Giving Meaning to the Concept of Sustainability in Architectural Design Practices: Setting Out the Analytical Framework of Translation

Torsten Schroeder

doi:10.3390/su10061710

Abstract

The question of how to give meaning to the concept of sustainability in architectural design practices is highly contested today. Although architects, engineers, clients, politicians, and others seem to agree that sustainability must be addressed, behind this apparent consensus many ambiguities, contradictions, and open questions emerge. Opinions largely vary on how to define the sustainability challenges that architectural design is to respond to, how to align the various stakeholders involved, which scales and elements to consider, and how to transform these questions into design strategies, spatial configurations, and materiality of buildings. These practices cannot be confined merely to technological problem-solving as they essentially mesh a range of cognitive, social, cultural, and material elements. This article draws on the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) to set out the transferable analytical framework of ‘translation’ through which to explain how the concept of sustainability is continuously transformed within contingent, complex, and dynamic architectural design practices as buildings materialize. The framework of translation is particularly well adapted to unpack claims, make them more accountable, and thereby support the larger project of sustainability.

Highlights

This article builds on a completed and award-winning PhD research project that adapted Michel Callon’s concept of translation through an in-depth empirical case study to understand how the concept of sustainability is interpreted and implemented in architectural design practices [1,2]
This research project did not start with any interest in a particular building, but with the ambition to develop a better understanding of what architects, engineers, clients and others do with the concept of sustainability in their design studios, offices, and on site
The transferable analytical framework of ‘translation’ draws on the interdisciplinary field of STS to explain how the concept of sustainability is continuously transformed within contingent, complex, and dynamic architectural design practices as buildings materialize

Summary

Introduction

This article builds on a completed and award-winning PhD research project that adapted Michel Callon’s concept of translation through an in-depth empirical case study to understand how the concept of sustainability is interpreted and implemented in architectural design practices [1,2]. Callon’s concept of translation has been used in several contexts (e.g., [3,4,5,6,7]), but never as a framework for exploring sustainability in architectural design practices, which is valuable to both research and practice. This framework is transferable: it may be used to reflect on architectural design processes completed (past) or to reframe and improve design processes in progress (future).

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