[Note: As this presentation was prepared as a speech, the text does not include footnotes as would be customary for a printed article.]

"Goodness, Truth and Beauty"

by Louis Nelson

Faculty Speaker, 2009 Diploma Ceremony

UVa School of Architecture

Let me begin by recognizing the ten years in which the School of Architecture has flourished under the deanship of Karen Van Lengen. Without her hard work, we would not have the two phenomenal new wings that now shape our work and our lives together. These additions have not only had a profound and positive impact on our school, they have reshaped the place of architecture in our larger university community. She has also launched our Foundation Board and tripled the size of our endowment. These are no minor feats. Karen’s work will have a lasting impact on future generations of architecture here at UVA. As a learning community we all owe a great debt to Karen. Please join me in thanking her for her dedicated service.

You are today receiving a degree from the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia. So does that mean you are all going out to become architects? Of course not. We here at this School understand the term architecture to read far more broadly than that. We are concerned with the design of buildings, yes, but also parks, cities, transportation systems, gardens, neighborhoods, social networks, watersheds, public art, the list goes on and on. Architecture as we understand it encompasses the whole of the built environment. And we are concerned not only with the improvements for the future, but also the conditions of the present, and the lessons of the past. So if we define architecture so broadly, is there anything that lies at the heart of what we do? Besides just a collective interest in built stuff, is there something that binds us together as an intellectual and academic community? As a historian, of course, I’m naturally inclined to reach into the past for answers to present questions. Some have offered the writings of early architects: Corb? even earlier? Alberti? earlier still? Vitruvius? In retrospect I think not. I want you to consider a claim that the foundations of great design were laid centuries before Vitruvius in a scholar who understood much about the nature of the human condition. In his treatise entitled Phaedrus, the Greek philosopher Plato identified three qualities that stood as the highest of all human values: goodness, truth, and beauty. He saw these as inextricably linked one to the other and offered them as the criterion for human flourishing. It now seems to me self-evident that excellence in architecture emerges from scholarship and design that fosters human flourishing, scholarship and design that stands on the firm foundation of goodness truth and beauty. Let’s take each virtue in turn.

GOODNESS (Justice)

Goodness. For Plato, goodness was the source of knowledge and was best understood through analogy to the sun. For sight, the sun is the source of light, and so makes objects visible and allows the eye to see; for Knowledge, Goodness is the source of Truth, and so makes Forms intelligible and allows the mind to know. Goodness, which for Plato is virtue in action, was the source of truth that resulted in knowledge. We have surely seen that kind of knowledge generation at play in this coterie of graduating students. I have spent much of the last week collecting comments from the faculty about the work of their graduating students and that exercise has been clear evidence that you graduates embody the virtue of Goodness—the pursuit of knowledge through virtues in action.

One from among you put your commitment to local sustainability to action by writing an innovative study on local food in an effort to transform local foodways here in Charlottesville. Another wrote a thesis project on the district of Zongo in Cape Coast, Ghana, which currently functions in the unhealthy conditions of open sewers and water systems. This student has proposed a fundamental rethinking of water use as watershed, which could provide a new means of simultaneously resolving issues of sanitation and erosion. One of their peers wrote a thesis on the architecture of nineteenth-century African-Americans in Hampton Virginia, charting the ways architecture played a role in shaping an identity of freedom and independence. Students have also created the university's first community garden, worked for the improvement of informal housing settlements in India and Brazil, volunteered for the Albemarle Housing Improvement Program, and taught indigineous Chilean children about sustainable farming practices, all with an eye toward social justice and equity. Here in the School of Architecture and in the work of our students, Goodness abounds.

