Wind energy meets buildings? Generating socio-technical change in the urban built environment through vanguard visions

Abstract

Urban innovators such as startups, architects, and designers produce radical ideas about wind energy in cities. One emergent vision is that of the wind energy producing building. This vision challenges the dominant understanding of buildings, as well as the traditional design and function of wind turbines. Combining STS literature on the performativity of visions with urban assemblage theory, we analyse how these innovative ideas destabilise relations between various elements in the building assemblage. Based on the case of a Dutch startup company, this paper examines how these urban innovators enact their vision by preparing and installing a rooftop wind energy generating system. We find that in their attempt to tackle various challenges, these actors realign multiple elements in the assemblage. They rely on three main practices of producing calculations, reworking socio-professional relations, and reconnecting values around buildings. This implies that fostering urban wind energy and achieving net-zero buildings requires not just developing technical innovations, but taking into account multiple human and non-human actors that must be connected and held together.