Shifting priorities as a decisive factor: ethics in architectural practice

Abstract

[EN] Every professional offers a unique, precise and basic service to society. This service is vocational from the exemplary models of their profession, with an enlightened and free execution. In the exercise of the profession, the architect tries to provide solutions to the different functional problems that derive from the ideal way of life proposed by today's society, facing ethical, social, political and legal problems in the search for the satisfaction of needs, sometimes economic interests take precedence over the social function of architecture and the principles of sustainability. Trends and intellectual conceptions change. In any case, it is indisputable that the fundamental key to architecture lies in the creation of a habitable environment. Thus, the architect is called upon to act as a civic leader in his or her professional practice. Based on this, the general objective of this paper is to make an exploratory approach to professional dilemmas in the field of urban planning and urban design. This is done from the perception and experience of the urban architect who carries out his work in the Valencian Community, in Spain. It is a first approach, carried out through conversations with professionals using qualitative techniques of social research, specifically the interview. The profiles interviewed combine the professional role with the teaching role in the university, which allows us to propose keys that can contribute to generating good practices in the professional field of the urban architect, but which are also present in teaching and learning. Among the conclusions highlighted are the disjunctions derived from political, economic and political-economic interests, which sometimes call into question the social function of urban planning as public policy; the necessary break with the elitism that has characterized the profession and the interdisciplinary work in urban planning as a way to act as a civic leader.