This beautifully compact book – the combined discourse of a moral philosopher and an architect – provides us with a parti pris for contemplating the often contradictory interplay of ethics and aesthetics in the generation and perception of architectural form. The authors jointly acknowledge the challenges poised by the conflict between raw instrumentality and the nuances of environmental culture. In so doing they identify six ethical categories which have the capacity to impact fundamental issues pertaining to the genesis of built form and, similarly, a set of values with regard to function, context, time and intellect, which we may discern either together or separately in our reception of architecture.

Translated by: Lina Tao