THE REPAIR ATELIER
ART and DESIGN in REUSE
02.jpg

LEXICON OF REPAIR

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.

On Jugaad (II)

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."

Markus Berger