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Everyday Resistance

Daniele Campobenedetto, Cassandra Cozza, Francesca Frassoldati, Daniele Frediani, Caterina Padoa Schioppa and Michele Rinaldi
p. 8-15
Translation(s):
Una quotidiana resistenza [it]

Editor's notes

DOI: 10.17454/ARDETH15.02

Full text

1This issue of “Ardeth” explores experiences of composition and recomposition of built space through subtle yet tenacious processes of transformation. Drawing from the call for papers, the fragility of architecture and architectural design – whether material, mechanical, chemical, cultural, or social – is understood here as a starting condition upon which to develop a theory grounded not in reaction to, but within, modernity itself.

2The perspectives that view planet Earth as a finite system with limited resources – and the implications this has for the fragility of any drive toward progress – were consolidated culturally not only through the Club of Rome’s report on the limits to growth or the well-known work of biologist Rachel Carson (1962). The arguments that matured where early environmental movements gathered to protest against atomic bomb testing, already found resonance in the late 1950s theoretical reflections on technology.

3In his reflection On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (1958), Gilbert Simondon breaks the correspondence between the conditions of use and operation of technical products and the expression of human knowledge and values. This reinterpretation of technical objects in relation to the intrinsic transience of human matters conceptually opened construction systems and the built environment to the ideas of care, reuse, and regeneration.

4That same year, Yona Friedman published a self-produced brochure titled L’architecture mobile, which illustrated the possibility of emancipating inhabitants from architectural production means through recycling, reuse, and repair. The translation of these concerns into architectural and urban design discourse subsequently seemed to run parallel to the global reorganization of production processes toward the East and Global South, alongside the idea of unlimited generative reversibility made possible during those same years by computational sciences. The emblematic case of Detroit, explored by David Harvey in The Condition of Postmodernity (1989), is a key example that contributed to a turning point in reflection on the paradigms of design. After Detroit – and the chronicization of the Fordist production system’s crisis – design at all scales would be conceived as part of or catalyst for reparative processes, and positions like Friedman’s could no longer be considered avant-garde.

5“There can be no infinite growth on a finite planet,” scientist Enzo Tiezzi (2001: 197) warned over two decades ago. Alternative frames to the Fordist idea of unlimited growth denounce its lack of foresight, opening a now-inescapable field of experimentation of “cooperation” and “regeneration” strategies. In distinguishing between growth and development, Tiezzi clarifies the scientific nature of the conservative strategy of living systems and complex systems in general – their intrinsic capacity to increase internal order and counteract the increase in entropy (typical of closed systems): “growth is a quantitative increase on a physical scale; while development is a qualitative improvement or an unfolding of potentialities” (Tiezzi, 2001: ibid.).

6Tiezzi draws on the concept of ‘negentropy’ formulated in 1943 by Erwin Schrödinger and later used by Bernard Stiegler in his critique of the Anthropocene. Negentropy refers to the local decrease of disorder in a system where, for Schrödinger, biochemical processes characteristic of life play an essential role. Applied to architectural design practices, negentropy offers a possible key for understanding productive models alternative to the Fordist one, including the reparative model.

7In architecture, a project that intrinsically encompasses ‘repair’ can no longer be considered an anomaly today. It is no longer something that violates common expectations or conditions considered normal based on pre-existing paradigms, according to Thomas Kuhn’s definition (1969). Rather, ‘repair’ is such a consolidated field of research and widespread practices that its strategic and political role is ‘expected’ and far from marginal or negligible. In recent years, institutions themselves – starting from the European Union’s Green Deal – have promoted experiments in these areas through legislative and financial support, institutionalizing a category of design that neoliberalism had marginalized.

8It is no coincidence, then, that the fragility evoked in the title of this issue of “Ardeth” seems closely linked to a sense of “hope” – a term that appears in the opening lines of the editorial and recurs across many contributions. As a counterpart to rationality and disenchantment, hope performs both a cognitive and an affective function: it humanizes the neoliberal crisis, situating it within the contours of a shared, inner drama. In his work dedicated to the topic, Ernst Bloch characterizes the principle of hope as an “expectant emotion,” an undefined feeling that fuels an “‘unreal’ future” (Bloch, 1986: 108). “Hope is not only the opposite concept to anxiety, but also, regardless of its emotional character, to memory” (Bloch, 1986: 112): it does not dwell on a mythologized past, and conceives the future as immediately connected to the present, thereby grounded in radical realism. Bloch clarifies the ambivalent nature of hope and, by extension, of fragility itself. In the Pandora myth, Hope is a deceptive gift, offered as the last and only tool by which humanity can “concretely” navigate the uncertainties, fears, and disappointments of the world.

