Blog – Fixing Futures

Fixing as Repair

‘We are doomed to repair.’ With these words the journal for architecture and urbanism ARCH+ introduces the project “The Great Repair” in its 250th issue. In two ARCH+ issues, an exhibition at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and a connected education program, The Great Repair invites us to think about the importance of repair practices in light of escalating socio-ecological crises on a planetary scale as a counternarrative to growth-driven ideas about a green capitalist transformation. In a similar vein, literature in the social sciences, humanities, and Science and Technology Studies (STS) increasingly engages with the concept of repair as a vital and potentially transformative practice for fixing futures, shifting the focus from one-size-fits all solutions to the socio-material embeddedness of transformation processes in the everyday practices of repair and maintenance.