Claudia Dutson Phd by Practice Royal College of Art November
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Thermal Performance The politics of environmental management in architecture Claudia Dutson PhD by Practice Royal College of Art November 2016 AHRC-funded This text represents the submission for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Royal College of Art. This copy has been supplied for the purpose of research for private study, on the understanding that it is copyright material, and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. Thank you for your help, support, patience and love: Cathy Johns, Martina Margetts, Àine Duffy, Fernando Rihl, Delfina Fantini Van Ditmar, Bruna Petreca, Helga Schmid, Will Hadwen, Fiona Brownfoot, Martine Dempsey, Wes Baggaley, Daisy Ginsberg, Konstantinos Chalaris, Jo-Anne Bichard, Neil Parkinson, Louisa Dutson, Barclay Dutson and Wendy Dutson. The instigators, inciters, inquisitors: Hilary French, Nigel Coates, Diana Tanase, Joan Ashworth, Lee Triming, Neil Shepherd, Tatiana Hennessey, Katie Lloyd-Thomas. And to those from other institutions whose generosity, of their time, of their engagement, and of inclusion were of so much value. Tilo Amhoff, Nick Beech, and the people I met at AHRA Conference Industries of Architecture especially Hélène Frichot, Julianna Preston, Karen Burns, Stephan White. Peg Rawes, who invited me and a colleague to attend her PhD Symposia at the Bartlett School of Architecture. Doug Spencer at the Architectural Association, Alex Wilkie at Goldsmiths, Jane Rendell at UCL Bartlett, Lois Weaver at Queen Mary University, Ysabel Clare at Goldsmiths. Thank you also to colleagues and friends at the Royal College of Art, all of whom have supported this thesis and made the work possible by providing spaces to work, props, and generally going way beyond their remit to help. Anil Sodha Nadia Epping Eloise Rowley Chioma Okocha Joanna Saxon Wanda Polanski Alex Watt Jon Goodbun Maria Ohlson Ian Whittaker Kevin Walker Paul Cruse Inka Hella Adrian Lahoud Martin Howe Kath Dickerson Jorge Flores Cedeno Doug Cassidy Adrianna Palazzolo Simon King Jayne Hayden-Baker Helen Whitmore Rodrigo Lebrun Darlene Maxwell Brigitte Lelievre Roberto Botazzi David Dixon Simon Taylor Boris Cesnik Dominic Tschudin John Peverall Panayiotis Delilabros Gill Dibben Martin Salmon Godofredo Pereira James Russell Robert Haigh-Mclane Conor Wilson Mark Trela Caroline Shilcock Sheila Clark Michelle Richards Magnus Lenneskog Andrew Loveland Paul Cross Tim Olden Jamie Gilham Mike Wyeld Nina Pope Richard Makin Rodrigo Canas Tatjana Duskevic Octavia Reeve Simon Bird Thermal Performance Author Statement During the period of registered study in which this thesis was prepared the author has not been registered for any other academic award or qualification. The material included in this thesis has not been submitted wholly or in part for any academic award or qualification other than that for which it is now submitted. Signature: Date: word-count 49,006 5 Thermal Performance Abstract How do architects address the ambiguity of practice, being on the one hand tasked with making buildings that perform well in terms of energy use and environmental strategy, and on the other facilitating the production of capital, through their service to ensuring that the performance of the occupants (efficiency, productivity and wellbeing) is satisfied? In this PhD by practice, I use the theoretical concept of ‘the performative’ through both the written thesis and project to interrogate the various ways in which thermal management becomes entangled with management processes. The context is specific: the workplace at a moment of convergence between smart technology with architecture; where notionally, agency is given over to autonomous environmental systems to do the right thing, and work environments that are embedded in performative-linguistic company cultures that urge their occupants to ‘do the right thing’1. In other words – where machines do things2 with fans and boilers, and humans do things with emails, meetings, performance reviews and corporate culture. I invoke Lucy Schuman’s question ‘who is doing what to whom?’3 to draw attention to the way that actions are elicited from employees through discursive and constitute organisational practices. At a point where new-build non-domestic buildings, which are specifically designed to perform environmentally well, are failing to do so4 - I 1 ‘Do the right thing’ replaced Google’s pseudo-ethical motto ‘Don’t be evil’ in October 2015 when Alphabet Inc. was formed as the parent company of Google Inc. and of companies owned by Google. 2004 Founders’ Letter to Investors on the company’s initial public offering (IPO) <https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/2004/ipo- letter.html> and Alphabet’s 2015 Founders’ Letter to Investors <https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ 2015/index.html> [accessed 4 August 2016]. 