Object Lessons in Collective Repair

The workshop invited the students to think about the most intimate and personal dimensions of pandemic life (at home and in the city), and to focus on objects (architectural, furniture, life-supporting) that have or could have the capacity to assemble collectives around and through them.

Each student framed one of these objects and narrated their stories through broken-world eyes. From that standpoint, thoughts and things that did not seem obvious before became possible; unleashing a kind of ingenuity. By reimagining architectural and furniture objects that might already have the capacity to reconnect individuals from the smallest-scaled perspective, by working in groups the students were encouraged to think about repairing the collective in a broader scope. This sometimes required reinventing the objects themselves, and other times, reinventing their protocols of use, as well as the stories they told about them.

Conference and workshop conducted through the Masters in Architecture (MARQ) at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, May – June 2021.