology, however, determine on their own or together to any fundamental extent the nature of a building design nor the quality observed by the users. What do determine these are the beliefs that owners, users, professionals and other people hold as to what ought to be desired and preferred. It is these beliefs that shape the ultimate perceptions related to building(s); and in this sense, people’s ethical beliefs are the ultimate determinants of how buildings are appraised.
Values in Ethics
If ethical considerations in building are to be of any operational consequence at all, we need to develop an approach different from traditional discussions in philosophy and social science, and work from a scientific understanding of ethics. One such approach, which will form the basis of the discussion in this paper, views ethics as the science of oughtness. A foremost proponent of this approach, Bahm, claims that “[t]he most basic problem facing ethics as a pure science is understanding the nature of oughtness” (Bahm 1994, 3). He goes on to state that the nature of rightness and wrongness, obligation and duty, codes, standards, norms, mores and laws are all related to oughtness, but that they are mere synonyms for it. As the fundamental notion in a study of ethics he regards values: “Fully adequate understanding of oughtness and rightness involves understanding values” (Bahm 1994, 28).
Bahm proposes, “as essential to ethics, some principles for choosing ... [which] will seem self-evident. All of them can be tested by rigorous examination. All of them presuppose that persons have values ... and that at least some of these values can be known and considered in making right and wrong choices” (1994, 27-28). The said principles consist of the choice of a good over a bad, of greater good over a lesser good, and of a lesser bad over a greater bad. By reference to a continuous scale of goodness, these principles can be consolidated into a single one, namely the choice of a greater good over a lesser good.
Values and Value Judgement
The question of value has been treated to great extents from philosophical, psychological and economic perspectives. Among these, the approach taken the behavioral sciences seems, at first, to lend itself to study of value in building. A widely-quoted definition of value given by the anthropologist Kluckhohn sees a value as a "conception, explicit or implicit, distinctive of an individual or characteristic of a group, of the desirable which influences the selection from available modes, means and ends of action" (395). This definition stems mainly from work that involves people's personal, social and moral values in affecting their behavior and has continued in that vein (Rokeach; Schwartz and Bilsky). However, Kilby, working from the same perspective, states explicitly that he ignores all of the technical meanings of value except the one in behavioral science (31) and this is a common trait of such studies. Furthermore, what is characteristic of values understood in this sense is that the thing valued, the concept used in judging it as good and the act of valuing it are integrated into the same notion.
Studies of value in building, on the other hand, need an alternate conception of value since building(s) is intimately connected with economic, engineering and artistic phenomena and since different parties involved in the life-cycle of building do not see the question of value in the same manner. In order to do this, we need to approach the question of value from a wider perspective. The conception utilized in axiology, the science of value in general, allows us to do this (Pultar).
Quoting the work of Hartman, based on the conception of ethics as a knowledge of goodness, Forrest gives a definition of goodness as “degree of concept meaning fulfillment” (2), which implies fit to some ideal or perfect state. Goodness is understood to be variable; there can be different degrees of fit to an ideal. The definition also incorporates the notion of badness and exhibits a gradation from good to bad (Bahm 1993).
The construct which expresses the variability of goodness is defined by Forrest as value: “Value is goodness gradation specificity” (23). Analogous to “number” being a construct for resolving questions of abundance (quantity) gradation, value is a construct which pertains to questions of goodness gradation. Thus, for any concrete or abstract object which displays a particular goodness gradation, it should be possible to define a value which describes that gradation.
In many instances, values have a hierarchical nature in that some values constitute generic classes; these generic classes may be thought of as incorporating different values which have a common character, a feature of similarity. For example, the value of reliability incorporates the values of functionality and durability, which themselves are similar but different instances of reliability. Even these may be thought of as generic classes of other more narrowly defined values. The hierarchy relations in Figures 3 to 5 show, furthermore, that hierarchy may extend through different types of values and that such relations are not unique.
Traditionally, values have been differentiated as to whether they are intrinsic or operational (Bahm 1993, 40-42). Korsgaard has argued that these are two dualities: intrinsic versus extrinsic, and operational (means) versus non-operational (ends). Green has extended the same argument to environmental values.
Intrinsic value pertains only to the attributes of the object itself, independent of its circumstances. Many building values such as strength, durability, safety and executional mastery are intrinsic in character. Extrinsic value, on the other hand, resides in the relation of the object to its circumstances (Green, 32). Typical examples of extrinsic values in building can found in the contextuality of a building in consequence of its historical importance or in the uniqueness of a building as the sole remaining instance of a particular style in a city.
An object has operational value if it is good for achieving an end. To a housing developer, a building has value as a means to profitability; to a designer, computer aided design has operational value for achieving a better design. The end value of an object appears, however, to coincide with its intrinsic value, as profitability is for the housing developer.
Values are constructs which associate potential goodness attributes to objects. They do not indicate, however, what the goodness gradation associated with that value is to be. This association involves not only the indication of the value but also description of its nature and its desirability or acceptability conditions. In other words, it requires establishing their goodness gradation. Re-wording Kluckhohn's definition to read "beliefs, distinctive of a group of professionals or users, of the desirable conditions which influences their decisions and perceptions" provides an explanation of this kind of association. Such beliefs are called value judgements. In building, specifying the structural requirements of strength may be given as an example of explicit value judgement. A value of social status such as conformity with fashion or style exemplifies implicitly held value judgements.
