Learning in demonstration projects for sustainable building (chapter 17)

Book chapter, 2009

As a key feature of sustainable construction, energy efficiency is both an objective and a problem to be solved within the project. As a problem, it is accompanied by many sub-problems and can easily become ill-defined. It can be seen as an innovation and as a technological change. Ideally, it would be better to understand both simultaneously, but that is difficult. At one extreme, energy efficiency is a necessary worldwide goal, the realization of which requires a global commitment toward sustainable development and building. At the same time, it requires numerous innovations (technological as much as conceptual and strategic) and change to be implemented inside local contexts. Both innovations and change have to penetrate the disciplinary organization of knowledge, inducing change toward sustainable building, while respecting and understanding the heterogeneous engineering that is needed. The aim of this chapter is to provide a distillation of observations about the kind of learning going on in projects in terms of its elements and procedures. Investments in learning may be questions of providing more time for project teams, but also of encouraging actions of deliberate learning in project environments. The study is based on empirical observations made within the context of a funded research project.