- Title
- Assembling retrofit practice: rethinking what retrofit is and what it might do
- Creator
- Doney, Rupert H.
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2018
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Residential retrofitting provides multiple possibilities for effecting action and change in the home. Yet, current research and policy making has been dominated by analyses grounded in techno-rationalist thinking which emphasises the role of technology and information transfer in determining people’s actions. This techno-rational focus bounds the means through which action and change are understood to occur. It simultaneously occludes and forecloses other existing and possible arenas of retrofit action and change. The aim of this thesis is to set out an extended conception of what retrofit is and what it might do from those commonly advanced under a techno-rational agenda. This thesis explores the different practices occurring at multiple scales, and the component systems, actors and relations that configure the use and provision of residential retrofits. This attention to these heterogeneous and relational associations begins to unbound the techno-centric, rationalistic and essentialist categories against which the contribution of retrofit is commonly assessed. In this thesis, I draw together a socio-technical perspective with assemblage thinking as a basis for decentring the dominant techno-rational paradigm. The conceptual bearings of social practice theory provides an analytic that attends to the situated, socially-embedded and practiced constitution of retrofit across multiple practice bundles. The analytics of assemblage thinking provides an opportunity to extend the social practice analytical gaze to incorporate a multi-scalar imaginary, while also attending to the role of materiality and processes of formation and change in retrofit systems and practices. As a whole, this analytical orientation provides a means of exploring the socially and materially produced, practiced and distributed assembling of residential retrofit. It points to the indeterminate and fluid qualities of retrofitting as it is made and re-made through manifold practices. In doing so, it reveals practices of retrofitting to be vibrant and capacious, realised amid complex socialities, spatialities, materialities, desires, expectations and competences—all of which make up potential determinants of action and change. This thesis documents how residential retrofitting is configured and reconfigured as part of the socio-material practices through which householders and professionals assemble retrofits in everyday life. I combine documentary analysis with (i) 23 semi-structured interviews with industry and building professionals and (ii) 20 observational walk-and-talk interviews, photographs and diary entries with retrofitting householders in Newcastle, Australia. Through these I explore the multiple ways that retrofitting is practiced, assembled, experienced and manifest. The insights gained offer new ways of thinking through the possible terrains of retrofit intervention and how to support and nurture its transformative potentialities.
- Subject
- retrofit; home; sustainability; assemblage; social practice; Newcastle, (NSW); comfort
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1388310
- Identifier
- uon:32741
- Rights
- Copyright 2018 Rupert H. Doney
- Language
- eng
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
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| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 205 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |