Workshop

Ethics and Philosophy of Practice in the Built Environment (Seminar)

This seminar explores the ethical and philosophical dimensions of practices within the Built Environment. Rather than treating "ethics" as a broad and abstract concept, the seminar seeks to critically examine and contextualize it through multiple perspectives. By analyzing the historical, political, and cultural factors that shape these diverse practices, it aims to clarify what "ethics in practice" means across disciplines. The seminar then investigates its practical applications, with a particular focus on the field of the Built Environment.

The seminar is structured around a central question: Why does the Built Environment necessitate ethical inquiry? It addresses this question across multiple levels, beginning with political systems (governance), moving through ideological systems (society), and culminating at the individual level (the subject).

  • Analyze the major trends in the history of ethics research, and various domains of application, and be able to work toward ethical solutions in design and urban practice more broadly

  • Identify the complex ways in which extractivist logics manifest themselves in urban environments, and use the tools from spatial, social, and ecological justice to enact ethical forms of engagement;

Instructors

Salma Belal

Salma Belal is a co-founder and Program Director of BIAS-AME. Her work focuses on intersectional approaches to urban activism through community-based projects centered on built heritage, urban justice, and public space. Salma is interested in critical spatial and cultural practices and their influence on pedagogical methods within the Built Environment. She has taught design thinking, architecture, and urbanism at multiple academic institutions. Her experience with Mada Masr has also deepened her interest in alternative pedagogies and collective learning through media.

Mohamed Abo Youssef

Is a historian specializing in the modern Middle East, with research interests in Islamic modernism, Islamic thought, and the social and intellectual history of modern Egypt, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He completed his Master of Arts in Islamic Studies at McGill University, with a thesis titled “Masking Islamist Politics: Pseudo-Authenticity and Producing al-Marʾa al-Muslima in Zaynab al-Ghazālī’s Writings in the Twentieth Century.” Currently, he is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of History at the American University in Cairo and a researcher with the Patterns of Cairo project.