The Aesthetic Evaluation in Sustainable Architecture through Ethics to reach Well-being: Maslow’s Hierarchy as a Tool

Abstract

Sustainability in contemporary buildings is one of the important orientations to bring well-being to the occupants in addition to protecting the environment. Beauty or aesthetic value in the design is one of the crucial factors to bring pleasure to the users of the buildings, which consequently positively influences their health. A comprehensive understanding of the aesthetic value in sustainable design is crucial for architects to implement a salutogenic or healthy design. Since ethics is dealing with the behavior of human beings in terms of bad or good. Therefore, ethics were involved in this study as an indicator to evaluate beauty and well-being in sustainable design. This study aims to examine the influence of ethical design on aesthetic assessment in sustainable architecture. This research hypothesizes that, if the building could achieve the ethical dimension in sustainable design, then it can reach aesthetic appraisal. This study suggests a conceptual model that shows the influence of ethics on aesthetic value in sustainable architecture. The methodology of the study has employed Maslow’s hierarchy as a tool for assessing aesthetic value through the steps of human needs in the hierarchy of Maslow and the ethical parameters in sustainable design. The findings demonstrate the significant relationships between aesthetic appraisal and ethical parameters in sustainable design. The results of the study highlight useful facts to improve our knowledge about well-being and salutogenic design by estimating aesthetic appraisal using the ethical parameters in sustainable design.