2012–13 LECTURES

Annie Pedret, Associate Professor, University of Illinois,
School of Architecture

November 15, 2006 @ 6pm

Annie Pedret is an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Chicago.  Her research focuses on the debates and reassessment of modern architecture after World War II and the contribution of this discourse to architecture culture in Europe and the United States.  She holds a Ph.D. and an S.M.Arch.S. from MIT, a B.Arch. from the University of British Columbia, and a B.Sc. from the University of Toronto.  She is currently working on manuscripts, “The History of Early Team X Thinking, 1947-1962,” and is editing a collection of essays titled, “Mies Re:considered.”

LECTURE

“Beneath Ethics:  Love, Understanding and Non-Action”

Ethics, as a basis of correct action that allows us to live together, change with time and context. Based on the collective and variable nature of ethics, Pedret will argue two things.  First, that they are bound to, and change with, our evolving conceptions of reality.  Second, that in a mature state, action has to be integrated in human life which means that it must be balanced with both understanding and felt experience.  Pedret will discuss that understanding, or understanding the essence of an ‘other,’ is an expression of love; and that we also accept a definition of felt experience as describing a state of non-action or being, then ethics as a basis for correct action that allow us to live together are based on love and being . This understanding of ethics, she will explain, puts into crisis modernism’s avoidance of the spiritual dimension.  More importantly, an understanding of the role played by love, understanding, and non-action allows us to go beyond the motivations, desires, ego, and attachments implicit in the process of making to an awareness of reality that is detached from wanting or not wanting. This in turn can lead to respect, dignity, generosity, grace, and even beauty. 

This lecture will be published in The Archeworks Papers Volume 1, Number Four which will be released in spring 2007.