These examples highlight a characteristic of value judgements. Even though strength is a value, its goodness gradation can only be established in reference to the load carrying capacity of a structural system in a building. Similarly, thermal comfort can be established in reference to the internal temperature. Thus, value judgements necessitate the association of some building descriptor with the corresponding value. Figure 2 shows, for example, a naïve value judgement for thermal comfort in the form of a goodness gradation associated with the descriptor, internal temperature. This example is a singularly well defined case because it associates a continuously measurable descriptor with a continuous goodness gradation. Some value judgements, however, simply associate a binary goodness gradation with a value, as is the case for strength; the load carrying capacity either is above a predetermined threshold (acceptable) or below it (not acceptable). Others may be better defined in reference to categorical or ordinal goodness gradations.
Many of the descriptors related to values in the engineering and economic aspects of building can be defined explicitly. Usually this is the outcome of an involved cognitional process and often the product of cultural aggregation in the profession. Major problems seem to occur, however, in the association of descriptors with social values and in the measurement of these descriptors. Even though some scales exist such as the Rokeach (1973) scale of values, few well established procedures of measurement have been developed for a majority of the behavioral and perceptual values involved in building(s).
Values and Value Judgements in Building
Whether building values are intrinsic or extrinsic in character, or are means or ends values is not of great importance unless these values have been identified and denominated in the first place. A convenient route for identification would be to consider the kind of human needs that they are related to. From this viewpoint, values that affect the nature and outcome of human activities may be classified under three general categories: technical, socio-cultural and percepto-cognitional.
Technical values are related to the satisfaction of non-human requirements, as well as biological and bio-social human needs. Three generic values in this context are reliability, efficiency and compatibility. Reliability is associated with the probability that a problem solution will perform its function satisfactorily. In the building context, as shown in Figure 3, reliability may be interpreted, for example, to mean the probability that a building will provide the necessary meso-environmental conditions. Efficiency concerns the ratio of the utility obtained to the amount of the resources supplied. In building, efficiency measures may be such quantities as amount of useful space or quality obtained per unit of investment, or the efficiency of the heating system provided. Compatibility is a value related to the inverse of the degree of conflict that the solution implemented will create with people, and other entities in the environment. A foremost example of technical compatibility is safety.
Compatibility also falls under the general class of socio-cultural values. As shown in Figure 4, social compatibility comprises values of past and future continuity, suitability to the social and cultural context, and conformity to good professional practices.
Also affecting the formation and perception of the built environment are percepto-cognitional values, among which may be mentioned the generic values of evocativeness, dishabituality and mastery. Cf. Figure 5. Evocativeness is a measure of the extent to which the senses, emotions and intellect of observers and users are invoked. For example, such evocation may consist in giving an impression of magnanimity or historical continuity, or invoking feelings of homely coziness or community. Dishabituality is a measure of the novelty and the unfamiliarity of the solution. In building this might correspond to the provision of novel spaces, vistas that people are unaccustomed to and novel uses of materials and other architectural elements. Mastery comprises qualities that are conveyed by formal aesthetic characteristics such the unity of the design, the refinement in details, the degree of perfection attained in design and construction.
In building, there are many values ranging from those related to structural parameters to acoustic variables, from material costs to formal aesthetic measures. Several different values would fall in the same category: for example, the safety of the building against collapse during earthquakes; safety from household accidents or toxic emissions from the building materials; and the degree to which a building blocks the sunlight of adjacent buildings are all instances of compatibility values which exist simultaneously in building. This diversity in the range of values is a major problem in studies of building values.
Another problem relates to the fact that it is not only building, the product, but the whole of the building activity as described in Figure 1 that constitutes the subject area of building values. Although it will not be possible to enumerate these values here, the short list below will serve to illustrate their diverse nature:
a. The intrinsic values of the building product, such as compatibility with the physical and mental health of the occupants (Cf. Day).Value judgements in building are formed mainly through the accretion of successful professional examples and the practice of criticism. They are transferred throughout the building professions through education, professional guidance and control, and through society by enculturation. Parallel to cultural phenomena, value judgements vary through time and in space. Whereas judgements related to technical values have a tendency to remain fairly constant, other values judgements change more often and are variable from group to group, and society to society.
b. The means value of the social organization through which the planning has been achieved, such as a participatory process.
c. The extent of the discourse that a building has generated in architectural circles.
d. The extrinsic value of compatibility with the topography and climate of the environment.
e. The innovativity of the techniques used in the construction.
f. The appropriateness of the spatial solution vis a vis the cultural value systems of the occupants.
g. The means value of the attitudes of building professionals (Cf. Manheim).Explicity stated value judgements are encountered in the clauses of professional standards, building codes and other codes of practice. Ordinarily, such clauses are not interpreted as value judgements, but they are, nevertheless, totally consistent with the understanding of value judgement provided above. Such value judgements rarely create much disagreement. Much more controversial, however, are socio-cultural and percepto-cognitional value judgements not laid down in an explicit manner but rather carried implicitly by professionals in their individual style of practice. Attention must also be drawn to the fact that many values in building, in addition to not having clearly defined descriptors, have value judgements associated with them implicitly. The designation of such values incorporates their goodness gradation, often in binary form. Values commonly used in architectural criticism such as creativity, sensitivity, perceptivity, boldness, and brilliance are examples of such values.
