THE REPAIR ATELIER
ART and DESIGN in REUSE
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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 Murammat

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.

Markus Berger