Almost-always-falling-apart
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Other Title
Authors
Budgett, Jeanette
Douglas, C.
Twose, S.
Douglas, C.
Twose, S.
Author ORCID Profiles (clickable)
Degree
Grantor
Date
2022-03-09
Supervisors
Type
Journal Article
Ngā Upoko Tukutuku (Māori subject headings)
Keyword
disaster relief
repairing
COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-
pandemics
problem solving
climate change mitigation
environmental remediation
crisis management
architecture of resilience
repairing
COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-
pandemics
problem solving
climate change mitigation
environmental remediation
crisis management
architecture of resilience
ANZSRC Field of Research Code (2020)
Citation
Budgett, J.A., Douglas, C. & Twose, S. (Eds.). (2022). Almost-always-falling-apart. Interstices Journal of Architecture and Related Arts. 21 (Fixing), 2-9. enigma : he aupiki charitable trust, University of Auckand & Auckland University of Technology. https://interstices.ac.nz/index.php/Interstices/article/view/683/647
Abstract
This issue of Interstices coincides with a period of crisis: a global pandemic set against a backdrop of climate change and ecological disaster. Crises, times of intense difficulty or danger, signal turning or tipping points. They are unstable moments depending on emergent conditions, at which small changes might have big effects. Crises frequently demand urgent action, but also destabilise conventional patterns of thought, generating complexity and making simple solutions improbable. Previously successful strategies seem suddenly inadequate, and sometimes a surfeit of purported solutions does not change anything at all. Crises spill over economic, national, ecological, and biological bounds to form an overwhelming milieu or predicament, rather than a collection of discrete, well-bounded problems. Even where solutions are clear (stop burning fossil fuel, vaccinate), the path to those solutions can be unexpectedly complex. On edge, people rush to find certainty in ever-hardening positions; but fixed frameworks seem to generate antagonistic camps more likely to exacerbate crises than defuse them.
These crises are bedded in the narratives of the modern capitalist project: stories of progress, human exceptionalism, individualism, and timely technical solutions. The figure of the individual innovator able to identify and overcome problems is a frequent protagonist in these stories, and architects and designers have frequently been seen (and seen themselves) in this light. Media ethnographer Stephen Jackson points to the way stories of innovation obscure the work it takes to keep the world going, and to adapt what already exists for new purposes. Redirecting attention to the work of fixing he writes,
The question is this: can repair sites and repair actors claim special insight of knowledge, by virtue of their positioning vis-à-vis the worlds of technology they engage? Can breakdown, maintenance, and repair confer special epistemic advantage in our thinking about technology? Can the fixer know and see different things—indeed, different worlds—than the betterknown figures of ‘designer’ or ‘user’? (2014: 229)
Publisher
enigma : he aupiki charitable trust
University of Auckland
Auckland University of Technology
University of Auckland
Auckland University of Technology
Permanent link
Link to ePress publication
DOI
https://interstices.ac.nz/index.php/Interstices/article/view/683/647
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Authors
Copyright notice
CC BY Attribution 4.0 International