Architecture, Theology, and Ethics - by Elise M Edwards (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book explores why and how the design of architecture contributes to Christian pursuits of social and environmental justice. Edwards offers a new understanding of architectural design's relation to Christian ethics and proposes five moral commitments for orienting the desi...

Book Synopsis

This book explores why and how the design of architecture contributes to Christian pursuits of social and environmental justice. Edwards offers a new understanding of architectural design's relation to Christian ethics and proposes five moral commitments for orienting the design process towards the flourishing of humanity and God's creation.

Review Quotes

Bridging her training as an architect with the task of ethics, Edwards invites the reader to consider the moral meaning and value of our built environment. Too seldom do we consider the ethics of design and how it can contribute to the well-being of the human community. This book is a beautiful reminder of the central role that aesthetics can and should play in helping us shape a more just and sustainable world.

Elise Edwards's Architecture, Theology, and Ethics is groundbreaking. Here for the first time, we have a black feminist ethicist trained in Architecture, Christian Ethics, and Theology articulating what architectural practice rooted in a moral and liberative vision looks like. For the first time, we could sit architectural students, theology students, art students, and students concerned with black life in the same classroom and offer them a text to think together about our work, our world, and the possibilities of a shared project of building life. This is a generational text.

This exciting interdisciplinary work by a Black feminist scholar and registered architect will expand the reader's understanding of the ethical dimensions of the built environment. As Edwards extends liberationist thinking by approaching architectural design through it, we readers will come to learn how architectural design can advance or thwart the values of justice, creativity, empathy, discernment, beauty, and sustainability. This book is a must-read for anyone curious about those questions.

About the Author

Elise M. Edwards is assistant professor of religion at Baylor University and a registered architect.