This little handbook acts as a brief introduction to philosophical ideas and how they intersect with architecture: its reception and appreciation as well as its practice. It suggests that since design is the core human discipline, being the only activity that involves the imaginative conception of ideas, leading to artifacts that are realised as actual constructions in the world, architecture itself can be regarded as a way of overcoming philosophical tensions by suggesting practical possibilities, namely designs, that appear to bridge between rival theories and approaches.

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,...