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Achieving legitimacy: visual discourses in engineeringdesign and green building code developmentKathryn Henderson aa Sociology Department MS 4351 , Texas A&M University , College Station, TX, 77843-4351,US E-mail:Published online: 08 Feb 2011.

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Achieving legitimacy: visual discourses inengineering design andgreen building

code development

KathrynHenderson

Sociology DepartmentMS 4351,Texas A&MUniversity,College Station,TX 77843-4351,USE-mail: hendrsn@tamu.edu

This paper examines the processes by which early alternative, green-oriented building codes – namely those for straw

bale building – were created. It compares these with the visual processes in industrial design work. The comparison

reveals clear parallels in the ways in which tacit and experiential knowledge is conveyed through visual

representation. The study examines how straw bale building innovators in Arizona and New Mexico, US, used visual

discourse to convey technical knowledge within their own building community, and how they used visual discourse

in the form of historical documentation, illustrative sketches, and video footage to make a convincing case for their

technique as a viable one for code officials, even though visual representations were not allowed in building

standards, per se, at the time. The research methods used are participant observation, in-depth interviews, and

discourse analysis.

Keywords: alternative technology, building codes, green building, messy practice, mixed practices, situated knowledge

and practice, social context, visual discourse

Cet article explique comment ont ete crees les premiers codes de construction de batiments ecologiques alternatifs, a

savoir les codes de construction de batiments en ballots de paille. Il les compare aux processus visuels que l’on trouve

dans les travaux de conception industrielle et en degage un certain parallelisme entre les methodes de transmission de

la connaissance tacite et experimentale par la representation visuelle. L’auteur examine comment aux Etats-Unis (en

Arizona et dans le Nouveau Mexique) les innovateurs dans le domaine de la construction de batiments en ballots

paille ont fait appel au discours visuel pour transmettre des connaissances techniques au sein de leur propre

communaute professionnelle et comment ils ont utilise ce discours sous forme de documentation historique, de

schemas illustres et de programmes video pour en faire un argument visant a convaincre les autorites responsables des

codes que leur technique etait viable alors meme que les representations visuelles n’etaient pas autorisees en tant que

telles dans les normes de construction a cette epoque. Les methodes de recherche utilisees sont l’observation des

participants, des entretiens approfondis et l’analyse du discours.

Mots-cles: technologie alternative, codes de la construction, batiments ecologiques, pratique desordonnee, pratiques

mixtes, savoir situe et pratique, contexte social, discours visuel

IntroductionRecent decades have seen the emergence of innovativebuilding techniques that glance backward for inspi-ration, style, and materials to older traditions that areless processed, toxic, dependent on forests, and moreenergy efficient. Advocates wanting to move such

techniques and materials from experimental showpieces into mainstream viability via the legitimationof building codes must negotiate with building officers’assumptions and conventions of everyday practice,which construct how they interpret their charge toensure a safe built environment. Green-building

BUILDING RESEARCH & INFORMATION (2007) 35(1), 6–17

Building Research & Information ISSN 0961-3218 print ⁄ISSN 1466-4321 online # 2007 Taylor & Francishttp: ⁄ ⁄www.tandf.co.uk ⁄journals

DOI: 10.1080/09613210600979780

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advocates articulate their ethics in a discourse ofecological sustainability and building code officialsemploy a discourse safety. While not incompatible,translation between these two calls for mediation andan important part of that mediation is a visual dis-cursive practice. Examination of visual discourse isinformed by detailed observation of everyday practicein work settings and close attention to how knowledgeis made, where knowledge resides and how it is con-veyed in representations (e.g. Lynch and Woolgar,1988; Ferguson, 1992; Bucciarelli, 1994; Vinck,2003). To understand better just how visual discourseworks in this setting, the present author has drawn onthe visual culture and practices of design engineering(Henderson, 1991, 1995, 1999) for comparison.

The attention to how things are carried out in everydaywork practice follows Haraway’s (1988) reformulationof objectivity, conceived in contrast to the stance of aremoved, uninvolved observer. Instead, the focus ison situated action in a given context from the acknow-ledged point of view of multiple observers, so thatmany points of view are represented. Attention to prac-tice as the locus of knowledge and knowledge transferis informed by Lave’s (1988) and Suchman’s (1987)insight that the richest form of knowledge is that situ-ated in practice and that knowledge resides in com-munities of practice (Lave and Chaiklin, 1991). Thepresent author also draws on Clarke’s (2005) situa-tional analysis, a synthesis of grounded theory andthe shift of focus to understanding heterogeneousknowledge worlds through attention to fractured, mul-ticentred discursive systems. Using Clarke’s mappingtechnique, the figures given below give a rough ideaof the complexity of such systems in the two strawbale cases and where visual discourse plays a role.This focus on the interactive roles of visual represen-tations in engineering design and alternative code-con-struction processes examines how visual discursivepractice serves to construct meaning and form for tech-nological artefacts and how it serves to facilitate nego-tiations about a safe and healthy built environment.Such representations are viewed as active members ofthe network that creates them and the techniquesthey represent. This perspective draws on actor net-work analysis which views the web of humans andnon-humans or actants that participate in the construc-tion of a new technological artefact as mutuallyconstructed, simultaneously with the artefact’s deve-lopment: change one element in the network and thewhole matrix changes (Callon, 1986; Latour, 1987;Law, 1987, 1999).

