Architecture and the ethics of harm: design, responsibility, and the cost of inaction

“To what end do we put our skills without ethical purpose”
Richard Sennett, The Craftsman

The pursuit of technical mastery without ethical consideration has long been a defining tension in professional practice. History offers stark examples – figures like J. Robert Oppenheimer, who grappled with the moral weight of his scientific achievements, and Adolf Eichmann, who saw himself as a mere functionary, absolved of responsibility by bureaucratic process.

Oppenheimer was highly skilled, and Eichmann was meticulously efficient in administration, yet their legacies are shaped by the ethical consequences of their work. In architecture and construction, where decisions about materials, design, and procurement shape lives and landscapes for generations, this same dilemma persists. How much agency do architects truly have in shaping ethical outcomes, and to what extent have they surrendered responsibility to cost, regulation, and external pressures?

Richard Sennett, a sociologist and author of The Craftsman, explores the relationship between skill, labour and ethics in professional practice. He sets out his stall by using both Oppenheimer and Eichmann as examples of high intellect and skill so narrowly focused on solving their respective tasks that ethical consequences become retrospective questions to their “beautiful” and “final” solutions. One was convicted as a war and human rights criminal; the other was convinced he’d be remembered as one.

From there, Sennett overlaps Animal Laborans (subsistence labour) and Homo Faber (skill to ethical ends) – concepts that Hannah Arendt, his teacher, had placed at opposite ends of the ethical spectrum. Today, Sennett argues, they have become conflated: the working hours of a surgeon, musician, computer programmer or architect – and the 10,000 hours of skill development – serve both to keep a roof over one’s head and to yield an ethical outcome, whether intended or not.

He reminds us that Homo Faber, as coined by the 3rd-century BCE Roman statesman Appius Claudius Caecus, directly links mind and hand skill with a purpose to benefit society. Vitruvius, some three hundred years later, framed architecture’s fundamental ethics more explicitly as “firmness, commodity, beauty” – structural integrity, budget and beauty (as defined by its culture). Perhaps a low bar, to which we have, by consensus and law, added much more – not least fire safety, sanitation, fair(ish) labour and, more recently, embodied and operational carbon.

At present, ethical accountability too often comes only when we are sued or when a public inquiry exposes negligence

If Grenfell has taught us anything, it is that all of us – architects, structural engineers, building trades, suppliers and consultants, not least the quantity surveyor and always the client – whether by contract or inference, make choices that have consequences. The very making of materials and their assembly, deployed to realise an architect’s persuasively rendered ideas, carries weight. We hope those choices are, if not entirely benign, at least sympathetic to the needs of those who hire us and that they contribute positively to broader wellbeing long after we hand over the keys.

Doctors train as long as architects, take the 2,500-year-old Hippocratic Oath, register with the GMC, and join the BMA or Royal Colleges of Surgeons and Physicians. Architects register with the ARB and RIBA – though both institutions long ago lost their once extensive ethical codes of conduct. Medical practice continually evolves in response to new research, emerging evidence, and improved understanding of risks and outcomes.

Treatments once considered safe and routine are reassessed and, where necessary, abandoned in light of new scientific consensus. Every month, it seems, GPs will advise and re-advise on nutrition, exercise, and work-related diseases, from mental health to exposure to harmful materials. Can we say the same for architects and others in the construction sector? At present, ethical accountability too often comes only when we are sued or when a public inquiry exposes negligence.

For a moment, set aside the lies, fraud and incompetence across our sector that resulted in 72 deaths at Grenfell. Did you know that architects, engineers and quantity surveyors continued to specify asbestos for decades after medical and scientific consensus had confirmed its dangers? Even as asbestos-related illnesses were well documented, advertisements in professional journals continued to reassure readers of its safety. Use of asbestos persisted in UK construction until its full ban in 1999, long after the risks were widely understood.

The HSE estimates that thousands of deaths per year still result from historical asbestos exposure, with hundreds of thousands affected over time. The consequences of design and specification decisions are often out of sight and out of mind – from the stroke of a pen to the click of a mouse. How many architects and consultants ever truly stopped to ask the ethical question?

For years, we have known that the construction sector is responsible for 40% of global CO₂ emissions (UN Environmental Programme) – around 60% of which comes from material production, use and construction, and 40% from building operation (EN15978). Developed and rapidly developing countries emit the largest share and are already economically better positioned to manage the consequences. To put this into perspective, the UK’s reliance on brick façades results in the purchase of around 2.1bn bricks per year, with their manufacture alone generating 5mn mtCO₂ – equivalent to 1.5% of the UK’s total annual emissions.

After seven years of training, do architects even retain ethical agency in shaping sustainable outcomes?

