Abstract
Despite documented political support for energy reduction measures in Switzerland’s built environment, as well as high international regard for its construction and research sectors, design practitioners and researchers perceive a diverse set of challenges involved in the implementation of green development solutions. Grounded in Science and Technology Studies (STS), observations drawn from 31 semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted with Swiss building industry experts provide insight into the relationships between designers, researchers and public authorities. A series of examples from the empirical data show how regulatory frictions and the challenges of implementing construction strategies into diverse domestic and international working contexts are ameliorated.
Highlights
While buildings play a central role in the cumulative effects the built environment has on rising worldwide emissions, it has been repeatedly shown that the construction and design industries possess significant potential to mitigate the accelerating negative impacts of development through sustainable construction [1,2,3]
It is within this STS perspective of situated actor networks that the research presented in this article was formulated to develop a better understanding of the knowledge practices and concerns of Swiss experts linked to the implementation of energy efficiency measures and green development strategies [11,12]
Qualitative assessment, the concerns of Swiss development experts involved in sustainable construction efforts provide insight into understanding where frictions exist in the overlap between researchers, practitioners and public authorities that share similar green ambitions of implementing sustainable construction within a significantly broader landscape of actors
Summary
While buildings play a central role in the cumulative effects the built environment has on rising worldwide emissions, it has been repeatedly shown that the construction and design industries possess significant potential to mitigate the accelerating negative impacts of development through sustainable construction [1,2,3]. Scholar Elizabeth Shove argues in her article, “Gaps, Barriers and Conceptual Chasms: Theories of Technology Transfer and Energy in Buildings”, that notions of technical potential, the discourse of gaps and barriers, as well as the focus on technology transfer often create a problematic “web of taken-for-granted belief strong enough to encapsulate” the wide range of sectors affiliated with the design and management of the built environment and “elastic enough to span countries and continents” [10] She suggests that by recognizing differing countries possess varied histories linked to alternate temporal patterns of development and actor networks, technological approaches to energy efficiency and the technologies themselves would be better understood as part of “unique socio-commercial” narratives that defy simple strategies of transfer. The aim in this article is to situate aspects of the socio-technical process of sustainable construction within a specific country context through: (1) in-depth interviews with a subset of heterogeneous research and design actors and (2) reflection on expert-reported challenges
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