Bresnen et al. (2005) point out that change is difficult toachieve in the construction industry because existingconventions such as the project-based nature ofconstruction activity and other entrenched practices‘militate against longer term learning at the level ofthe organization’ (p. 548). Conventions are socially

constructed practices that become taken-for-grantednorms over time (Roy, 2001). People too often forgetthat they can be re-negotiated. As described elsewhere(Henderson, 2006), testing conventions in combi-nation with numerical calculation have become thenorm for ethically ascertaining the viability of a build-ing material in the US. The use of visual representationshelped the negotiating parties in the straw bale case tomove beyond this sole criterion.

MethodsThe straw bale code development analysis and com-parison are based on ethnographic fieldwork withstraw bale building communities in Texas, NewMexico, and Arizona, using participant observation,open-ended interviews, and document analysis. Quali-tative examination of the manner in which values areembedded in the everyday practices of grass-rootsinnovators and building code officers reveals the con-struction and negotiation of what it is to have ahealthy and safe built environment. The authorattended Straw Bale Association meetings in Texas,Green Building and Natural Building conferences,and symposia in Texas and New Mexico, participatedin straw bale wall raisings and plastering, interviewedstraw bale home owners, contractors, designers, archi-tects and Department of Energy evaluators, surfed thestraw net and conversed with members of the move-ment in person and via electronic means in order tofind out how one becomes an ‘expert’ straw balebuilder. She examined the archival documents of theNew Mexico Construction Industries Division (CID)and interviewed building officials in Arizona, NewMexico, and Texas who were active during the timethe straw bale standards were developed. Such quali-tative methods are particularly applicable for thisstudy because participant observation during industrialdesign and assembly or community building andnegotiation provides the necessary rich base of datato track the passing of tacit or unarticulated knowledgebetween individuals against a background of relevantcontext. In-depth interviews help add the dimensionof individual experience, revealing members’ meaningsand their values in their own words along with narra-tive accounts of experiences not observed by theresearcher. Examination of the archives of the earlystraw bale movement at the home of early activists inTucson facilitated a contextual reading of newslettersand media coverage through consultation with themwhile examination of the New Mexico CID archivesin the proximity of the official who served as mediatorbetween activists, building officials, and the homebuilding lobby provided a different kind of contextualreading for those documents. In the design engineeringsetting, the viewing of sketches, official drawings,margin sketches, build books, and maintenancemanuals, in conversation with those who use them,

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revealed the relationships between their forms andfunctions in context. These data collection methodsfacilitated capturing some of the multiple perspectivesof participants involved in both technology buildingand the code-building processes, through individuals’own accounts rather than only that of one ethno-grapher. Some details and/or perspectives haveundoubtedly been lost through researcher shortcom-ings and space limitations, but at a minimum, represen-tation of more than one perspective provides a view ofsome part of the complexities of visual design workand building code negotiations.

These findings from code-negotiation settings are com-pared with previous ethnographic fieldwork in twodesign settings. In this previous work, design settingsincluded a young corporation, designing a disposablemedical optics surgical instrument and an old-line cor-poration re-designing a turbine engine supportpackage. The author attended design meetings ineach of the engineering design case studies, conductedopen-ended interviews with designers, technicians,engineers, drafters, and managers, examined docu-ments, and observed on the shop floor as the designengineers actually put together the turbine enginesupport package prototype because of a machinists’strike. Though this work has been extensively writtenup and discussed (Henderson, 1991, 1995, 1999), anumber of concepts from these studies are pertinentto understanding visual processes in code negotiationand other settings, illustrating the important conceptof messy practice.

Visual representations and visual culture indesign engineeringClose examination of engineering design work revealsthe crucial importance of visual representations fromrough and talking sketches, through official drawingdrafts and margin sketches, to illustrations for assem-bly or maintenance. This is a visual culture in whichmuch knowledge is visual in format and those whomanipulate and negotiate it command a visual literacyof signs, symbols, and conventions for manipulatingthem.1 The connection between how practice and away of seeing are connected in engineering is illustratedby an example from the turbine package study. Acomputer-aided design (CAD) drawing of an oil sealpanel to hold various gauges was sent to the shopfloor for production, rendered in a 30/608 isometric per-spective view. The shop workers tore up this drawing.They regarded isometric rendition as only appropriatefor ‘pretty pictures’ – illustration drawings for custo-mers, not for production. As one engineer stated,‘would you want a dress pattern given in perspective?’2

The shop engineer redrew the design in a simple sketch,without drafting precision, and the machinists foundit acceptable, showing how a given work world is

tied to the practices of rendering its work and that con-ventional practices of looking can be more importantthan numerical precision (Henderson, 1991, 1999).Similar instances in which visual discourse in the formof sketches, photographs, or video rather thannumbers are accepted as legitimate argumentation willbe seen in the straw bale case.

