Constructive technopolitics: infrastructure, agency and socio-material obduracy in German housing innovation

Housing construction shapes everyday life and has environmental impact, yet dominant norms and routines governing it continue to produce profound environmental damage and social inequality. The question in urgent need of an answer is what lies behind the durability of resource-intensive construction practices, which have the effect of keeping socio-ecological alternatives marginal. Conceptually, this article theorises infrastructuring as a technopolitical strategy through which dominant actors stabilise specific socio-material assemblages in housing construction while constraining alternative ones. Empirically, the paper compares postwar innovation models in German housing construction, contemporary industry mainstream models and countercultural initiatives. The comparison reveals forms of ‘infrastructured agency’ across discursive, institutional and industrial standard-setting layers that reinforce socio-material obduracy within powerful construction regimes. By advancing an understanding of how technopolitics underpins the durability of socio-material assemblages, the article contributes to debates on materialities, governance and territorial regimes of construction.