The Great Repair

Today’s ecological crisis, 50 years after the publication of the study The Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome, is no longer just a topic for environmental activists. Its immediate effects impact us all. Nevertheless, resource waste and environmental destruction continue. One reason is growth-oriented narratives of progress, which influence the almost irresolvable conflict between growth and climate protection in favour of market-oriented policies.

The exhibition project “The Great Repair” discusses contradictions between growth and ecology based on architecture’s material culture. It presents more than 40 positions from art, architecture, and spatial practices in which repair becomes a new design paradigm. In the arts and in the cultural and social sciences, there are increasing calls for new strategies to reduce resource consumption and preserve and repair what already exists. The exhibition examines to what extent repair politics and aesthetics from a decolonial, feminist, and posthuman perspective can be a meaningful alternative. Sufficiency, longevity, solidarity, reappropriation, plurality, and care work are explored as politics of a repair society.

In an accompanying workshop programme for visitors, those involved in the exhibition examine these politics for a repair society in indepth discussions.

Contributors: Assemble, Kader Attia, Atelier Bow-Wow, Brenne Architekten with Jana Haibach / TU München & HfBK Dresden and the AdK Baukunstarchiv (Architecture Archives), Manuel Chavajay, Santiago del Hierro with AWAI and the Cabildo Inga de Mocoa, Kathrin Dörfler, Edit, Anna Heringer, Florian Hertweck / Master’s in Architecture, University of Luxembourg, Manuel Herz, Hans Hortig, Interboro, Folke Köbberling & Martin Kaltwasser, Lacaton & Vassal, Mierle Laderman Ukeles / Bettina Knaup, Silke Langenberg, Limbo Accra, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Mapping Ukraine ETH Zürich, Material Cultures, Riccardo McAvinue / Kleine Gebäudereinigung, Ana Miljački, Sarah Nichols, Fuminori Nousaku & Mio Tsuneyama, Marjetica Potrč, Bas Princen, Maksym Rokmaniko / Center for Spatial Technologies, Sakiya (Palestine), Alexander Stumm, Paulo Tavares, Milica Topalović / Architecture of Territory ETH Zürich, UVW-SAW, Michael Wolf, ZAS*, and others

A project by ARCH+ gGmbH
in cooperation with the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, the Department of Architecture at the ETH Zürich, and the University of Luxembourg, Faculté des Sciences Humaines

Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb), the Hans Sauer Foundation, the Wüstenrot Foundation and Pro Helvetia

The Experimental Fellowship Program for young architectural researchers is funded by EXPERIMENTAL

Artistic Direction: Florian Hertweck, Christian Hiller, Markus Krieger, Alex Nehmer, Anh-Linh Ngo, Milica Topalović

Curatorial assistants: Marija Marić, Nazlı Türmerdem
Production management: Felix Hofmann