Sketches ^ the heart of designSketches are at the heart of design work. They serve asthinking tools to capture fleeting ideas on paper wherethey can be better understood, further analysed andrefined and negotiated. In the turbine package studyan up-through-the-ranks design engineer, originallyfrom drafting, stated that when she was promoted toengineer her drafting board was taken away. Sheasked for it back, stating ‘I can’t think without mydrafting board’, adding:

You can’t sit there and wait until you’ve got it uphere because it comes through drawing it.

(Henderson, 1991, 1999)

Once on paper, sketches serve as talking sketches, colla-borative tools for working out ideas with otherdesigners as well as with those in production, asdescribed by the senior designer of the turbine supportpackage:

I usually take my layouts right after I’ve started . . .before they’re ever dimensioned. . . . I’ll sit andtalk with them [structures] and say, ‘Look,here’s what I wan’ a do and here’s the types ofmaterial I wan’ a use’ . . . a lot of times they’llsay, ah, ‘Well, gee, if you did this, over here, thiswould save one weld’.

He also noted the importance of clarifying sketches inthe margins of official drawings:

I’m liable to just go off with the pencil and go andjust make a little hand sketch off to one side –just to make it clearer to the guys doing it atthe time. . . .

(Henderson, 1999)

Political careers of prototypesIn the medical instrument case visual design iterationsin the form of drawing/prototype pairs serve tocapture tacit knowledge and supporters. Designersand users engage the prototype in interaction, playingwith it and discussing its performance in relation totheir criteria. Changes are captured by red-lining draw-ings, a new prototype is produced, and the cycle beginsagain. Similar to but more complex than Latour’s(1986) cascade of drawings, the prototype/drawing

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dyad (Henderson, 1995, 1999) is the crucial part of acentre of calculation where knowledge is increasinglyintegrated through subsequent interactions in whichdrawings capture increasingly refined tacit knowledge,accessed through interaction with the prototype. Thecomponents serve as mutually dependent inscriptiondevices to capture data generated from interaction(Latour, 1986). The pair also serves as a conscriptiondevice in that anyone desiring to participate in thedesign process must interact through these represen-tations (Henderson, 1999). The development engineerpoints out the importance of prototypes in generaland in particular for the medical tool being designedto insert a foldable optical lens into the tiniest incisionpossible for cataract surgery:

[A drawing] helps in terms of . . . ‘how does thiswork?’ or ‘I think my finger could work reallywell on this.’ But until you actually get yourhands on it, it’s still not even close. There’s abig, big, difference in drawing it and making it.That’s really where the main change comesover – when you get the prototype. . . . I wouldsay you cannot make anything unless you makeprototypes and understand it and worry out thebugs. . . .

. . . I bring them into my office and play withthe instruments. That’s when things get accom-plished.

Thus, the prototype is a centring device for the concen-tration of visual, fingertip, and other tacit knowledgeshared by participants in interactions; its increasingrefinement captured through interaction between thehumans, the prototype, and the drawing.

In this case study the prototypes served not only toelicit and capture more knowledge, but also as politicalrecruiting devices. They were handed to each new teammember as the Research and Development (R&D)team expanded as it moved toward production inorder (1) to elicit tacit knowledge feedback, but also(2) to generate buy-in through direct interaction withthe design idea in tangible form. As boundary objectsvisual representations in the design process such asdrawings and prototypes have various meanings forthe different various groups involved (Star, 1989; Starand Griesmer, 1989). Boundary objects usually facili-tate coordination, as described above, but may, insome cases, allow articulation of alternative interpret-ations of parties, unsupportive of the project.

Boundary objects and boundary facilitatorsIn the medical optics case, although the actual fabrica-tion of the instrument was being handled by an outsidevendor because of the contentious history between

R&D and production, that history still contributed toconflict. When the pre-production prototype was sentto a physicians’ conference, an over-enthusiastic salesforce neglected the instruction sheet and tore some ofthe tiny Mylar paddles that deliver the lens into theeye incision. By the second day, the sales personswere trained to handle the instrument correctly andthe new instrument was well received by the medicalcommunity. However, the report of the disastrousfirst day circulated wildly through the gossip networkback to the home office. The production side of thecompany that was handling the complicated medicalpackaging of the instrument balked. They invokedbureaucratic process to refuse accepting the hand-offof the design drawings to their department, maintain-ing there were materials incompatibility and otherflaws in the drawings. It took the direct interventionof a vice-president, forcefully stating at a meetingthat the project had the full support of the companyand no further delays would be tolerated, to break theimpasse. Afterwards, a production engineer, questionedabout the flaws in the drawings, said that they had beenmisread and refused to discuss it further. The point isnot that the production side dissembled. They read thedrawings through a lens of prior problems with flaweddesigns that had resulted in flawed inventory on theirshelves, for which they, not R&D, took the blame: avariant reading of a boundary object which can, givenits robust capacity to support multiple interpretations,be the locus of dissent as well as the locus of colla-boration. In this case the power of management wasinvoked to mediate the diverse readings. In the strawbale code cases diverse and contentious readings of thetechnology were also present but were resolved in aless authoritarian manner.