Value Systems
The value-related features that characterize particular people, groups and societies are not the individual value judgements that they hold but rather their value systems. A value system may be defined as an abstract collection of value judgements held by a person or a group regarding the various values involved in a phenomenon. Within a value system, value judgements do not exist independently of each other; they are interrelated through interactions and conflicts. As formulated by Schwartz and Bilsky (1987), the conflicts that exist between quality judgements and economic interests are very real examples.
Two main problems appear in the formulation of value systems: how to compromise different value judgements and how to aggregate them. Regarding the former, the value system must contain additional rules that prioritize value judgements and dictate when and how precedence may take place. In the case of conflicting judgements, the value system must contain ways of resolving this conflict. Because these will involve a preference between various goodnesses, such rules are in the nature of ethical dictates. They express what ought to be done in particular situations. Therefore, the study of value systems is essentially an ethical problem rather than an axiological one.
Regarding the problem of aggregation, it is helpful to find a value to which different values may be converted thus reducing to value analysis to a common basis. Cost is one example of such a value. In case such a common value cannot be formulated, various value judgements may be aggregated by weighting them and forming a composite. Somerville, for example, discusses the aggregation of benefit and harm: “Value judgements are involved here as to what counts as benefit and harm, and as to what weight should be given to each” (77). Stern, Dietz and Kalof (328) have used a similar approach to model the motivation to act on the environment.
Value systems are more variable in time and between groups and societies than are value judgements. It is not difficult to imagine, simply by looking at the types of building values in Figures 3 to 5, that architects will tend to give preference to some values over others as different from what a builder, contractor or local administrator might do.
Valuation and Worth
The discussion above has been general in that no reference was made to particular instances of building. To bring the study of values to an operational level, we need to consider what is involved in the evaluation of instances.
Establishing the goodness level of a particular instance (building) on the goodness gradation of a value is a process that may be called valuation. The level established in this manner is the worth of that instance for that value. For example, the structural analysis (valuation) of some particular load carrying system of Building A (instance) establishes that its strength (value) is strong (worth). Thus, a building descriptor, mediated through valuation, results in a worth for that building. This example also illustrates some salient features of valuation:
a. Valuation may consist of a procedure varying from a simple one capable of being done by a layman to a detailed professional study.Overall quality in a building is a typical example of composite worth, incorporating the worth of all values pertaining to a building. Because it is mediated by value systems, it is continuous and variable throughout the life cycle of the building and also with respect to the groups that are doing the valuation, emphasizing the essential subjectivity of building appraisals.
b. It may be done at different stages of the building process; predictively during design as in the example above, selectively post design as in an architectural competition or in post facto assessment.
c. Because the valuation of an actual building will involve many value judgements, some procedure of composite valuation needs to be formulated using the premises of value systems in order to determine composite worth.
Some Observations on Value-related Issues in Building
Many of the problems that generate debate may be re-formulated in the light of value systems. One such issue concerns the conflict that is observed between different groups. For example, there appears to be constant conflict in the needs and approaches of professionals versus users, in the attitudes of architects versus engineers, in the interests of contractors versus owners. A re-analysis of these problems in value-related terms may help in understanding but not necessarily in resolving these differences.
Another occasion where problems associated with value systems become apparent is in design competitions. Competition documents expressing the problem are prepared by a planning/programming group that also sets performance criteria and acceptable standards. The actual choice of the solution to be implemented, however, is governed by the value system of the jury. It is very easy to foresee that different winners would emerge if different juries were to judge the same entries. The perennial complaints by designers that documents are not clear, or too restrictive, or have not been taken into consideration by the juries are likely to find clarity when viewed in a value-related perspective.
A major portion of the energy that is devoted to building education goes to forming the value system of the students. This effort would be better guided by a consciousness of value systems through a study of the values involved and their formation, examining past and present value systems held by different groups. Similarly, value-related analysis may also be used in the studies of designer attitudes and behavior.
Conclusion
This paper has attempted to discuss fundamental value concepts and to provide a framework for considering value issues in the building as a basis for building ethics.
Further progress in value-related issues may be attained by the following studies:
a. Identifying and specifying values in building and developing operational procedures for value judgement.Works Cited
b. Examining and documenting value systems of different groups involved in building, taking account of variations in cultural backgrounds.
c. Observing and documenting changes in value systems of different groups involved in the process over time and the manner in which these changes take place.
d. Studies of the formation, transfer and diffusion of value systems.
e. Studies of user groups to document their preferences in choosing buildings and in their attitudes towards them.Bahm, Archie J. Axiology: The Science of Values. Amsterdam, Atlanta GA: Rodopi, 1993.
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