Tectonics of Avoidance

This article unfolds as a dialogue between architectural and economics concerns on how a sustainable circular practice can be introduced and upscaled in construction. It will point towards absolute sustainable targets and will be analyze in juxtaposition to the (weak) economic drivers that can get us there (Brejnrod et al., 2017; Eberhardt et al., 2020). First, it is established that sustainable innovation is design strategies that simplify construction in order to avoid environmental impacts tied to building material overuse. These strategies are defined as tectonics of avoidance and consist of two, direct and indirect, approaches to architectural design. Common for both is that as innovation they must be understood more at applied complex knowledge more than a specific product.
In the second part of the article, we discuss how this kind of information (knowledge) can be applied in the economic circumstances that frame construction and architecture today. How it challenges the path-dependency of design methods today and how information and complex knowledge can be 'sold' in an 'open source' or 'closed' approach to the existing marked for construction.