Mixed andmessy practiceThese studies illustrate the important concept of messypractice. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, design workdoes not flow in a neat linear pattern, but rather isbeset, like those on the ‘yellow brick road to Oz’,with innumerable diversions, mishaps and patch-ups.The implementation of computer graphics into thepaper world of engineering design is an illustrativecase. Those using it the most successfully employedmixed practices of paper and computer graphicstechnologies, using whichever best suited the needs ofthe job. One aerospace graphics department managersaid: ‘My designers use more paper than ever nowthat they use graphics systems’. They printed out newiterations for every design meeting so they could red-line them for the next set of changes. A manager inthe turbine package study complained that computergraphics were being used by his engineers ‘as a veryexpensive, fast eraser’; while designers at a well-known computer manufacturer used the computerassisted machining (CAM) function to refine visually

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iterations of monitor frames instead of calculatingthem with the software. All of this points to thesituatedness of knowledge in everyday practice andinteractions (Henderson, 1999). Turning to the use ofvisual representation by green building innovators inconvincing building code officials to support the deve-lopment of codes for straw-bale construction, compari-son of the visual discourses in the two design casestudies with those employed by straw bale buildingadvocates reveals the locally contingent nature ofdesign, its meanings, and the way values and ethicsare embedded in artefacts and practice. These negotia-tions were also not linear, but fraught with misunder-standings and messy practice. Comparison of theneed for translation of the visual discourses of strawbale activists and code officials with the conflict ofdiscourses in the medical instrument study reveals theinterconnections between situated practice, structure,and power relationships.

Quest for straw bale building codesWhen Nebraska pioneers in the US experienceda shortage of locally available building materials inthe late 1800s, they were able to draw on the recentinvention of mechanical hay baling equipment,enabling them to use hay bales like giant buildingblocks to build everything from churches to houses.Contemporary straw bale builders construct networksthat include, among other things, baling technology toconvert straw in the field to building-grade straw bales,farmers and the crops they grow that produce straw,transport and moisture-proof storage for bales,designers and plans particular to the medium, andknowledgeable people and tacit knowledge of thepeculiarities involved in putting all these thingstogether into a building (Callon, 1986; Latour, 1987,1999; Law, 1987). Today they also have to negotiatebuilding codes that will allow them to use thetechnology.3

This is a story about networks and about the valuesthat drove negotiations among and throughout them.It is a story about contingent meanings embedded inpractice and about practitioners involved in eachnetwork attempting to talk to those in anothernetwork in language their audience did not understand.The need both for translation among multiple pers-pectives and for mediators to facilitate the translationwas service that visual representations and certainparticipants provided in the standards buildingprocess and for the researcher. To locate contextuallythe values that kept the process alive and how theyinfluenced behaviour first it is necessary to groundthe current straw bale movement in the history whichhas lent itself to visual representation and the strawbale activist argument for the technique as viable andecologically sustainable.

Straw bale sources ^ ¢rst sketchesThe first US straw bale houses were constructed bypoverty-stricken pioneers in the Sandhills of Nebraska,a region that produced impressive stands of meadowhay (Myhrman and Knox, 1993; Steen et al., 1994).4

So-called ‘Nebraska-style’ bale construction is loadbearing, that is, the weight of the roof rests directlyon the stacked bales.5 The first post-and-beam strawbale building still standing in good repair today wascompleted in 1938.6 The late 1960s and early 1970sbrought both a counter-culture and professional inter-est in innovative and vernacular building, often usingrecycled or waste materials. Based on his research onsuch folk and vernacular Nebraska architecture, in1973 folklorist Roger Welsch published a one-pagearticle entitled ‘Baled hay’ in Shelter. The page con-tained text, a grainy photograph of a straw balehouse, and a sketch illustrating wall and plastercomponents. Straw bale lore credits Welsch’s shortarticle as doing more to launch the straw bale buildingrevival than any other single factor. Of course any suchinformation must enter a fertile environment to havean impact.

Like the first sketch that captures initial ideas in designengineering, from these sketchy representations inno-vators began experimenting with the technique. Theethos of the 1960s and 1970s is a factor here for theprevalent questioning of convention and increasedattention to ecological concerns. Those who beganexperimenting with straw bale as a building material,drawing on Welsh’s article, found, however, thathistoric information by itself was not enough actuallyto build a straw bale house. Trips to Nebraska toexamine construction techniques proved frustratingon the technical level, even if they did provide historicexamples of still standing, straw bale buildings.Myhrman and Knox, who made several such tripsin the 1980s, report that most participants whoassisted in raising original straw bale buildings arenow deceased and those few that remain were tooyoung at the time of construction to provide technicaldetails. Moreover, few buildings could be inspected forconstruction details without harming the structure.Hence the experimentation of contemporary strawbale innovators was crucial in developing a viable con-temporary technology. Reports of some of those wholived in the historic straw bale structures, however,raised an issue that has become part of the value struc-ture of the straw bale movement: lower energy use dueto conservation provided by the super-insulation ofstraw bale walls. So from the historic accounts cometwo elements that are part of the ‘green’ or conserva-tion values and rhetoric of straw bale advocates: theintentional recycling of waste or readily availablenatural material and reduced energy use. So too fromthe historical accounts come the first sketches andphotos of straw bale buildings, like sketches, capturing

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an idea for further development. The historic represen-tations, themselves, were also to play a role.

