‘Danger building site—keep out!?’: a critical agenda for geographical engagement with contemporary construction industries

Abstract

In this paper, I seek to develop a more direct, sustained and critical engagement between social and cultural geography and contemporary construction industries. In setting out this agenda, I focus on the UK construction industry and a body of work outside of geography describing how the UK construction industry evidences and maintains a problematic array of working practices that are socially consequential. However, despite such potent critiques, recent geographical work on architectural practices, including that focused on the UK, has remained rather detached from the people, places, politics, and indeed problems, of contemporary construction industries. Nevertheless, recent geographical studies of architectural practice possess a significant potential to directly inform critical analysis of construction industries. It is only through such direct engagement with the contemporary lives of building practitioners that I argue geographical studies of architecture, and especially architectural practices, can recognize and realize its political and ethical contribution.

A critical argument in favor of theoretical pluralism: Project failure and the many and varied limitations of project management

“…Whilst, such generalizations might be accurate to some extent, especially given the long-standing separation of design and building processes (see Sage, 2012), various ANT orientated studies of design (Eisenstein and Whyte 2009;Latour and Yaneva, 2008;Yaneva, 2009) enter into the collectivity of building, or not. Across this example, the drawings are shown not to objectively cause project failure, but rather they help distribute responsibilities, identities and actions for defining, understanding and monitoring project "success" and "failure".…”

Spatial agency and practising architecture beyond buildings

“…More than this, a fundamental problem for the professional architect goes beyond trying to claim control over the life of a building project, for which they are sure to fail, but that there is a need for more and more building (Awan et al, 2011). Architecture is a 'weak profession' (Crinson & Lubbock, 1994, p. 2): where architects were once responsible for managing finances and construction contracts, these roles have largely been fragmented and replaced by specialists such as project managers and quantity surveyors brought in to manage risk and cost, with architects often becoming confined to desk-based delivery and design management (Sage, 2013). The weakness of the profession is most exposed when there is no construction work at all.…”

“…yet, this is often engineered by risk managers more than architects, after all. As it has been highlighted elsewhere (Sage, 2013), geographers should not assume that this de-centring will necessarily lead to more democratic or utopian architectural inhabitations.…”

Buildingwithwildlife: project geographies and cosmopolitics in infrastructure construction

“…Set against EIA, there has been a steadily growing interest in the active involvement of various non-human actors in construction management processes (see Bresnen and Harty, 2010;Harty, 2008;Lingard et al 2012;Ivory and Alderman, 2011;Sage, 2013). Much of the work around non-humans within construction management has been influenced by ANT (Latour, 2005), its derivatives and relations.…”

“…Indeed, with a few recent exceptions (Sage et al 2011;Tryggestad et al 2013), there is a paucity of work which has examined the interaction between humans and wildlife in construction projects. This is despite the burgeoning interest in other non-humans, namely technological objects and artefacts, in construction projects (for a review see Bresnen and Harty, 2010;Sage, 2013), especially as influenced by Actor-Network Theory (ANT).…”