Paper long abstract:

Over the past decade there has been an increasing focus on the gap between predicted and as-built performance in new-build housing, which has led to a range of post completion and post occupancy studies. Absent to these studies is a detailed evaluation of how the design process shaped the performance gap. This paper looks at two prototype houses that were commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust and which have undergone co-heating testing to establish the fabric performance gap. Through the use of Actor-Network Theory the paper examines how the human and material-object 'actors' (client, design team, contractor, drawings, models and various regulations) interact in the negotiation, shaping and re-shaping of the building's fabric energy performance through the design and construction process. Both the changing energy performance through the design and construction of the buildings and the controversies of the actor networks are mapped. This shows how the asymmetries between different actors shifted re-defining the goals of the network and thus re-shaped the predicted energy performance and performance of the final buildings. The research in this paper reveals the drifting of goals as more actors are enrolled and the gaps that are revealed when moving from models to reality. It offers an insight into why our buildings never perform as we predict them to while providing a methodology for representing why this is the case.