Figures 1 and 2 illustrate the messy interconnections ofpeople, things, organizations, and discourses in theArizona and New Mexico straw bale code nego-tiations, respectively, from the perspective of actornetwork theory which grants agency to non-humans.Their use draws on Clarke’s (2005) mapping techniqueto show how visual discourse was enmeshed in thefractured and multicentred discourses of the negotia-tion process in Arizona and New Mexico.

Prototypes, politics, and tacit knowledgeThe statements of the medical optics engineer that:

until you actually get your hands on it, it’s stillnot even close. There’s a big, big, difference indrawing it and making it

make clear why the early experimental straw bale postand beam cottage built by northern California architectJon Hammond, featured in Fine Homebuilding(December 1984), was so influential. The Fine Home-building article inspired a number of future leaders ofthe contemporary straw bale movement, many ofwhom met at a Permaculture Workshop in Oracle,Arizona, in 1989 where initial consistent methods forbale buildings were shared and refined collectively.This was a crucial juncture in the development andexchange of tacit knowledge along with the develop-ment of a fairly consistent practice. It was also theinitiation of a network for dissemination and advocacyof the technique, reintroduced as an expression ofgreen ethics, putting conservation values into buildingpractice. Myhrman and Knox started a newsletter,later to become The Last Straw Journal, which dissemi-nated technical information and also held the grouptogether – the mutual co-construction of a technologyand network that actor network theory describes.

The 1990s saw a proliferation of straw bale buildingsof all shapes and sizes throughout North American,European, and Asian countries built by professionalsand non-professionals, along with the move to standar-dize the technique and make it more widely availablethrough the establishment of building codes. Thegroundwork for straw bale building permits was laidin Tucson, Arizona, through the collaboration ofstraw bale advocates and a friendly building codeculture. The code development process was started atalmost the same time in New Mexico in a buildingcode culture in disarray because of fiscal neglect andstate politics. Comparison of the two processesreveals the importance of local situational context. Itwas out of these two code negotiation processes thatthe initial testing of straw bale techniques cameabout. But here, too, the testing process was locally

contingent and influenced by the values, practices,and composition of local straw bale associations,their professional status, economic resources, relation-ships with the local office of building officials, and theinterpretation of safety ethics in those offices.

Quest for legitimationLegitimation was the issue driving pursuit of straw balebuilding codes for everyone concerned. Many of theearliest straw bale homes were built in locations thatbuilders referred to as ‘off the grid’ – outside city ortown limits, often in unincorporated areas wherebuilding codes do not apply and city amenities suchas power, sewerage, and water lines are not available.For early innovation and experimentation this wasadvantageous, as innovators did not have to contendwith codes designed for timber-based construction.However, for straw bale building to move into themainstream, codes were necessary.7 Straw bale advo-cates were not looking merely for permission, but fora code of their own for at least three significant reasons:

. Cognisant of what had happened to the early USsolar energy movement, discredited by unskilledand sometimes unscrupulous entrepreneurs,promoting inferior and sometimes non-functionaltechnology and incorrect or misleading infor-mation, straw bale activists wanted to ensure thatthose who employed straw bale building techno-logy were held to a standard that would ensurethe success of the technique and its reputation.

. Beyond building permits, bank loans and insuranceavailability are usually tied to building coderequirements.

. A standardized building code would lend credi-bility to the technique in all building sectors.

Ethics,mediation, and boundary workersIn 1991 Myhrman and Knox decided to employ thetechniques, learned at the Oracle workshop, to builda small straw bale dwelling for Matt’s mother.Myhrman went to the local building office to seek apermit. Both describe the values that have permeatedtheir activism and leadership in the straw bale move-ment in terms of ecological responsibility for the nextgeneration.

Knox: We need to dramatically change the waywe meet our basic needs as human beingsbecause we are consuming the planet. Therewill not be enough of the planet left for ourgrandchildren. . . .

Myhrman: These people who are leading it[straw bale movement] are driven by a much

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larger, I think, awareness. They see straw baleconstruction as beautiful in itself and a veryinteresting technology, but its real power andexcitement is it relates so well to many of theplanetary problems.

These are examples of the ecological sustainability dis-course spoken by straw bale advocates. David Eisenberg,a Tucson engineer turned straw bale advocate andmediator, laid the foundation for negotiation betweenstraw bale activists and code officials early on withstatements in The Last Straw Journal similar to the onebelow:

. . . People have this sort of image of building offi-cials as being these petty bureaucrats and tyrants,etc., and basically forcing people to do all sorts ofthings they don’t want to do, and in many casesthat is what’s going on. They also are, as wehave begun to call them, a caring community, a

group of people who takes extremely seriouslytheir responsibility of protecting the publicwelfare from the building environment.

The ecological discourse worked in Tucson whereopenness to seeing and exploring something new forecological and economic reasons captured the valuesof both the building office and the straw baleactors from the beginning. Building officials, afterinitial, rather jovial amazement, engaged in a willing-ness to consider straw bale technology seriously andto advise on home-made testing. Straw bale advocates,told that they needed test results, managed with a veryminimal budget, a large amount of creativity, andadvice from code officials to produce them.

Leroy Sayre, then Tucson Chief Building Official,recounts his first encounter with Myhrman and thefirst time he heard of seriously building with strawbales.

