This Lexicon is an extension to the “Lexicon of Repair” from the book Repair: Sustainable Design Futures edited by Markus Berger and Kate Irvin, Routledge 2023, and expands the books 12 samplings of reparative philosophies and methods practiced around the world within different cultures, religions, and languages. Some in this inventory of key concepts of repair have been around for centuries, while others are much more recent. We aim to expand the initial 12 lexicon entries from the book (snapshots in the cultural world of reparative thinking and practice), they represent a wide array of rooted practices that we hope will spark interest in further research on the myriad examples of global traditions and modes of repair not included in this vocabulary.

PLEASE submit here your contributions to above topics- we will soon transfer all these entries to a Digital Commons Site hosted by the RISD Library.

Please send your submissions to: therepairatelier@gmail.com

By Jiayi Wang

Zi Zhu Chuang Xin combines two words “Zi Zhu” and “Chuang Xin”. “Zi Zhu” means being able to solve problems or make decisions by oneself independently and responsibly without being swayed by others. “Chuang Xin” means innovation in various fields and events. In a certain sense, the word is an invention (by the government) to broadcast a certain kind of collective spirit and appeal to the public to improve our creativity during daily production to push economic growth. 

Instead “Zi Zhu Chuang Xin”, I prefer to use words like “Zi Zhi” (made by one’s own), “DIY” (do it yourself), or “Gai Zao” (transform, modify, remake), to describe literally making or transforming something with our own hands. These words describe a departure from the economic market, they focus on an original demand, they express individualities, and propose a resistance to industrial reproduction.

By Fred Paulino

Gambiarra is the name given in Brazil to the practice of carrying out repairs and inventions using alternative materials, improvisation, and a sense of spontaneous and immediate creativity. A gambiarra is a temporary solution that can turn out to be permanent.

Gambiarra is universal and part of the country’s culture, whether in rural or urban areas, and it subtly articulates ideas that are relevant to contemporary life, such as the reuse of materials, DIY, open source, and repair practices. We don’t make gambiarras just because we need to, but also because we like it. Simultaneously gambiarras are both the Brazilian’s salvation and failure. While gambiarras reveal an innate ability to solve practical problems in the most adverse situations (extreme adaptability), they expose the ills of a society historically left to neglect—by the colonizers, by the elites—and that, therefore, often conforms to the vagueness of temporary responses to chronic problems. Brazilians even boast frequently about it, as if this supposed “strategic differential” was an expanded capacity for survival—compensating for the historical delay. The contemporary world solemnly distances us from dealing with objects, tools, and the materiality of existence, impelling us to digital interfaces in place of gambiological practices. However, as long as there is Brazilianness—the ingenuity for making and doing with less—and economic resources are limited or in the hands of only a few, there will be gambiarras.

By Tahir Karmali

Literally translated as “fierce sun,” Jua Kali originally referred to day laborers who worked in the fields. After Kenya’s independence, this term slowly changed meaning as cities developed across the country. Everyone in Kenya has their own nuanced definition, but, for the most part, Jua Kali describes the informal sector of Kenya’s economy. It also refers to a region in the city where “Jua Kali workers” create practical design objects, often welded or made from metal, at a lower cost than those found in retail stores. When something is described as “made in a Jua Kali way,” it means that the object was made practically, quickly, and with ease. 

As a descriptor of quality, Jua Kali could go one of two ways: if the object fails, then it was shoddily made; if the object succeeds, then it is sturdy and reliable. I think of Jua Kali as being closer to improvisation and creativity. I imagine all of us as being Jua Kali: welded together to somehow function at any cost, we are the amalgamation of a series of fragmented histories, full of ambition for “development,” and left with the painful echoes of colonialism. I find it poetic that this term is linked to the sun because it is innately associated with time. It is a reminder of our history and ferocity as we continue to move into the future.

By Hammad Abid

I was ten years old when I first encountered jugaad. I would accompany my father to our family’s textile mill in Meerut, India. One day he advised a technician who needed loom equipment that could only be imported from China: use some jugaad and fix it cheaper and faster by repurposing some scrap parts out of older looms. Since then, I’ve come to understand jugaad not as a grand premeditated plan, but as a method for patching things up as need arises. It is a way to remedy and repair challenges as they emerge in everyday life with thrift and limited resources. As part of a culture of reuse and ingenuity, jugaad was present everywhere in our house, particularly in the ethical conservation of textiles. A new party outfit would become my casual wear; over time, I might wear it to the gym, then as pajamas for sleeping. As the clothes fell apart, my mom wouldn’t throw them away; she used them first to dust the house and finally to mop the floor. By necessity, jugaad offers an alternative approach to prevailing cycles of consumerism, demonstrating how people creatively engineer solutions to daily, economic, and environmental challenges by recontextualizing and transforming the items around them.

