ABSTRACT
Social scientists of architecture and technology have argued for many decades that when designers define the characteristics of new products and settings, they necessarily form a hypothesis about the world into which these things will move (Goodman and Goodman 1947; Rivlin and Wolfe 1985). Theoretical implications of post-disaster case studies suggest that these vulnerable communities present widely varying opportunities for the diffusion of design innovations and ‘urban reinvention’ (Ockman 2002;
Hoffman and Oliver-Smith 2002). This chapter tells competing stories of one small town’s reinvention after the Upper Mississippi River Basin floods of 1993 and the assistance of federal and state agencies as well as sustainable design assistance teams. When seen in retrospect, successful design innovation builds up layers of connections as the social and material dimensions grow entangled and conceal their origins and projections, only to appear years later as inevitable or natural (Akrich 1992: 206). Cultural phenomena that appear inevitable ‘transform history into nature’, wrote Roland Barthes, producing a mythology that depoliticises everyday life (Barthes 1972: 129). Not all design innovations, however, naturalise. Among those that stand out, not yet embedded in the political or material culture of the United States, are the diverse practices of sustainable architecture.
