Reparative architecture

Abstract

By considering the architectural object as a non-relational and non-human adversary, its reparative function is paradoxically revealed. Reparative is understood here in the sense Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick gave to it, as the possibility to use cultural artefacts in a creative, transformative way to deal with inner conflicts and negative affects. Reparative architecture is thus not only related to well-being and the improvement of the built environment. Architecture can also become reparative when it functions as a projection screen on which feelings of frustration, melancholy and unhomeliness can find an external form. Precisely because it wants to think beyond the human, object-oriented architectural theory allows us to examine this aspect of the architectural object as an antagonistic force. Two cases will briefly illustrate this: the melancholic geometry of Marianne Brandt’s Bauhaus teapot (1924) and the sublime indifference of Etienne-Louis Boullée’s cenotaph for Isaac Newton (1784).