Faithful readers of arcCA will have noticed that this is the first—and indeed the only—issue of the journal for 2012, though it has likely arrived in 2013. Consider it a New Year’s gift. If you have been slow to settle on your New Year’s resolutions, perhaps it may prompt you.
We’re calling it “On Good Behavior,” and it elides the realms of ethics and etiquette. I had imagined that there might be a common etymology for these terms, but such doesn’t prove to be the case. “Ethics,” as you probably know, is from the Greek ethika, a shortened form of ethike tekhne, the moral art, with ethika itself coming from ethos, “character,” especially (as used in English) the “character and spirit of a people”—this from Eric Partridge’s wonderful Origins: a Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. “Etiquette,” on the other hand, comes from the French, in which Partridge traces this lineage: “a label, a ticket, hence certain labels implying a certain order, a certain rank, hence . . . court ceremonial, hence formal good manners.”
As Thomas Fisher points out in “Ethics for Architects: Introductory Comments,” etiquette can, at times, serve to obscure deeper problems behind a façade of “just getting along.” More cynically, it can become an enabler of meanness, as Oscar Wilde observes in his inversion of one customary definition of a gentleman:
“A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.”
I continue to believe, however, that etiquette makes, far more often than not, a positive contribution to our ethos. As this ethos evolves along with our wildly expanding means of communication, via the Internet and its proliferation of social media channels, etiquette—which is so fundamentally concerned with communication—is a realm worth revisiting.
And ethics is a realm continually worth revisiting.
I hope you’ll find this “arcCA handbook” a useful reference tool. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the accompanying section on this year’s AIACC award winners.
I also hope you’ll take a renewed look at aiacc.org, where you’ll find, on a regular basis, the thoughtful articles you are accustomed to encountering in arcCA. Here’s a small sampling of what we have published since I began editing the website in January 2012, to give you a sense of the range of form and topic:
Amy Fashimpar, “Bridging the Gap: Public Interest Architectural Internships” (02/16/12), book review;
Brad Leiben, “Fire Station Health Centers” (07/11/12), one of a series on architecture for healthcare;
John Lucchesi, AIA, “Architecture as the Frame, Not the Picture . . . Really” (05/09/12), on a new model of owner-completed housing from Finland;
Garret D. Murai, “Professional Liens: Gone But Not Forgotten” (02/27/12), hard facts for your practice;
Simon Sadler, “How Design Makes Us All Californian” (06/11/12), a repost from BOOM: a Journal of California, a wonderful magazine out of U.C. Davis; and my own
“Brad Pitt, Move Over: It’s Moby Time” (07/16/12), directing to the musician’s blog focusing on eccentric L.A. buildings.
Do please follow aiacc.org, and weigh in with your comments and contributions. You can also tune in via Twitter (@AIACC) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/AIACC).
Originally published late 2012, in arcCA 12.1, “On Good Behavior.”
