The Great Repair

Topics
The socioecological crisis directly impacts everyone. It is no longer solely the concern of environmental activists but permeates everyday life. 

The resource depletion and environmental degradation fueled by a growth-driven economic model have myriad societal consequences.

Reconciling limitless growth with climate protection verges on the impossible; instead, the necessity to transform our material culture and adopt new forms of coexistence is becoming undeniable. 

Spanning art, architecture, and spatial practices, the 40 positions presented in this exhibition spell out a new design paradigm: The Great Repair.

The exhibition begins with a look at the repair and maintenance of the Akademie der Künste building itself, highlighting the value of care work for the institution. 

The showcased practices not only exemplify reparative approaches to artifacts within the built environment but also underscore the need for comprehensive repair spanning socioeconomic, geopolitical, and ecological contexts.

The act of repair inevitably reveals things that cannot be repaired. Acknowledging these scars and assuming responsibility for ecological damage from colonial entanglements is integral to a great repair as a process of reparation.

Only through the lens of social and ecological justice can we truly approach repair as a collective effort and find new optimism in what has been repaired.

Program
The opening on Friday, October 13, 2023 at 7pm will be marked by a performance by the mixed-abled FORWARD DANCE COMPANY by LOFFT – DAS THEATER and Alessandro Schiattarella in collaboration with Performing Architecture / Goethe-Institut.

The opening weekend will be accompanied by an extensive program of events called the School of Repair, exploring individual themes of the exhibition. Project participants will host workshop discussions and roundtables. Visitors are invited to choose their own schedule amid simultaneous events, providing them with insights into the practices of about 30 different artists, architects, and spatial practitioners. Further events and workshops will take place in cooperation with KUNSTWELTEN, Haus der Materialisierung, S27, FORWARD DANCE COMPANY, and others.

For the closing of the exhibition on January 14, 2024, the pioneering artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles will speak for the first time in Berlin about her extensive œuvre. Details about the event organized by the Akademie der Künste in collaboration with curator Bettina Knaup will be announced shortly on the project website.

Publications
Two issues of ARCH+ Journal for Architecture and Urbanism will accompany the exhibition. The first issue, The Great Repair: Politics for the Repair Society—A Reader, serves as a theoretical introduction to the topic, while the second one introduces practices of repair and will be published on the occasion of the exhibition’s opening as a bilingual catalog, in English and in German: ARCH+ 254, The Great Repair—Praktiken der Reparatur / A Catalog of Practices.

With positions by: Assemble, Atelier Bow-Wow, Kader Attia, Brenne Architekten with Jana Hainbach / TU München / HfBK Dresden / Akademie der Künste Baukunstarchiv, Matthias Brenner, Center for Spatial Technologies, Manuel Chavajay, Collective Architecture Studio & Ana Miljački, Collective Works, Agnes Denes, Kathrin Dörfler & Lidia Atanasova, Edit, Haus für Poesie with Hinemoana Baker, Don Mee Choi, Tim Holland, hn. lyonga, and Katharina Schultens, Studio Anna Heringer, Florian Hertweck & Caroline Faber & Marija Marić & Céline Zimmer / Master in Architecture University of Luxembourg, Manuel Herz Architects, Hans Hortig with Tang Wei, Inga Community in Columbia with Santiago del Hierro, Interboro with Center for Justice Innovation & Patterson Houses NeighborhoodStat Team & Richard A. Chance & Coco McPherson, Kleine Reinigungs- und Dienstleistungsgesellschaft, Bettina Knaup, Folke Köbberling & Martin Kaltwasser, Lacaton & Vassal, Silke Langenberg, Limbo Accra, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Mapping Ukraine ETH Zürich, Material Cultures, Fuminori Nousaku & Mio Tsuneyama, Zara Pfeifer, Marjetica Potrč, Bas Princen, Sakiya, Alexander Stumm, Takhayali, Paulo Tavares, THEMA (Sarah Nichols, Akshar Gajjar, Marion Moutal) with Syn Liu, Milica Topalović / Architecture of Territory ETH Zürich, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, UVW-SAW, Michael Wolf, ZAS*, and others.

Artistic direction: Florian Hertweck, Christian Hiller, Markus Krieger, Alex Nehmer, Anh-Linh Ngo, Milica Topalović / Curatorial assistance: Marija Marić, Nazlı Tümerdem / Production management: Felix Hofmann. / Design: Stan Hema / Press contact: Barbara Schindler, schindler(at)archplus.net.

The Great Repair is a project by ARCH+ gGmbH in collaboration with the Akademie der Künste Berlin, the Department of Architecture of the ETH Zürich and the Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, University of Luxembourg.

Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media. The workshop program is funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education. Additional support from Wüstenrot Stiftung, Hans Sauer Stiftung, Goethe-Institut, Pro Helvetia, Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg, Creative Industries Fund NL, and Experimental.