Repair: Sustainable Design Futures Markus Berger 9781032154053

A collection of timely new scholarship, Repair: Sustainable Design Futures investigates repair as a contemporary expression of empowerment, agency, and resistance to our unmaking of the world and the environment. Repair is an act, metaphor, and foundation for opening up a dialogue about design's role in proposing radically different social, environmental, and economic futures.

Thematically expansive and richly illustrated, with over 125 visuals, this volume features an international, interdisciplinary group of contributors from across the design spectrum whose voices and artwork speak to how we might address our broken social and physical worlds. Organized around reparative thinking and practices, the book includes 30 long and short chapters, photo essays, and interviews that focus on multiple responses to fractured systems, relationships, cities, architecture, objects, and more.

Repair will encourage students, academics, researchers, and practitioners in art, design and architecture practice and theory, cultural studies, environment and sustainability, to discuss, engage, and rethink the act of repair and its impact on our society and environment.

Markus Berger is Professor of Interior Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He is the founder and director of The Repair Atelier.

Kate Irvin is Curator and Head of the Department of Costume and Textiles at the RISD Museum, an integral part of the Rhode Island School of Design.

"There's no hope for a sustainable future without 'Care and Repair' becoming as sexy and seductive as 'Use and Lose'. In this very timely book we have some smart creative minds riffing on how to start this re-imagining. There's a deliveryman at the door. On the cardboard box is written 'HANDLE WITH CARE AND REPAIR.'"

Peter Gabriel, musician, singer, songwriter, record producer and activist

"Pulling together scholars and activists from around the world, this splendidly curated collection of essays forcefully reminds us how varied repair is, the remarkable skills such work requires, and the crucial role of such work in resistance to the unrelenting powers of decay and destruction."

Elizabeth V. Spelman, Professor of Philosophy, Smith College

"This text makes an essential contribution to debates about repair now exploding across design, the fine arts, architectural studies, critical theory and many other spaces and places. Beautifully illustrated, carefully curated and containing a wide range of vital critical interventions from some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the field, this book will set the agenda for sustainable repair studies for years to come."

Damian White, Dean of Liberal Arts and Professor of Social Theory and Environmental Studies, RISD

"Repair: Sustainable Design Futures is an important contribution to the ongoing discussion about repair, with a special focus on its significance and impact on society and the environment."

Silke Langenberg, Editor of Repair. Encouragement to think and make (2018) and Upgrade. Making things better (2022)

"'Repair' is a word that is simple yet complex. The authors show how different ways of thinking contribute to a broader notion of this simple word, one based in different ways of knowing. Through this exploration they develop more eclectic understandings of the world we live in, the processes and systems that surround us, how these inform what we do and fundamentally help us make sense of who we are. This book is an excellent example of how we can think and act to be better participants on this planet."

Pradeep Sharma, Director of Arts|Culture|Heritage at the Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation