Constructing buildings ambitions：The Turning Torso case.pdf

Constructing buildings and ambitions – The Turning Torso case By Kjell Tryggestad (kt.ioa@cbs.dk) Copenhagen Business School, Dept. of Organization and Industrial Sociology, Paper prepared for the conference: Micro-Processes of Managing the Construction of Buildings, Copenhagen November 16-17 2006. Please do not quote without permission of the author Abstract Can buildings have ambitions? Or is it only humans that can? And how do ambitions emerge and become a possession? The aim of this paper is to inquire into this question on the emergence and distribution of ambitions. The inquiry is furthered by a case based investigation of the skyscraper Turning Torso in Malmö Sweden. The inquiry accounts for the performative role of devices like the design prototype and the budget in constructing the building. Four related roles are discussed; 1) Articulation, 2) Decision, 3) Control, and 4) Accounting. When put into circulation, the devices simultaneously perform different, sometimes conflicting work, notably in constructing the appropriate time for the building, and closely related - in negotiating the emerging ambition of the building. The puzzling deviations from and revisions of the budget (exceeding costs and prolonged time) can be further explained if the unexpected and negotiated relations between the devices are taken into account. In particular, the unexpected role of the prototype as a narrated time-folding machine deserves to be emphasized. Such unexpected instances of time-folding are important to emphasize because they profoundly challenge the traditional notion of linear calendar time inscribed into the budget, and more generally, into modern management controls. It is argued that keeping the budget and the design intact, i.e., without allowing for their negotiation, mutual adaptation and subsequent transformation; a project will - for better or worse, most likely disintegrate and end as a dead object.