Figure 1 Arizona discourses.This illustrates the messy interconnections of people, things, organizations and discourses in the Arizonastraw bale code negotiations from the perspective actor network theory which grants agency to non-humans and shows how visualdiscourse was enmeshed in the network.

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I spent my summers as a youngster in Ohio at mygrandfather’s farm and we used to stack up balesof hay and it was nice and cool [inside the struc-ture] in the summer. So the more I thought aboutit, the more I thought well, gee, we stack upbricks, why can’t we stack up straw bales? . . .If you could meet the forces in the code withany kind of material, I think a building officialshould be willing to at least consider the possi-bility of whatever the alternative material is.

Aside from his cultural sympathy for straw bales, basedon his boyhood farm days, when Sayre says ‘if thingswere done so the structural forces referred to in thecodes were accounted for’, he is referring to testing ofthe materials that will give numeric outcomes. So hereone begins to see the turn toward standard practice andtesting evidence as ethics for the building office and aslegitimation for the straw bale activists. That does notmean getting the testing done was easy. How a messier-than-normal practice was turned into clean numbersfollows, though the numbers did not stand alone.

How do you standardize a bale of straw?Tucson: ‘rustic testing’These activist groups were certainly networks, buttheir success depended on materials and peoplebeyond their own group. Fortunately for the strawbale advocates, the broader building culture ofTucson itself, where building officials were alreadyaccustomed to adobe building as an alternative toconstruction industry practice, set a precedent ofopen-mindedness for innovation with highly placedbuilding officials. The chief building official, whoinfluenced others in the community of building offi-cials, employed a normative discourse of health andsafety, but was also open to innovation, informed bypractical concern for replacements for steadily weak-ening timber and an ethical attempt to adapt an ill-structured, radical building system into normativepractice that would render it approvable as a low-level material. The testing outcome was a compromisebetween the evaluation of single bales and whole wallsystems.

Figure 2 NewMexico discourses.This illustrates themessy interconnections of people, things, organizations and discourses in theNewMexico straw bale code negotiations from the perspective actor network theory which grants agency to non-humans and shows howvisual discourse was enmeshed in the network.

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Employing the language of Van de Poel and Van Gorp(2006), drawing on Vincenti (1992), recommendedattempts for standardized ICBO (InternationalCongress of Building Officials) testing of bales are actu-ally recommendations to make a radical and ill-struc-tured design/building technique fit it into a normativeframework where it would be easy to ascertain safetyissues by simply applying normative calculationmethods. Farmers, as the producers of baled straw,were certainly in no position nor had any desire toconduct expensive laboratory tests and bales are irregu-lar in dimension and density. Tests were carried out byrecruiting a University of Arizona graduate student,Ghailene Bou-Ali, from Tunisia, to do the calculations.Straw bale builders built the apparatus to test load, windsheer, and lateral sheer using borrowed materials underthe guidance of code officials. Documentation dependedon sketches and photographs supplied by the straw baleadvocates, who made the visual representations and ashort text available for builders.

NewMexico: overcoming politics, organizationalchaos, andmiscommunicationHaving granted the first experimental straw balepermit to Virginia Carabelli in 1991, the State ofNew Mexico CID, petitioned by a Straw Bale Con-struction Association (SBCA) made up of professionalcontractors and architects, issued ten experimentalpermits for non-load-bearing straw bale structuresand then ten more, given high demand. However,local building officials did not know how to evaluatestraw bale building processes and outcome, hence theneed for a specific set of standards. Moreover, inNew Mexico, shortly after the construction of theinitial modest straw bale structures, an elite clienteleemerged interested in high-end straw bale homes.Building professionals seeking codes needed their legit-imation for this market. They brought a proposal for apost-and-beam straw bale building code to CID. Thedirector established a task force made up of knowl-edgeable builders and building office officials. He toldthe SBCA members it would be time-consumingprocess of about two years. That was in 1991. Thecode was finally passed in 1997. What took so long?

To understand this long delay it is necessary to under-stand the structure and funding of CID during this timeperiod. In the state of New Mexico both the head ofCID and the head of Licensing and Regulation, towhom the head of CID reports, are political appoint-ments, as are all the positions on the Building Commis-sion. All fees for permits and contractors’ licenses thatCID collects, it must turn over to the state. These gointo the state General Fund and CID is then given abudget by the legislature. In 1991, when the strawbale code was proposed, CID was in trouble. It hadan inadequate budget and was in fiscal and organiz-ational crisis. Its building inspectors had a poor

reputation with the building community, regarded aspoorly informed, arrogant, and prejudiced againstnon-locals. They were also grossly underpaid; theirvehicles were falling apart and their operating budgetwas inadequate. Between 1991 and 1995 members ofthe Straw Bale Task Force, including SBCA members,building officials, and representatives of the Home-builder’s Association, all felt frustrated as they triedto move forward. The SBCA brought materials tomeetings and thought they were providing the infor-mation needed to create a code, only to be told theyneeded more each time. The groups kept talking pastone another, becoming increasingly more alienatedfrom one another as time went on. A sense of this frus-tration can be seen in the following quotes from theCID liaison to the Straw Bale committee at that time:

The intent was to have open discussions and getdirection. They didn’t know how to handle it tomake it work. The alternative methods of materialswere the approach that I thought would be easiestand most expeditious. All they really managed todo was develop these experimental permits buthadn’t really done anything else. They had allthese buildings done but had not gathered anyinformation to really substantiate any codes forthe mainstream process. So many of them arereally how each building was built.

