ABSTRACT
Architects increasingly work around the world, in cultures far different from their own, and that leads to ethical conflicts of various sorts. A recent philosophy to emerge in ethics – moral foundations theory – claims that all cultures share, to differing degrees, the same core values, all of which affect the built environment. The controversial part of this theory is its claim that Western countries have emphasized a couple of those values over the others, such as liberty and caring, while non-Western and more conservative communities have maintained a greater balance of them all, a claim illustrated in the architecture of those cultures.