By Vikram Chandra, taken from his book: Geek Sublime, Greywolf Press, 2014

]ugaad is Hindi for a creative workaround, a working improvisation that is built in the absence of resources and under pressure of time (from the Sanskrit yukti, trick, combination, concatenation). There can be something heroic about jugaad, as in the strange-looking trucks one sees bumping down country roads in rural India, which on closer examination turn out to be carts with diesel irrigation pumps strapped on; or the amphibious bicycles buoyed by improvised air floats and powered by blades taken from ceiling fans. Jugaad makes do, it gets work done, it maneuvres around uncooperative bureaucracies, it hacks. In recent years, jugaad has been recognized as down-to-earth creativity, as a prized national resource, and has acquired the dignifying sobriquet of "frugal engineering."

By Jessica Urick

For textile conservators, mending fabric has historically meant obscuring markers of age and use—cleaning, stitching, and aligning loose threads. But what do you do when the existence of physical damage is necessary for ideological repair? Sometimes, true mending requires leaving damage intact, letting physical evidence tell a story without erasure, and reassembling the broken pieces of a narrative. Damaged textiles bear physical proof of people and their care, trauma, and love. Who used this? Where were they? What caused this tear or that stain? When the work of mending is physical, conservators stitch, stitch, stitch. When the work of mending is intangible, they climb into a messy, nuanced space between the unavoidable humanness of textiles and the complex bias of an outsider peering into someone else’s story. Mending—of fabric or histories—requires a community working together to lift and support the full weight of each textile. 

By Mirei Takashima Claremon 

The Japanese term, mottainai, is most commonly associated with wastefulness, such as when something of value—such as food, time, an opportunity, or even a person’s talent or potential—is lost, unused, or otherwise not valued or utilized wisely. In English, the closest translation would be the expression, “What a waste!” Alternatively, mottainai is also used when one is given a gift that one doesn’t feel worthy of. In such cases, “You shouldn’t have!” best captures the sentiment in English. The ancient meaning of mottainai is imbued with a more spiritual sentiment. Originally, mottainai referred to the loss or absence of the true nature of what is holy, specifically Shinto deities and Buddha. In this sense, mottainai implies something deeper and more melancholy than the relatively shallow, unpleasant feelings of wastefulness. Stemming from the cultural belief that there is always a proper and correct way for things to be, the emphasis here is on the feeling of regret or pity that arises from the absence of what is morally important and right. In this way, mottainai also encapsulates the belief that we should not take things for granted. Instead, we should feel grateful for our existence and for all of the things that we have—and as a result—be mindful so as not to behave wastefully. 

By Shahzad Bashir

Murammat is a term of Arabic origin utilized extensively also in other languages such as Persian and Urdu. Indicating repair, reconstitution back into whole after breakage or decay, the term can be attached to auxiliary verbs to indicate reconstitutive actions. The term acquires special resonance when deployed for culturally significant objects, such as ceramics, manuscripts, carpets, and textiles made into clothing, bedding and tents, and decorative hangings. Repair is an economic as well as social imperative, the objects repaired needed for quotidian usage and also often meaningful as holders of personal and social memory. The fact of repair can enhance value by signifying age or association with particular persons or past contexts. A much-repaired object transmits the touch of ancestors and predecessors through time.

By Zoë Pulley 

Quilting is a tradition that goes back at least three generations within my family. In 1929, my great grandmother, Ma Fannie, created a quilt for her son, my grandfather Charles Pulley. That quilt was then passed to his sister, my Great Aunt Steen, and eventually passed along to my father, Brett Pulley. I vividly recall my father showing my sister and me the blanket while standing in a room on the third floor of my childhood home. He took it down from a shelf in the closet of his office, carefully removing the textile from its cardboard box and vinyl plastic bag to reveal a multi-colored work that has withstood years of wear, ownership, and care. Reflecting on that moment, I now recognize that quilting is a practice of preservation. The African American quilting tradition has lent itself as a cultural guide to a larger lexicon of memory, kinship, and history within the Black American experience—quilting presenting a means for Black women to construct both a personal and collective narrative. Whether this practice is viewed in its most literal sense, as exemplified through my great grandmother’s quilt, or in the more pervasive modes in which slave women utilized this craft as a means to quite literally survive, quilting imparts a nuanced connotation of repair—that repair is a conscious and mutual act of self-preservation.

By Matthew Shenoda

What is reparation but an act gesturing toward repair? An attempt at the restoration of cultural and communal spaces disturbed by the hubris of men. A restorative act that allows for a healing, a patching of things, a signal, a symbol, but never a replacement or a “fix.” Reparation is a culturally and communally led act that recognizes the damage caused by acts of genocide, enslavement, colonialism, trickery, deceit, and domination. A recognition that in order to forward our collective communities we must first attempt to repair the damage done. Reparation is a generative act that if done right can surface the central tenets of our humanity, the ones that desperately need focus. Reparation is not justice, as it is too often material, and justice, in my world, can never be material. But it is a symbol, a symbol of an ethics that can spark an invitation to a relational and restorative path. Reparation is a small step towards a self-determination, and self-determination is a path towards liberation; a path where we abandon the extractive for the collaborative, where in the words of Bob Marley, “we refuse to be, what they wanted us to be/we are what we are/and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

By Robert Arellano

Resolver: to solve or sort out, carries very specific nuances in modern Cuba. Need an appointment at the US Interests Section? Yo puedo resolver eso. Fix a ‘57 Chevy with nothing but PVC plumbing? De alguna manera hay que resolverlo. In 1992 Fidel Castro declared the “Special Period in Peacetime”—a euphemism for the Revolution’s need to make wartime-sized sacrifices in the face of the new, post-Soviet economy on top of 32 years (and counting) of US embargo. For the better part of the next decade, Cubans would need to confront shortages of food, fuel, and consumer goods with a superhuman talent for invention: a key duplicator powered by an old washing machine motor, metal trays turned into TV antennae, desk fans made from vinyl albums (and propelled by record players)—just a few of their many inventos. 