Yet, of the 210 countries listed in European Commission CO₂ emissions data, 135 have total annual emissions lower than the UK’s demand for fired bricks alone. Factor in steel, concrete and other materials, and it becomes clear that architects, through their specifications, contribute to the vast majority of global construction emissions – and the sometimes severe human hardship that follows. These decisions may be made with little thought, abstracted into the stroke of a pen or the click of a mouse, without malign intent – but the law is rarely forgiving when ignorance is the excuse.

After seven years of training, do architects even retain ethical agency in shaping sustainable outcomes? In matters of cost control, structure, thermal performance, fire safety and sustainability, their influence has diminished – at best, they act as ‘Team Leader’ to the specialist consultants, assuming the QS isn’t already the PM. Cost consultants will decide whether steel or reinforced concrete is specified, or whether gas or electric heating is used, based on which is cheaper this year than last.

Structural, mechanical and electrical engineers will configure a grid of columns, beams and services as efficiently as possible behind whatever ‘beautiful’ external and internal elevations the architect has composed. In this process, the architect’s agency erodes further, reduced to an overqualified and highly indebted wallpaper artist, dressing up a façade du jour over cost-controlled material and structure.

Still, if all goes well, the building will stand safely, avoid catching fire, and likely receive an ‘outstanding’ or ‘platinum’ rating under LEED, LETI or BREEAM. Yet, on closer inspection, does it still consume the same amount of concrete, steel and aluminium as it did three or four decades ago – before sustainability was even a legislated concern?

In October 2023, the Principal Designer role was redefined under the Building Safety Act, expanding its responsibilities to include coordination of design with building, fire, and other regulatory requirements. This restores elements of a role that architects have historically been trained for – and should continue to be. It marks a welcome return to greater responsibility where architects choose to embrace it for specification and coordination, potentially with a commensurate increase in fees. But where are the regulatory design tools to support architects in making material and structural choices that help reduce the 40% of annual global emissions attributed to the construction sector?

Material passporting is essential for accurately accounting for sequestered and locked-in carbon

EN15978, a globally adopted ‘cradle to cradle’ embodied carbon metric introduced in 2017, provides a framework for assessing a building’s carbon footprint across its lifespan. When combined with the BSRIA/University of Bath Inventory of Carbon + Energy, it becomes a cross-disciplinary design tool. With input from EightVersa, WebbYates, BuroHappold, RCA postgraduates and Groupwork, this framework has been developed into an easy-to-use manual input Excel sheet – soon to be available as a software plug-in for 3D-CAD models/BIM.

The tool presents material and operational carbon in a ‘traffic-light’ format – red for high, green for low. Aluminium, for example, registers at +36mtCO₂/m³, mild steel at +12mtCO₂/m³, fired clay bricks at +1.2mtCO₂/m³, while stone falls to +0.032mtCO₂/m³. At the other end of the spectrum, carbon-sequestrating materials such as sawn hardwoods (-1.2mtCO₂/m³) and Palm Strand Board (-0.9mtCO₂/m³) offer clear alternatives. The tool allows designers to iterate, adjusting material volumes and expected levels of renewable energy to optimise sustainability.

Among carbon-sequestrating materials such as CLT, DLT and hemp/straw, stone has emerged as a focal point for consultants looking to cut embodied carbon. Studies show that using stone instead of steel can reduce embodied carbon by 99.8%, and by 98% when replacing reinforced concrete structures or fired clay brick façades. When these materials are combined – and “material passported” for reuse – the result is buildings with carbon-negative outcomes, containing more locked-in carbon than was generated through material production, construction and operation.

Seven years of education should be more than sufficient to equip architects for this responsibility

Material passporting is essential for accurately accounting for sequestered and locked-in carbon. Perhaps surprisingly, existing planning laws already provide the framework to facilitate this. Rather than limiting planning conditions to superficial concerns about façades, they could be expanded to encompass the entire building – from the exterior through to its structural core.

This shift would position planners as gatekeepers to a low-carbon and even carbon-negative future. Barrister and solicitor Sarah Fitzpatrick at Norton Rose Fulbright is already exploring the legal and financial implications of this approach. Meanwhile, the EN15978 tool has emerged as a transparent, forensic benchmark for planners and consultants – one that offers a clear directive to achieve net zero, if not carbon-negative outcomes, with tangible ethical benefits.

What kind of architecture could emerge from this? One in which material choices and assembly are guided by an understanding of structural, thermal, carbon and fire performance, alongside textural and tactile properties – with a balanced consideration of their poetic and practical qualities.

Seven years of education should be more than sufficient to equip architects for this responsibility, qualifying graduates to take on roles as Principal Designers, CDM Coordinators and Team Leaders. This would result in an architecture that extends beyond the pursuit of a “style” without ethical accountability – one intrinsically shaped by ethical agency, with architects actively steering design choices towards a more sustainable and responsible built environment.