“Building” is a powerful metaphor that has long structured how we think about progress and accomplishment. What might be the new metaphors, the new rubrics, for an epoch of repair? How might professions premised on growth and consumption — new buildings, new landscapes, new cities — adapt to the new urgencies of reuse, preservation, and degrowth?

Image: Vacant lot, Second Avenue and Second Street, New York City, July 2024. [David Gissen], Places Journal.

Field Notes: Repair explores these questions and more through an ambitious eight-part narrative survey, featuring observations from nearly 100 scholars, designers, planners, activists, and artists. Contributing authors take us to locales around the world, from Belgrade to Chicago; Delhi to the Blue Pacific; Johannesburg to New York City, Malmö, and London, among many others.

In the installments, you’ll discover thoughtful, nuanced, and urgent calls for practices of repair, reuse, preservation, maintenance, and care. Some are hyper-practical, concerned with the lifespans of artifacts and structures. Others revise or propose philosophies of repair that might address the overlapping crises of climate change, economic inequality, and racial injustice. More than a few acknowledge that repair can only take us so far. “Field Notes: Repair” follows an earlier series in Places, Repair Manual.

Like much else — everything else? — in the modern era, architecture has been shaped by fossil fuels, by the materials, forms, and environments made possible by the extraction and combustion of coal, oil, and gas. Many iconic buildings of the 20th century deployed copious quantities of concrete, steel, and glass, and found expressive ways to conceal their energy-intensive mechanical systems. Indeed, it would be difficult to come up with a more carbon-hungry type of construction. Yet now we know with ever-increasingly clarity that these formally compelling structures, with their carefully conditioned interiors, are contributing to the climate crisis that is suddenly, it seems, impossible to ignore. The science is clear, the changes are happening now, the transition is upon us.

Architects know all this; we know there are more responsible ways to design, and to build, and there is fervent collective aspiration to do better. Still, the field struggles to achieve even half-measures. The profession is reluctant to disrupt practices that have long driven and defined the design disciplines, practices that reward creation not maintenance, novelty not repair. Reluctant to cross the line that would mark a decisive shift from our carbon-profligate past to a future in which the environments we design have a wholly different metabolism, a different relationship to energy and the countless ways in which it shapes, even controls, our society and our politics…

Today we are compelled to recognize that the historical importance of architecture lies not just in its cultural dynamism but also in the energy systems it has depended on, deployed, and facilitated. To put it plainly: in the modern era, buildings have been a primary means through which fossil fuels, once extracted from the earth, have been processed and made social, and then entered the atmosphere in the form of carbon emissions. Buildings regulate throughput; metabolize forces. Buildings are in essence processors of energy, from construction to occupation to demolition to decay. One imagines that a history of 20th-century architecture, perhaps written in 2050, will emphasize this carbon-processing capacity as much as (or more than) the debates over modernity and postmodernity, or the indulgent thrills of parametricism. The buildings that exist, the buildings we are designing now: all perpetuate the fossil fuel economy. Architecture can be understood as the cultural frame — an apologist, even — for this processing of fuel…

Drawing the Line, Daniel A. Barber, Places Journal. This is the first article in the series Repair Manual. Thanks to Milo.

With L’Increvable you change each component when needed. You don’t have to be a handy(wo)man: the Increvable website guides you through each component maintenance thanks to well-documented tutorials and each new component is delivered with proper tools.

You buy the washing machine in flat-pack form and then you assemble it yourself : it gives you the opportunity to get to know the machine. The traditional 30 kg (60 lbs) of cement ballast are replaced by a water tank. The latter is automatically filled during the first use of the machine. This means that the machine can be made lighter again when it needs to be moved.

By removing all highly technical and hardly replaceable parts from the structure and built with such specifications from the ground up, the Increvable is destined to be easily manipulable by the mere user. The missing technologic parts (i.e. touchable screen) do change the User Experience in a very fundamental way, giving maybe to some of us a certain old school feel to the tech but adds several dozens of years before obsolescence as a result.”

See & read more: 1 / 2 / 3. Thanks to Christopher Santerre.

More repair. More wood. Pictures by No Tech Magazine.

“Antiques with inventive repairs (also known as “make-do” repairs) are unique examples of necessity and thrift, made during a time before Krazy Glue was invented. Unlike today where we discard anything chipped or cracked, broken household items were repaired at home or taken to a metalsmith to be brought back to life, often with whimsical results. Once regarded merely as damaged goods by antiques dealers and collectors alike, antiques with inventive repairs are justly receiving the respect they deserve.”

Read more: Past Imperfect. Check out the ‘staples/rivets’ category. Via iFixit.

Previously: Repair is Beautiful / The Japanese Art of Kintsugi / Dealing with Holes.

Via REculture.

The repair process of all objects (a chair, an anglepoise, headphones, an iPod) is explained step by step with photographs.

The Japanese art of Kintsugi, which means ‘golden joinery’ or ‘to patch with gold’, is all about turning ugly breaks into beautiful fixes. Most repairs hide themselves – the goal is usually to make something as good as new. Kintsugi proposes that repair can make things better than new.

Kintsugi is a technique of repairing broken porcelain, earthenware pottery and glass with resins and lacquers that come from trees. It dates from the 15th century. The kintsugi artist carefully repairs the broken vessel with a sticky resin that hardens as it dries. The resin can then be sanded and buffed until the crack is almost imperceptible to the touch. After that, the artist takes a lacquer that has been combined with real gold and covers the crack.

Check it out: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5. The first link mentions a couple of DIY-kits using cheaper binding materials.

Makezine points to this printable poster that displays all the different bolts and nuts and connectors along with their official names (and instructions on how and when to use them). All bolts – except for the Pentalobe screw (more).

• The monster footprint of digital technology – how much energy does it take to manufacture electronics?
• iFixit – repair manuals online

Here. (Hat tip to Sally)