This D.I.Y. movement was not only condoned but co-opted by the government. Try googling “Con Nuestros Propios Esfuerzos” (By Our Own Exertions), and you’ll find a 289-page PDF of a book published and widely distributed by the Cuban military to “deal with the Special Period” and “demonstrate the possibilities of our system to all people who wish the best for humanity—Cuba’s political, economic, scientific, technical, and organizational capacity to solve [yes, resolver] the nation’s problems with the active and direct participation of an aware, dignified, united and courageous society.” 

In the recipe section, you’ll learn how to make grapefruit sausage, papaya steak, beetroot pudding, and tilapia butter. Tenemos que resolver …

By Aliza Tuttle

Tikkun Olam is an ancient concept that has changed with the times to remain a coalescing force for the Jewish community. Experiences of Tikkun Olam center on humanity’s actions, choices, and judgement in world-making by acknowledging the mistakes of the “collective we” and seeking to repair them. Tikkun Olam is actions to repair and improve, a sense of responsibility for well-being, and a role in the world for each of us. We see the world as a work in progress, and we are the driving forces of progress. If not me, who? If not now, when? Tikkun Olam is me, here, now. 

The concept of the world can be literal: the air, water, land. And, Tikkun Olam is the world of our perceptions. Within each of us is a world. Relationships are worlds, my internal self is my world, my community is my world. Tikkun Olam is internal world repair, relationship repair, and community repair. Tikkun Olam is a repairing of all of the worlds at all scales, a driving force to be the one to repair, now, in everything. 

By Bec Barnett and Tristan Schultz

Understanding that repair needs to be considered from a pluriversal lens, that there are many different forms of repair, repairing many different ‘things’ and worlds, is vital to the repair project. This recognises, not only the many diverse repair practices that exist and the diversity of ‘things’ requiring repair, but also the unique needs and local constraints and affordances responded to by place-specific cultures of repair. A pluriversal understanding of repair acts in opposition to the universalising capitalist economy by creating spaces for new and ancient ways of doing, collective modes of being and care to be practiced. A pluriversal understanding of repair allows one to identify “I do not have the skills or materials to carry out this repair but someone else might.” and then seek that person out.

By Robert Arrelano

By Vazira Zamindar

By Lorèn Spears

By Shándíín Brown (Diné)

The Diné Bahane’ (Navajo creation story) tells us that the Holy People (our deities) taught the Navajo people how to weave textiles so that we could provide for ourselves and stay warm. Rooted in strong traditions, Navajos make and use textiles as cloaks, dresses, and blankets. In Navajo culture, we are taught to be resourceful and see the beauty in everything. When a textile is damaged or ripped, we repair it. We repair and mend our textiles over and over to honor the piece, maker, materials, and Holy People. The word, as well as concept, for “repair” in Diné Bizaad (Navajo language) is ‘andoolnííłgo. When I was a young girl, shimá sání (my maternal grandmother) instilled the concept of ‘andoolnííłgo in my being. She taught me how to mend and thus honor the material items we are blessed to have. Moreover, she told me stories about when our people had everything taken away from them during the 1864 Long Walk of the Navajo and years of forced internment at H’weedli (Fort Sumner, New Mexico). During that time our people could not weave and thus did not have their woven cloaks, dresses, and blankets. Many Navajos became gravely ill and froze to death. From these stories I have a deep gratitude for our textiles and the practice of their repair. 

By Lisa Z. Morgan

Darning is a stitched response to holes/breaks/wounds that develop in knitted fabrics; perhaps rubbed through by repetitive wear and tear or eaten away by moths. Due to the nuances of material, weave, fibers, etc., the hole requires a darn that fully meshes with the body of the garment. The outcome is prescribed, i.e to fill the hole, mend the hole, and to make wearable/useful once more. The darning of a hole, no matter how small, is wide open to interpretation; it requires tender involvement, and a readiness to sit with a level of discomfort before beginning to respond. One needs to almost “listen to” what the wound/rupture might need—assessing, touching, feeling, intuiting, as well as a close examination of the threads that remain; what is strong, resilient or weak. Darning also becomes a compelling proposal to activate ideas regarding reciprocal responsibility and thought. It engenders connection and also makes visible the endeavor to mend the flaws. The very presence of the stitched response or “mark” communicates the wish to ameliorate, to tend and to care, and on a local scale it affords us an agency for how we might address questions, and shape answers that are responsive—to ourselves, social relations, and our environment.