Maintenance and Care An Article by Shannon Mattern placesjournal.org Maintenance has taken on new resonance as a theoretical framework, an ethos, a methodology, and a political cause. This is an exciting area of inquiry precisely because the lines between scholarship and practice are blurred. To study maintenance is itself an act of maintenance. To fill in the gaps in this literature, to draw connections among different disciplines, is an act of repair or, simply, of taking care — connecting threads, mending holes, amplifying quiet voices. Rethinking RepairWhat this site is repaircareconnectionknowledge
A World Where Things Only Almost Meet Recall that great line from Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths. Only, here, it’s some lonely postal worker—or a geography Ph.D. driven mad by student debt—out mapping the frayed edges of the world, wearily noting every new dead-end and cul-de-sac in a gridded notebook, diagramming loops, sketching labyrinths and mazes, driving empty streets all day on a quest for something undefinable, some answer to why the world’s patterns have gone so wrong. A self-diverging world, where things only almost meet. Geoff Manaugh, BLDGBLOG www.bldgblog.com How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths urbanismgeometrydystopia