Date of Award
Spring 6-1-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Industrial Design
Department
Industrial Design
First Advisor
Ayako Takase
Second Advisor
Markus Berger
Third Advisor
Lindsay French
Abstract
This book is an index of nine exchanges with strangers whom I met online through email Listservs or by word of mouth. In these transactions, I offered to repair broken things for a trade-in-kind payment. Through the brief relationship between owner and designer, each interaction suggests that an object is almost never entirely obsolete despite its perceived obsolescence.
At the core of these trades is a grassroots protest of the landfill and a critique of our global capitalist commerce system. The apparent desire for and nature of these trades demonstrates that stories make our objects meaningful. Each interplay studies peoples’ mercurial understandings of value. Each repair celebrates the scars that become evident when an object lives a long life. Each decision is rooted in the belief that small (inter)actions cause large ripples.
The nuance of a considered repair is never invisible but always beautiful. By leaving the scars of one’s process, an object’s history is memorialized. This reparative act breathes new life into our things, adding tangible and intangible energy to something deemed broken or devoid of value. In a world desperate and anxious for adaptation, stewardship, and care, our desire to buy something new must change.
Recommended Citation
Howard, Ethan, "Repair Rolodex: Exchanges, Changes, and Patchwork Parables" (2024). Masters Theses. 1304.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1304
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Included in
Art and Materials Conservation Commons, Environmental Design Commons, Environmental Studies Commons, Furniture Design Commons, Industrial and Product Design Commons, Other Anthropology Commons