In taking visitors on a journey through recent practices in making and unmaking, ‘The Great Repair’ marries the human need to create things (whether needed or not) to resource extraction, designers’ concerted efforts to counter obsolescence and users’ strategies to get creations to endure. This transdisciplinary exhibition assembles 40 ‘positions’ comprised of archives, documents and collections indicative of damage (trauma) and repair (healing) from the perspective of multiple research fields: materials science, architecture, sociology, history, economics and ecology.
‘The Great Repair’ treats the lifecycle of man-made things, whose lives span resource extraction to fabrication and beyond, as inherently traumatic. Since things are always at risk of falling apart, if not being destroyed, we devise strategies to extend their lives. This e…