TRUTH (Integrity)

Truth: In his Allegory of the Cave, Plato argues that that which is true is that which has substance. In this dialogue, Plato offers an image of individuals having to choose between the reality of shadows they have always known or the reality of the objects that cast those shadows, but objects they have never seen. In so doing, Plato asserts that truth is that which is tied to reality, to substance, to those things which have integrity. In addition to pursuing goodness in their work, students also demonstrate the pursuit of truth, by which I mean the pursuit of that which has intellectual and ethical substance. One of you argued for the individual and collective design integrity of mobile home parks. Others of you wrote dissertations truthfully balancing the hopeful intentions and the sometimes destructive realities of public housing initiatives and elevated urban highways. Another student developed a design proposal for a public swimming park in Richmond, VA-- across the railroad tracks from a recently-acknowledged slave cemetery. Engaging the difficult historic realities of that place resulted in a dignified, respectful project that articulated a coherent vision for an urbanism that links social justice with access to recreation. Another used digital representation to explore and communicate ideas about form, space and experience, especially the differentiation of experiences by individuals of varying ages and ethnic perspectives. Like many of his peers, this student’s work was attuned to subtle nuances in the patterns of everyday urban life, eager to consider social and ecological issues as a continuum of cultural concerns. Such attention to subtle details of perception is a commitment to truths about architecture.

BEAUTY (Beauty)

Beauty. Plato was among the very first to argue for beauty as the highest of all values. “If there is anything worth living for,” he argued, “it is to behold beauty.” But beauty for Plato was not only discernable by the eye, as we so often constrain it to mean. That which was beautiful could be anything material but also anything psychological or social that caused admiration, generated delight, or aroused enjoyment. Once again, you graduates have delivered. One of you developed a computerized interactive geo-spatial inventory of the specimen trees on the University Grounds. This inventory will not only serve the preservation of the beauty of the University’s living arboretum on grounds, but will allow students, visitors and others to appreciate the diversity of the ground’s environs. Another proposed new housing and a park that would mimic the form of the South Bronx river, rather than hem it in, and would provide access to the river and play spaces along it for mothers and children. The work reflected not only visible beauty by integrating building and natural landscape but also ethical beauty in attending to social justice and challenging the idea that it is somehow "natural" for poor people to live in ugly places. Another of you designed a Cistercian monastery described by a critic as “absolutely breathtaking in its poetic grace.” Many of you participated in amazing community-investment projects like EcoMod, project ReCover, the Downtown Mall project, the Learning Barge, the Fun Bus, the DIRT studio, the Falmouth Field School in Jamaica among others, projects that all work to integrate visual and ethical beauty.

Finally, I am told that there are few that demonstrate these virtues of goodness truth and beauty more clearly that one of our own graduating students who has recently fallen seriously ill: Catherine Brown. Her work has been described by her faculty as highly creative and keenly perceptive, especially her work on a Martha Jefferson Hospital site and for the Charlottesville Community Design Center. They write that she has redefined creativity, and is an inspiration to her classmates and instructors. Together as a community we extend our thoughts and prayers to Catherine and her family in the hope of a full and healthful recovery.

Plato identified three qualities that stood as the highest of all human values: goodness, truth, and beauty. For Plato, these were essential criterion for collective human flourishing. If Plato was right, the absence of these values, by contrast, leads to isolation, and withering decay. If we as a nation have learned nothing else from the economic crisis of the past year, we now recognize that the tyranny of the self reaps grim rewards for individuals and undermines the health of community. In architectural terms this new reality profoundly implicates the popular image of the starchitect, the singular designer of trendy buildings working to bring glory to the self. Such a model is deeply disturbing. In the stead of the self-made individual, excellence in architecture should be firmly rooted in that work committed to the health and sustainability of communities. Goodness, Truth, and Beauty all teach us that Architecture is for others. And that is where you as graduates of this School of Architecture shine. In your designs for future improvements, in your assessments of present conditions, and in your lessons from the past, you are already fluent in the language of these virtues. Goodness is the pursuit of knowledge through virtues in action. Truth characterizes things of substance. Beauty causes admiration and generates delight in others. With these tools knit into the very fabric of who you are and what you do, you will stem the tide of placelessness, resist the tyranny of the self, and demonstrate for future generations the way toward a horizon of sustainable, healthy communities. As you graduate from UVA, that is your charge…now go change the world.