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I use an actor-network perspective to analyze a case study of an environmentally sustainable, commercial textile fabric design. Susan Lyons of DesignTex, Inc., William McDonough of William McDonough and Partners, and Albin Kalin of Rohner Textil AG constructed and maintained a network of people and objects with an environmental focus by anticipating contingencies that continually threatened their network, such as waste disposal, credibility, and financial problems. In response to these contingencies, they developed and implemented environmental tools, such as an environmental design protocol, a life-cycle development (LCD) methodology, environmental cost accounting procedures, product-evaluation metrics, and employee-management systems. The success of their efforts rests on their ability to recruit network allies by integrating these environmental tools.
"Technologies do not . . . evolve under the impetus of some necessary inner technological or scientific logic. They are not possessed of an inherent momentum. If they evolve or change, it is because they have been pressed into shape. But the question then becomes: why did they actually take the form that they did?" [Bijker and Law 1990, p. 3].
From an actor-network perspective, I analyze a case study of environmentally sustainable design, focusing on how human agents (managers, for example) try to strategically align other human agents (such as suppliers or employees) and non-human elements (such as technology or environmental factors) in a mutually sustaining way [Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch 1987; Bijker and Law 1992]. A network's structure and alignment determine how well it responds to, deflects, or transforms challenges to its integration [Law 1987, p. 132]. I use an actor-network perspective to discuss lessons learned from a case study of sustainable, compostable office-furniture fabric [Mehalik, Gorman, and Werhane 1996, 1997a, 1997b, 1998a, 1998b].
Three people decided independently to develop an environmentally safe fabric: Susan Lyons, vice president of design at DesignTex, Inc., a New York company that manufactured contract textiles for commercial interiors; William McDonough, founder of William McDonough and Partners, which designed buildings and building-interior products; and Albin Kalin, managing director of Rohner Textil AG, a Swiss textile firm.
In 1991, Lyons wanted to produce an environmentally responsible fabric because "green" products were in the news, a few customers had inquired whether DesignTex's products were environmentally responsible, and out of personal interest.
DesignTex was the...