Technology and Place Available from the Center for Sustainable Development ($20.00) Chapter 1 (5.2mb PDF): "A question of Categories" Developing “sustainable” architectural and agricultural technologies was the intent behind Blueprint Farm, an experimental agricultural project designed to benefit farmworkers displaced by the industrialization of agriculture in the Rio Grande valley of Texas. Yet, despite its promise, the very institutions that created the Blueprint Farm locked its gates after just four years (1987-1991). In this book, Steven Moore demonstrates how the various stakeholders’ competing definitions of “sustainability,” “technology,” and “place” ultimately doomed Blueprint Farm. He reconstructs the conflicting interests and goals of the founders, including Jim Hightower and the Texas Department of Agriculture, Laredo Junior College, and the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, and shows how, ironically, they unwittingly suppressed the self-determination of the very farmworkers the project sought to benefit. From this small story, Moore finds large implications for the development of sustainability as a concept relevant to contemporary life and extracts eight principles for regenerative architecture, which he calls his “nonmodern manifesto.” Sustainable Architectures Full text available on-line to UT students and faculty via NetLibrary Available for purchase from Routledge Chapter 1    (7.1mb PDF) Chapter 4    (11.5mb PDF) Chapter 13  (12.5mb PDF) Three decades of debate about sustainable architecture and a search for some form of consensus around universal best environmental practices appear to have failed. Rather than argue that we need revolution or reformation, more or less technology, more pious behavior, to embrace or abandon the city, or to develop clearer definitions or standardization, the authors in this book explore the diversity of contemporary debate about sustainable architecture through a collage of differing analyses and intentions, of competing discourses of cultures and natures. In the process of analyzing the case studies documented in this collection, the editors develop the thesis that the challenge of sustainability is more a matter of local interpretation than the setting of objective or universal goals. But, rather than embrace simple relativism, their arguments are built upon the consequences of collective action, in particular, contexts of design and development. In this way the book encourages a deeper engagement with sustainable architecture, one that does not shy away from broader sociological or philosophical questions or merely indulge in the narrowly instrumental debate that characterizes so much of the green architecture literature. Alternative Routes to the Sustainable City: Austin, Curitiba, and Frankfurt Forthcoming in January 2007 from Rowman & Littlefield That cities might develop “sustainably” is no longer an outlandish or incomprehensible idea. Many authors have documented how cities already committed to sustainable development have stimulated economic growth, preserved threatened ecosystems, and improved social equity. Yet oddly, no one has investigated how it is that these well-known cities came to act as they do. Why has Austin, Texas rather than San Antonio; Curitiba, Brazil rather than Sao Paulo; or Frankfurt, Germany rather than Dusseldorf achieved so much? By listening to the stories told by the citizens of these three exemplary cities it becomes clear that these are places with a long history of public talk about social equity and environmental preservation—but each has developed particular dispositions toward politics, nature, and technology. The lesson to be learned from these cities is not that a single abstract model or universal checklist of best practices will solve our problems. Rather, it is that urban futures unfold as story lines constructed by citizens practiced and skilled at imaging how they might live differently than they do. Most of us accept the proposition that nature evolves, but only some of us accept the proposition that nature coevolves with society and technology. Readers receptive to this second proposition will find in the study of three cities competing story lines of our coevolution that reject universal models and lists of best practices as the only routes to the sustainable city. Philosophy of Design: From engineering to architecture Coedited by: Peter Kroes, Andrew Light, Steven A. Moore, and Pieter Vermaas Forthcoming in spring 2007 from Springer This volume brings together essays by more than twenty philosophers of technology and environment who alternately consider the ethics and consequences of engineering and architectural design--from nano-particles to cities, and from buildings to beings. These are diverse practices that are rarely compared or considered together but share the process of designing, of “transforming conditions into preferred ones.” Because designers tend to think of their work as the articulation of systems, we can understand the current state of engineering and architectural practice as at time when the boundaries of the systems to be designed are in flux, but both professions can be said to be engaged in the design of socio-technical systems, not efficient appliance on the one hand and beautiful objects on the other. Although the ethical cultures of engineering and architecture may be commonly understood to be distinct, the editors find that in practice they share many of the same concerns, and through globalization, are becoming more similar. In sum, the editors argue that design practices in general will improve in proportion to the degree we can distinguish between efficient and successful technological systems. For any system to succeed it must be sustained–which is to say continually renovated over time–by the citizens whom the system serves and who in turn serve it.