Questioning Architectural Judgment ─ The Problem of Codes in the United States

The book shines light on the problem of judgment, particularly in the realm of architectural "technics" and the codes that regulate it. The struggle to define "sustainability," and thus judge architecture through such lenses, is but one dimension of the contemporary problem of judgment. By providing the reader with an inherently interdisciplinary study of a particular discipline—architecture, it brings to the topic lenses that challenge the too frequently unexamined assumptions of the discipline. By situating architecture within a broader cultural field and using case studies to dissect the issues discussed, the book emphasizes that it is not simply a matter of designing better, more efficient, or more stringent codes to guide place-making, but a matter of reconstructing the boundaries of the systems to be coded.

Steven A. Moore is Bartlett Cocke Professor of Architecture and Planning and Director of the Graduate Program in Sustainable Design at the University of Texas at Austin, USA.

Barbara Wilson is an Assistant Professor of Planning and Sustainable Design and the Director for the Center of Sustainable Development at the University of Texas at Austin, USA.