Architectural scripts: construction procurement within the user worlds of building events

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe concept of the ‘building event’ has been central within recent geographies of architecture, marshalled against the assumption that buildings are stable or textual. Buildings, in these studies, emerge out of contingent relations among various configurations of human and non-human actors. Yet it is possible, other studies suggest, that this focus on the ‘building’ as the centre of the ‘building event’ has overlooked long-standing historical processes that are only visible if we consider aspects of contemporary construction industries. This study examines the relation between building events and construction industries from the point of view of one ‘big thing’ that has received little explicit attention from geographers: the procurement route and its associated selection procedures for architects and contractors. ‘Big things’ that circulate throughout the construction industry, procurement routes are organised around an understanding of building as a process that is nevertheless static and object-like. I examine engagements between procurement routes and architects through interviews, document analysis and participant observation. I suggest that procurement routes are additional actors within ‘building events’, resembling the actor-network theoretical notion of the ‘script’ while, unlike the script, anticipating their own de-scription. I conclude by pointing to opportunities for geographies of architectural scripts.