Stucco, for example, . . . to meet ICBO criteria, isrequired to have certain approved substance, thatit’s applied to. . . . Every stucco manufacturing hasdifferent performance levels established by ICBO.There is no performance standard to apply stuccoto straw. Nor had any of the stucco manufacturersbeen asked to provide data, which would give thebuilding officials anything to hang their hat on –it would be okay to put stucco on. The way wewere doing it, we had a wall that feels prettygood, but there was no way to determine if thisstucco is really performing in the way it is supposedto. That’s why we were trying to keep somereferences, to note performance. . ..

The language here, not unlike that in Tucson, advocatesstandardization and industry-sponsored testing as thenorm. But unlike Tucson, only official ICBO laboratorytesting is sanctioned and no offer is made to assist strawbale advocates in conducting alternative home-growntesting in lieu of expensive laboratory tests.

In 1995 a new governor was elected, but CID was in suchdisarray that no one wanted the appointment to head it.Finally, the governor asked an experienced womanadministrator from Energy and Minerals to take thejob. More than one informant told me that there wastalk in some quarters of a non-cooperation conspiracyagainst her. Especially some of the most reactionarymembers felt that not only was she a woman, but also

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she did not know construction. However, the same infor-mants report that six months later everyone loved her.

What Anita Lockwood may not have known aboutconstruction, she did know about the state legislature.She bartered with the powerful Homebuilders Associ-ation Lobby, promising better service in exchange forsupport for CID. As one informant put it:

She told them what to say, when they should sayit and to whom.

She negotiated a decent budget, bought CID newvehicles, and provided training for inspectors in bothjob techniques and human relations. She elevated keypositions to architect or engineer. To their credit,CID had tried to accomplish some of these thingsonly to run into bureaucratic hurdles. Lockwoodknew how to manipulate the bureaucracy and the leg-islature to accomplish her goals for CID. She requiredthe Straw Bale Task Force to define their terms and setspecific goals and procedures so that they could com-municate across their different languages. Her tenurebegan in 1995; in 1997 the Straw Bale Building codewas passed – taking the two years originally indicated.Lockwood and her professional management tech-niques were important mediators in the code-buildingprocess in New Mexico. So was her appointment of aliaison between the straw bale advocates and code offi-cials. A trained architect from a respected family con-struction business, the liaison, like the senior turbinepackage engineer, explained details such as contrastingmoisture barrier techniques for straw bale versus con-ventional building by drawing talking sketches.Mediation also came from the straw bale sidethrough visual discourse.

Visual argumentsDuring this period, the SBCA raised funds for testing bycontacting homeowners, contractors, architects, andanyone interested in straw bale building to sponsor aSmall Scale Fire Test and Transverse Load Test forstraw bale building. This was just the beginning. Theydid a formal presentation including not only the testresults in graph format, but also a colour video of thetesting process. The segment in which the door of thefurnace is opened to reveal the stucco-covered wall,against which an industrial-grade torch has beenapplied for over an hour, is dramatic. The bale underdirect blast is pulled out and falls on the floor,showing only minor scorching. Photographic represen-tations of historic straw bale homes and a church, builtnearly a century ago, were also presented in largeformats to illustrate the durability of the technique.

ConclusionIn design engineering, sketches serve to capture initialand shared ideas. For the straw bale movement as a

whole, Welsch’s and Hammond’s sketches, drawings,and photographs in Shelter (Welsch, 1973) and FineHomebuilding (Strang, 1984) served as sketches forthe subsequent renaissance of the technique becausethey entered the imagination of a larger group of inno-vators at a fertile period. Those representations alsoshare the characteristics of the prototype as a recruitingdevice in engineering design and the cascade ofdrawing/prototype dyads because they were followedalmost immediately by experimental play at work-shops such as the one at Oracle. Indeed, a bay areaarchitect who initiated straw bale arches said thatpart of the excitement for him is a whole new set ofmaterials with which to engage in play – the sameterm used by the medical optics engineer to describerefinement of the prototype details. The two publi-cations also generated more representations as strawbale enthusiasts went seeking additional historic struc-tures from which to learn, photographed them, andpublished them, along with technical sketches, for thegrowing readership of The Last Straw Journal.

Concern with codes enters at this early juncture withthe 20 experimental permits granted in New Mexico.And perhaps here-in lies the roots of the subsequentmisunderstandings between straw bale advocates andcode officials when they began to collaborate onwriting a standard together. The code officials andthe straw bale advocates had very different expec-tations of the experiment permits. The building codeofficials expected consistent measurement, testing,and numbers. The straw bale advocates gave themthe kind of information that was conveyed in work-shops – how to build incrementally a building, withphotographic documentation. This approach is verysimilar to what in the turbine industry were called‘build books’ – a compilation of sequential instruc-tions incorporating both in-house drawings and assem-bly instructions from vendors whose componentswould be integrated. These are also of the samefamily as Build it With Bales (McDonald andMyhrman, 1995) the first straw bale how-to manual,in that if all the steps are followed, by the end of thebook a turbine engine package or straw bale house isproduced.

