ABSTRACT
Does the architectural discipline in the West require that an architect must uphold life, prevent deaths and refuse commissions produced under despotic capitalism? This chapter pursues the inadequacy of architecture’s industry bodies to provide a moral code for the iconic architecture industry, and criticises those informal architectural groups claiming to be concerned with ethics, in particular their parochiality and neglect of foreign geopolitical contexts where human rights abuses are the law and life hangs by a thread. The design of iconic buildings takes place in an industry without any moral regulation that assumes and hides beneath a veil of “global” neutrality and moral distance, and has the capacity to degrade human life on an industrial scale.
