The Repair Agency
Very often (nearly on a daily basis) my kid comes to me with some object and tells me: “Daddy, could you fix this?”. Even when I sometimes respond that something cannot be repaired, they would not let go: “everything can be repaired”. Inspired by my kid’s conviction and enthusiasm, I would like to embark on a journey to reflect and experiment on whether everything can indeed be repaired and, moreover, assess if everything is worth fixing.
The Repair Agency is a long-term platform exploring repair as a speculative, situated, and critical design practice. It operates as a modular institution—appearing in different contexts as temporary stations, one-on-one sessions, public encounters, or field experiments—always anchored in the question: What is worth salvaging, and how might we repair it? Rather than offering fixes, the Agency treats each case of breakage—whether material, social, or conceptual—as a site for shared assessment. If a repair is deemed meaningful or necessary, a provisional protocol is drafted: a specific, local model that may be adapted elsewhere. Over time, these protocols form an evolving archive of situated responses to damage, neglect, and wear. As a platform, the Agency resists extractive design cultures and the fetish of innovation. It draws from repair traditions, maintenance work, and care practices often undervalued in mainstream discourse. It is slow, modest, and portable—committed to fostering attentiveness, relationality, and accountability through the act of staying with (the trouble of) broken things.