Moreover, up to the point of putting things into words,convincing arguments, accepted by code officials, hadbeen primarily visual ones, even when numeric datawere also present. The initial load-bearing tests, calcu-lated by a University of Arizona graduate, were basedon the use of home-made apparatus, constructed bythe straw bale community with the advice of localcode officials, were disseminated to code offices in apublication illustrated by photographs and sketches(Henderson, 2006). Code officials accepted the photo-graphic documentation of historic straw bale housesstill in good repair and conceded the durability of thetechnique. Several also admitted being more convinced

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of the fire-resistant qualities of a plastered straw balewall after viewing the video footage of the test morethan by the numeric read-out. In the straw bale com-munity, tacit knowledge of the technique was conveyedin hands-on workshops and illustrated manuals such asBuild it With Bales, while The Last Straw Journal keptstraw bale builders abreast of emerging refinements inarticles with supporting photographs and sketches.Having made successful buildings and successful argu-ments for the initiation of a building code, straw baleadvocates did not approach the code-making processfrom the conventions and discourse of that field, thusproblems of communication ensued during the yearsof disarray at CID. Yet, ultimately, success wasachieved through messy practice and sketching in themargins by mediators. Perhaps the best example ofthe resolution of differences is the manner finallyagreed upon to standardize a bale of straw, describedby Tony Perry, head of the New Mexico Straw BaleConstruction Association:

And the CID started off saying, we need to get thefarmers to certify every bale – tag put on it. Canyou see farmers doing that? . . . I said to them,‘That is impossible!’ There are 8 differentmachines. All right? There are 600 settings oneach machine. There are wheat, rye, oats,barley, and rice [straw bales]. And there areprobably 3- or 4-hundred different climatic con-ditions in which it might be cut and baled. Noway. So we ended up with a very practicalthing. And the CID came up with it. They said,all right, pick up a 2-string bale, by one string,and if you can walk 25 feet without it fallingapart, it’s good enough. And I thought, Wow,that’s sensible. Isn’t that nice.

At the start of this paper it was mentioned how conven-tions of practice can be barriers to organizationalchange. In the New Mexico CID office organizationalchange has taken place. The CID liaison who trans-lated discourses by sketching in the margins of under-standing is now consulted as the expert onincorporating indigenous building techniques intocode. He was recently visited by a delegation fromHawaii seeking to bring Polynesian thatch-and-lashing techniques into the building code. Therefore,a new community of practice is emerging, one thatuses visual discursive practice to mediate competingdiscourses.8

AcknowledgementsThis research was funded by The National ScienceFoundation, Ethics and Values Studies Division, TheLemelson Center for the Study of Invention andInnovation, National Museum of American History,Smithsonian Institution.

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Endnotes1Art historian Alpers (1983) notes that visual culture is a way ofseeing that simultaneously both reflects and shapes how membersrender the world, defining both what it is to see and what there isto see. For those engaged with drawing, painting or mechanicaldrafting, how they see their world is strongly tied to the conven-tions of rendering it. Engineers’ conventions of rendering comefrom drafting consequently those conventions are part of theirvisual literacy.

2Plan, profile, and section drawings provide the one-to-one corre-lations necessary for production.

3The straw bale building phenomenon itself continues to grow.As of 1997, the straw bale movement could claim at least onebuilding using the technique in every state of the union in theUS as well as a few located in Canada, Russia, and France.

Today, the straw bale registry lists approximately 1020 strawbale structures worldwide, most built after 2000.

4The plains environment was short on timber and the soil unsui-table for sod building. Building with straw bales was more effi-cient than building with sod because bale size facilitated morerapid wall construction and larger structures.

5Folklorist Welsch estimated that over 60 straw bale buildingswere put up in the Sand Hills region. The Last Straw Journalfounders, Myhrman and Knox, in their many research trips toNebraska have found evidence of only 28 such buildings.Exactly how many straw bale buildings may have been built inNebraska between the 1890s and 1930s remains unknown.

6Dr William Henry Burritt built his two-story mansion in Hunts-ville, Alabama, introducing the technique in his ‘X’-shaped plan,fronted with concrete Doric columns. The first version, using2200 bales, burned on the moving-in day, 6 June 1936. The firehad nothing to do with the straw bale construction. Burrittrebuilt it, replacing much of the wood with concrete and con-crete-fibre-reinforced shingles, retaining the straw bale infillwalls. A few straw bale constructions took place outsideNebraska in the 1940s, but building numbers diminished to thepoint of disappearing between 1950 and the late 1970s, probablydue to the increase in mass-produced construction and construc-tion materials.

7Straw bale buildings actually could have been permitted undera section of the Uniform Building Code (a national code onwhich many local standards are modelled) under the Alterna-tive Building section for alternative and experimental buildingtechniques, and indeed some have been. Section [105] permitsalternative building techniques with approval in the localjurisdiction.

8In the past few years, as building offices across the US adopt theInternational Building Code, visual representations have begun tobe introduced into the code where they are needed forclarification.

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