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Paper short abstract

Using a double vision care lens with coproduction, I follow environmental care from the individual, to the collective, towards the wider national and corporate institutions. The conduit of this study is additive manufacturing of concrete, an innovation researched and developed in Germany and Chile.

Paper long abstract

The construction industry is one of the largest contributors to climate change: through the creation of steel and cement, it accounts for 37 percent of the global carbon dioxide emissions (UNEP, 2023:1; Churkina et al., 2020). This figure follows the industry, demanding attention; the industry response so far has been, reduce CO2 emissions with innovative technologies. One of those innovations is additive manufacturing (3D printing) of concrete, the focal technology of this research. CO2 reduction as environmental care has become a central ambition of both industry and national academic research agendas, as well as a care-oriented motivation for researchers and workers of this printed innovation; its pluriform adaptation indicates its coproduction within these social contexts. With the double vision of care (Haraway, 1988; Martin et al., 2015; Lindén and Lydahl, 2021), I explore who cares and how, the inclusions and exclusions, and their impact. At this point, I found that environmental care – as it appears in this case – is both personal and political and its application within the webs of power can be explained through the lens of coproduction (Jasanoff, 2004; Pfotenhauer and Jasanoff, 2017). These analytical views allow me to see care practiced and follow how it is then coproduced within the wider scale of both the construction and national scales in Germany and Chile. Join me in exploring whether this care can exist in the harsh conditions that is the construction industry, or whether it is another attempt to plant a tree where it cannot survive.