Transitions towards sustainable architecture range from best practice exemplars based upon low carbon technical performance to aestheticized, iconic visions of sustainability framed by specific environmental philosophies. The resulting heterogeneity of design strategies serve as illuminating examples of the paradoxes that face efforts to design, develop and inhabit sustainable built form. In response, this paper argues for an alternative, more fluid interpretive frame, which acknowledges and even celebrates design diversity and acknowledges multiple transition points towards sustainability through the contingent, often messy practices through which architectural artefacts are assembled across sites and societies.