Reparatory Design : Sustainable Ecologies of Embodied Practices, Vulnerable Knowledge, and Resilient Methodologies in Barcelona

Abstract

The ecological crisis we are all globally experiencing is almost indescribable. It touches all the aspects of our survival and has exposed us to the fragility and fracturability of our world. Through their practices, artists and designers worldwide engage with multiple forms of damage. They search for solutions, create reparations that answer to and challenge the disciplinary institutional responses, and enable new processes of adaptation, rethinking, healing, and care.

This chapter reflects on a new perspective that critically and creatively interrogates and rearticulates our cultural notions of art and design. This new framework focuses on reparatory design practices and draws attention to their related methodologies, models, and practices hitherto misjudged by the disciplinary regimes of academia. The chapter aims to show how these practices enable the constitution of spaces of radical emancipation where resilient methodologies and vulnerable knowledge can grow; it draws primarily from three initiatives in Barcelona, Spain.