Ethics of Virtuality… Virtuality of Ethics
Aghlab Al-Attili, Leonidas Koutsoumpos · eCAADe proceedings · 2006
This paper addresses issues pertaining to architecture, virtuality and ethics by establishing an interactive, non-linear virtual environment as a tool for investigation into the virtuality of ethics and ethics of virtuality, in the context of architecture. Starting from the assertion that ‘Virtual Environment (VE) is a metaphor of Real Environment (RE)’, we test the proposition that suggests ‘Ethics of RE can be tested and simulated in VE’. Challenging the notion that sees people reacting to VE in the same way as they interact with their surroundings in RE, we propose that since ethics are engulfing architecture they are also present and simulated in VE. Virtual architecture has elements of ethics that we refer to as ‘Ethics of Virtuality’. In this context, VE ethics seem to lose the ubiquity that is present in RE. In order to examine this hypothesis, we created a VE that corresponds to the RE of the PhD students’ offices, within the Department of Architecture, School of Arts, Culture, and Environment in the University of Edinburgh. The real life users of these offices were subjected to this VE. A qualitative method of research followed to probe their experience, focusing on issues related to ethics. Subjects were asked to give a personal accounts of their experience which gave us an insight into how they think. The compiled list of results and their evaluation showed startling possibilities, further establishing VE as an arena for investigating issues pertaining to both architecture and ethics.