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My sculptural practice starts from the discarded- objects, spaces, patterns- seemingly not worthy by society. I aim to collapse boundaries between art, design and architecture.
About the Artist
Markus Berger is an artist, designer, writer, and Professor of Interior Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). A registered architect (SBA) in the Netherlands, he is the founder and director of The Repair Atelier, a workshop and design platform that activates ideas of reuse and re-making across art, architecture, and design. His work challenges conventional aesthetics and explores material memory through acts of deconstruction, appropriation, and reconstruction.
Berger’s practice is driven by a critical inquiry into discarded and overlooked materials—fragments of daily life that carry both wear and meaning. In his hands, the broken and the surplus are not seen as refuse, but as potential. By methodically disassembling and remaking these remnants, he invites a reimagination of their identities: not to restore a lost wholeness, but to celebrate the traces of use, damage, and transformation they embody. His process foregrounds care, fragility, and the aesthetics of incompletion—embracing repair as both concept and method.
Berger is co-founder and former editor of Int|AR: The Journal on Interventions and Adaptive Reuse (2009–2019), and co-editor of Intervention and Adaptive Reuse: A Decade of Responsible Practice (Birkhäuser, 2021) and Repair: Sustainable Design Futures (Routledge, 2024). He is also the co-lead of reharvest repair, a circular economy initiative mapping and reimagining Rhode Island’s material discard streams. His writing and teaching advocate for a shift in material ethics—one that values what remains, rather than what is made new.