2 These performatives are taken explicitly from J.L. Austin’s book on Speech Acts ‘How to do Things with Words’ and Bruno Latour’s subtitle of his essay ‘The Berlin Key: or How To Do Words With Things.’ John Langshaw Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962); Bruno Latour, ‘The Berlin Key: Or How to Do Words with Things’, in Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture, Paul Graves-Brown (ed.) (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 10-21. 3 Lucy Suchman, 'Located Accountabilities in Technology Production', Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 14.2 (2002), 91-105 (p. 95). 4 Summary of the report, and links to the full report available at <https://www.gov.uk/government/ publications/low-carbon-buildings-best-practices-and-what-to-avoid>; and Jason Palmer, Nicola Terry and Peter Armitage, ‘Building Performance Evaluation programme: Findings from Non-domestic Projects. Report’, Innovate 7 Thermal Performance invoke Isabelle Stengers’ ethical proposition ‘what are we busy doing?’5 to ask whether architects’ actions are fundamentally compromised by this entanglement. I propose a strategy for architects to address their practice in relation to these propositions, and trace the actions as they migrate through discursive fields – sustainability, organisational management, theories of motivation, workplace politics, technological innovation, activism and resistance. The narrative of the written thesis is asynchronous, and is interconnected with the project in multiple ways, it is structured in such a way so as to introduce strategies of encountering the various discursive fields which form the context of study. The project work, on the other hand, immerses the reader directly within these fields. The database that reveals the multiple realms that embed the concepts of power, economics, desire, love, productivity and war into the architectural concerns for comfort and energy use; while the performance video places two subjects constituted by management, whose passions are put to work and situate them within a discursive environment latent with the full cultural significance of its metaphors in the workplace of the knowledge economy. The first part of the written component of the thesis opens up discussions about performance and action – which are generally applicable for the discourse of environmental performance, as mediated by the occupant and the use of technology, within the contemporary workplace. I move into the second part of the written thesis, which places the context specifically within the conceptual domain of thermal management, elaborates on the implications of taking a performance oriented approach to ‘heat’, and reveals how performance and the domain of heat converge on issues of productivity, subjectivity, and wellbeing. UK Report (2016), pp. 3, 19-23, 29, <https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment _data/file/497761/Non-Domestic_Building_performance_full_report_2016.pdf> [accessed 30 March 2016]. 5 Isabelle Stengers, ‘The Cosmopolitical Proposal’, in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (eds) (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2005), pp. 994-1003 (p. 996). 8 Thermal Performance The two actors who perform in the video can only continuously improve their performance, every action can be subverted or appropriated, presenting the urgency for my conclusion in the written thesis, that as we, in architecture, are expected to also act entrepreneurially – the question is not how we do so subversively, or as a mode of critique. We should instead pay attention to Stengers’ and Suchman’s questions, and paying attention to what is brought about, and for whom, and focus our work on care for precarious, exhausted and hyper-active subjectivities that are produced through these actions. 9 Thermal Performance Contents Abstract 7 Introduction WARM-UP 15 Warm-Up 19 Hot Take - Structure of thesis 21 Research Context 24 Project Outputs 36 Siting of Installation 38 Chapter One PERFORMANCE 51 Chapter Outline 53 Architectural Performance 57 The Performance Gap 64 The Intention Gap 65 Disambiguating Theatrical Performance 69 Summary of Action – (towards a method) 84 The Efficiencies and Efficacies of the Performative 86 Actionable Improvements 88 Chapter Two DO THE RIGHT THING 93 Chapter Outline 95 Occupants 96 Locating the Occupant 98 The Employee 101 Silicon Valley Style Management 101 From Discipline to Happiness 105 Cultures 109 The Cultivation of Performative Control 113 Doing Things with Silicon Valley 114 Secret Sauce 117 Chapter Summary 122 Chapter Three THOUGHTFUL THINGS 125 Chapter Outline 127 Actions of Objects 129 Rem’s fireside chat 131 Laissez-faire... (Let Them Do...) 138