Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Ethical Design Intelligence: The Virtuous Designer explores the deep significance of philosophy and ethics to the practice of design. It offers designers from disciplines such as architecture, urban design, planning, landscape, interior, and industrial design an alternative ethical framework in which to expand their thinking about their practice.

Arguing that design today is primarily an agency driven by the momentum of globalization, embedded in economy, materialism, and utility, the book reconceptualizes the notion of virtue in design practice. Across chapters covering topics such as virtuous character, creative agency, and unsustainable practices, the book scrutinizes design through a philosophical lens.

d'Anjou dissects articulations from different philosophical thinkers from antiquity to contemporary time to reveal that ethics is fundamental to everything affected by design. Countering well-established modes of postmodern relativism in design, which has led to "defuturing" and "unsustainability," ethical realism is presented as an alternative solution. This book is written for designers, educators, researchers, and students.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

D'Anjou (Florida Atlantic Univ.) is known for his explorations of the existential perspective of design and design ethics. In Ethical Design Intelligence he offers a journey into the deep significance of both philosophy and ethics in the practice of design, regardless of discipline. His intent is to get the reader to reevaluate the notion of virtue in the actual practice of design, and in service of that he scrutinizes various topics relevant to the subject. D'Anjou calls on the ideals of a range of philosophical thinkers to support his assertion that ethics is an integral part of everything associated with design. He hopes that a better understanding of these principles by designers will lead to what he calls eudaemonia, a word of Greek origin meaning human flourishing, prosperity, and happiness. Ethical Design Intelligence appears in the "Routledge Research in Architecture" series, which promotes quality architectural research. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --Robert Paul Meden, Marymount University