Fifteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Despite their importance for sustainable design strategies, repair, its concomitant bricolage, and maintenance have hardly figured in academic design discourse until recently, nor indeed, in histories of technology. The emphasis in these, overwhelmingly, has been on innovation and technological solutions that are deemed to promise ways to overcome the consequences of the over-consumption of ever more limited resources. However, some designers are once again turning to repair, reuse, and repurposing in their approaches. There are calls to “design for repair”, renewed efforts to reuse or recycle both materials and design objects, and, in a move that recalls the adhocism of the 1960s, experiments in repurposing design artifacts, in and of themselves, or as part of a new constellation of objects, with a new function or purpose, as was briefly done, in the 1970s in the wake of the 1972 publication of The Limits of Growth by the Club of Rome, viz the works of the Des-in Gruppe, e.g. the “tire sofa.” Design literature has, in a limited way, taken up repair, however, often it is subsumed in other discussions, e.g. examinations of Levi-Strauss’s ideas concerning bricolage; considerations of “making do”, bodging; ideas of “good enough” (Herbert Simon’s “satisficing”), and, as above, Jencks’ and Silver’s ad hoc design, rather than addressed directly. Repair is integral to the life of a design object, prolonging its life is one key to sustainable design, and in-depth discussions translated into practice promise to be fruitful for at least in some measure addressing issues of sustainability.