Taking intermediary objects and equipping work into account in the study of engineering practices
Résumé
This article shows that the equipping of intermediary objects is a central concern of engineers and technicians. Through the process of equipping, new properties are conferred on the intermediary object and this contributes to the shaping of the design space and collective work. I follow in particular how equipping is used in practices of mediation, temporal set-up and framework outlining and how it creates spaces of exchange. The argument developed is based on ethnographic studies of engineering design activities in the manufacturing industry and in a design office in charge of developing a large instrument for the CERN cyclotron.