Abstract

Architecture, like ethics, concerns actual rather than ideal choices. William James's remarks on ethics, at a meeting of the Yale Philosophical Club in 1890, could apply equally well to the built environment:The actual possible in this world is vastly narrower than all that is demanded; and there is always a pinch between the ideal and the actual which can only be got through by leaving part of the ideal behind. There is hardly a good which we can imagine except as competing for the possession of the same bit of space and time with some other imagined good.1Health care facilities are spaces in which certain imagined goods—the care of the sick, the treatment or prevention of disease—meet the actual possible of ..