How do decay, maintenance and repair figure in the design, fabrication, and use of buildings, devices, and systems?  Would attention to impermanence -- how things age, deteriorate, become obsolete, or break down -- and an ethos repairability -- how we maintain, service, restore, and repair them -- help us acknowledge and address the contingency and entropy of what we design, specify, and produce?

The speakers invited to this symposium explore these questions from diverse disciplinary perspectives and at different scales: from textile, crafts, and devices, to products, buildings, infrastructure.  All address the long tail of what we make and use -- their multiple entanglements in time, in history, in technology, and in everyday life after their designers and engineers have left the scene.

RSVP HERE

Schedule of Events
Session 1 
9:30      Welcome & Introduction: Sabir Khan
9:50      Keynote: Andrew Russell 
10:30    Kate Irvin
11:00    Lynnette Widder
11:30    Claire Weisz
12:00    Discussion

12:30    Lunch

Session 2
1:15      Laura Forlano
1:45      Lisa Marks
2:15      Priya Jain
2:45      Discussion

3:15      Coffee Break

Session 3
4:00      Joe Brown
4:30      David Frost
5:00      Steve Usselman
5:30      Closing Remarks
6:00      Designing and Making Through Repairing: Student Work from ID 4833 Exhibition Reception 

About Our Speakers
Session 1 
Andrew Russell | Keynote | Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, Professor of History, SUNY Polytechnic Institute will present "The Innovation Delusion"

Kate Irvin | Curator, Costumes & Textiles, RISD Museum will present "Repair and Design Futures: Lessons from Mended Textiles"

Lynnette Widder | Professor, Sustainability Management, Earth Institute, Columbia University will present "Döllgast and Domoto:  Two Case Studies in Architecture and Repair"

Claire Weisz | Principal, WXY architecture + urban design will present "Maintaining Work:  Recycling the Architecture of Past Industry"

Session 2
Laura Forlano | Associate Professor, Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology will present "The Best Sleep of My Life:  Automated and Networked Medical Devices as Sites of Feminist Technoscience"

Lisa Marks | Assistant Professor, Technology and Applied Design, Berea College will present "Repairing as Making:  From a Single Stitch to the Fabric of a Cultural Practice"

Priya Jain | Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, Center for Heritage Conservation, Texas A&M University will present "Every Little Thing:  Documenting and Repairing Historic Facades in the Digital Age"

Session 3
Joe Brown | Assistant Professor, Environmental Engineering Sustainable Communities, Georgia Tech will present "Reliability and Resilience: Drinking Water Infrastructure in Rural Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Mozambique" 

David Frost | Elizabeth and Bill Higginbotham Professor, Geosystems Engineering, Georgia Tech will present "Infrastructure Failure:  Addressing Resilience During Reconstruction"

Steve Usselman | Professor, History and Sociology, Ivan Allen College, Georgia Tech will present "Can Maintenance Persist?:  Reflections on IBM and the Pennsylvania Railroad"