Publication date: 16 July 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781806550333

Number of illustrations: 65

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Practising Ethics

A poethic infrastructure for architectural and urban researchers

Jane Rendell (Editor), David Roberts (Editor), Yael Padan (Editor)

Grappling with ethics can disorientate and disturb your peace of mind in the small hours of the night. Practising Ethics transforms ethics from an obstacle to an opportunity by offering a poethic infrastructure to guide the development of ethical practice in architectural and urban research.

Practising Ethics bridges the gap between research volume and textbook. The book’s two-part structure creates a dialogue between ethical concepts derived from decolonial, ecological, feminist and queer theory, and lived ethical experiences that are explored through specific situations. A series of opening essays present hotspots, touchstones, keystones, blindspots, moonshots and milestones as different ethical orientations in a six-point methodology. This is followed by six case studies in which practitioners and researchers navigate these orientations through narrative figurations that describe ethical deliberations arising from social science, humanities, practice-led and participatory art and architectural design research in El Salvador, India, Nigeria, Peru and the United Kingdom.

The book acts as a companion to an award-winning online toolkit and is illustrated by Judit Ferencz who offers creative exercises for readers to develop their own poethic infrastructures.

List of figures
List of contributors
Acknowledgements

Preface: ethics as a living practice
Vanesa Castán Broto and Caren Levy

Introduction: practising ethics
Jane Rendell, David Roberts and Yael Padan

Part I: Orientations

1 Hotspots
Jane Rendell

2 Touchstones
Yael Padan

3 Keystones
David Roberts

4 Blindspots
Yael Padan

5 Moonshots
David Roberts

6 Milestones
Jane Rendell

Part II: Figurations

7 Research amid despair: participatory architecture in times of hunger
Belen Desmaison

8 The transitoriness of research ethics: when values and practices travel
Vikas John and Priya Singh

9 Full-bodied ethics or ‘You look good in short skirts’
Ariana Markowitz with Cristian Olmos Herrera

10 Crying in the field: I struggled to control my own emotions, feeling tears welling up inside me
Zubaida Umar Baba

11 ‘Reperforming’ as a practice for preserving confidentiality
Naomi Gibson

12 Halema’s kitchen
Judit Ferencz

13 Conclusion: a poethic infrastructure – six reorientations
Judit Ferencz with Jane Rendell

Epilogue: the grit of a future ethics
Pia Ednie-Brown, Estelle Barrett and Barbara Bolt

Index

DOI: 10.14324/111.9781806550333

Number of illustrations: 65

Publication date: 16 July 2026

PDF ISBN: 9781806550333

EPUB ISBN: 9781806550340

Hardback ISBN: 9781806550319

Paperback ISBN: 9781806550326

Jane Rendell (Editor)

Jane Rendell is Professor of Critical Spatial Practice at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Her recent publications include The Architecture of Psychoanalysis (2017), Silver (2016), and the co-edited volume Reactivating the Social Condenser (2017). She curates site-writing.co.uk and criticalspatialpractice.co.uk. With Padan and Roberts she established, co-curates and edits www.practisingethics.org.

David Roberts (Editor)

David Roberts is Associate Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. He is part of collaborative art practice Fugitive Images and of architecture collective BREAK//LINE. With Jane Rendell and Yael Padan, he designed and coordinates the open-access project www.pratisingethics.org and has exhibited, screened and installed work at Tate Modern, Hayward Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, ICA and PEER.

Yael Padan (Editor)

Yael Padan is a researcher working in the interface of architecture, planning and sociology. She received her PhD in sociology from the department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, working on the Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality programme.

Urban Beauty

Matthew Carmona, Jingyi Zhu,

01 January 2027

Planning Public Space in the Vertical City

Nir Mualam, James T. White,

01 November 2026

Practising Ethics

Jane Rendell, David Roberts, Yael Padan,

16 July 2026

Rethinking the Pavilion

Cindy Walters,

26 March 2026

University College London

Amy Spencer, Colin Thom,

11 February 2026

Architecture of Memory

Natalia Romik,

27 October 2025

Space Syntax

Laura Vaughan, John Peponis, Ruth Dalton,

30 April 2025

Between Design and Making

Andrew Tierney, Melanie Hayes,

08 July 2024

Newman University Church, Dublin

Niamh Bhalla,

01 July 2024

Fabricate 2024

Phil Ayres, Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, Bob Sheil, Marilena Skavara,

04 April 2024

Urban Informality and the Built Environment

Nerea Amorós Elorduy, Nikhilesh Sinha, Colin Marx,

12 March 2024

Parliament Buildings

Sophia Psarra, Uta Staiger, Claudia Sternberg,

30 October 2023

Architecture’s Model Environments

Lisa Moffitt,

20 February 2023

Enriching Architecture

Christine Casey, Melanie Hayes,

26 January 2023

The Covert Life of Hospital Architecture

Julie Zook, Kerstin Sailer,

22 March 2022

Resisting Postmodern Architecture

Stylianos Giamarelos,

10 January 2022

Architecture as a Way of Seeing and Learning

Nerea Amorós Elorduy,

16 August 2021

Design for London

Peter Bishop, Lesley Williams,

10 December 2020

Expanding Fields of Architectural Discourse and Practice

Matthew Butcher, Megan O'Shea,

27 November 2020

Dwelling on the Future

Pierre d'Avoine,

01 October 2020

×

Practising Ethics

A poethic infrastructure for architectural and urban researchers

Publication date: July 16, 2026

Open Access PDF ISBN: 9781806550333

Paperback ISBN: 9781806550326

Hardback ISBN: 9781806550319

Trim size (hardback): 23.4cm x 15.6cm

Trim size (paperback): 23.4cm x 15.6cm

Download free PDF online

https://uclpress.co.uk/book/practising-ethics/

Grappling with ethics can disorientate and disturb your peace of mind in the small hours of the night. Practising Ethics transforms ethics from an obstacle to an opportunity by offering a poethic infrastructure to guide the development of ethical practice in architectural and urban research.

Practising Ethics bridges the gap between research volume and textbook. The book’s two-part structure creates a dialogue between ethical concepts derived from decolonial, ecological, feminist and queer theory, and lived ethical experiences that are explored through specific situations. A series of opening essays present hotspots, touchstones, keystones, blindspots, moonshots and milestones as different ethical orientations in a six-point methodology. This is followed by six case studies in which practitioners and researchers navigate these orientations through narrative figurations that describe ethical deliberations arising from social science, humanities, practice-led and participatory art and architectural design research in El Salvador, India, Nigeria, Peru and the United Kingdom.

The book acts as a companion to an award-winning online toolkit and is illustrated by Judit Ferencz who offers creative exercises for readers to develop their own poethic infrastructures.

Jane Rendell (B01)

Jane Rendell is Professor of Critical Spatial Practice at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Her recent publications include The Architecture of Psychoanalysis (2017), Silver (2016), and the co-edited volume Reactivating the Social Condenser (2017). She curates site-writing.co.uk and criticalspatialpractice.co.uk. With Padan and Roberts she established, co-curates and edits www.practisingethics.org.

David Roberts (B01)

David Roberts is Associate Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. He is part of collaborative art practice Fugitive Images and of architecture collective BREAK//LINE. With Jane Rendell and Yael Padan, he designed and coordinates the open-access project www.pratisingethics.org and has exhibited, screened and installed work at Tate Modern, Hayward Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, ICA and PEER.

Yael Padan (B01)

Yael Padan is a researcher working in the interface of architecture, planning and sociology. She received her PhD in sociology from the department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, working on the Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality programme.