9Hope may be what unites the cultures of reparative projects, whose operations always unfold between a “Where To” and a “Where From” – to use Bloch’s terminology – and whose nature is inherently equivocal, open to possibilities that only object-based knowledge can illuminate.

10Rather than constituting a fully fledged new paradigm, these cultures of reparative projects centered on fragility have, over time, generated studies, practical experiences, and manual knowledge, whose abundance may, in retrospect, reveal a different trend. Over the past three decades, reparative theories and practices have indeed proliferated in multiple directions, producing a plurality of interpretations and solutions that, when applied in pedagogical contexts, have demonstrated the capacity if not to revolutionize, at least to refine the assumptions underlying academic research.

11Summing up the reflections of other observers of global phenomena, Mark Fisher highlights the mechanisms that exorcize capitalism’s most harmful effects. As he writes: “‘Flexibility,’ ‘nomadism’ and ‘spontaneity’ are the very hallmarks of management in a post-Fordist, Control society […]. ‘Successful adaptation’ is the strategy of managerialism par excellence.” (Fisher, 2009: 70). We might add, in relation to this argument, that practices of repair and care for the built environment are only apparently rejected by global capitalism.

12Acknowledging the symbolic, material, social, and economic value of processes involving reparative and regenerative actions – including parasitic or appropriative practices, as in the ancient use of spolia – reignites centuries-old debates: new versus old, authentic versus inauthentic, conservation versus transformation, recalling the supposed incompatibility between interventionism (Viollet-le-Duc) and fatalism (Ruskin). This issue of “Ardeth” explores this tension within ordinary architecture and everyday urban experience, through perspectives that embody highly heterogeneous values and underscore the fluid boundary between practices of conservation, transformation, and stabilization.

13Within this spectrum of approaches, the relationship between the intentionality of the phenomena under study (the presence or absence of a project) and the temporal scale of the actions proposed to address them distinguishes the interpretations of fragility presented in this issue. There are four polarities that outline the main trends in reparative design, which, in the interval between the “Where To” and the “Where From” mentioned by Bloch, can alternately start from or arrive at an object-based understanding of the problem. Intentionality alone, however, is not sufficient to guide the search for reparative models: proceeding through empirical insights and practical experimentation allows us to assess the effects of fragility.

14At one extreme, we find proponents of intentional approaches, who aim to address or describe fragility through systemic readings, attempting to reformulate the very role of the architect and of the project. At the opposite extreme, there are situational experiences, where fragility emerges as an obstacle, arising from conflicting interactions between space, bodies, objects, and natural elements. Here, reparative action – aimed at finding ways to coexist with corrosive forces, extreme temperatures, and non-human agents – can become a driver of change, adaptation, and compromise, sometimes in unexpected ways. In the other two quadrants, fragility is either segmented according to the project’s capacity to trigger repetitive processes or behaviors (as a founding principle of “maintenance”), or treated as a solution to a problem situated in space and time – a targeted “circumstance” whose accumulation can, ultimately, substantiate Schrödinger’s theory of negentropy.

 

15In the first quadrant, reflections focus on fragility in processes of spontaneous and informal appropriation of space. The case studies included here observe these processes, whose design-related outcomes manifest in the reparative actions undertaken by residents. There is no room for institutionalized planning or for exceptional events, which could only disrupt the fragile balances painstakingly achieved.

16At the extreme of this perspective are the contributions by Gianluca Burgio and Deborah Giunta, who read architecture as an evolving ecology in which interdependencies between humans and non-humans shape space through continuous processes of maintenance, repair, and negotiation. Using the Ballarò Market in Palermo as a case study, the authors show how material and social fragility can become engines of innovation and resistance, revealing the adaptive capacities of precarious and unstable systems.

17Ruth Baumeister and Carolina Dayer trace three micro-stories set in Rome’s Corviale complex, where broken windows, corridors, and elevators are both the source of residents’ complaints and the focus of their care actions. Residents act as designers of a delicate balance of interventions that do not aim to ‘solve’ the problem but to transform its shared perception. One might wonder whether the authors’ suggestion of the ‘minor architect’ – someone who acts through care and normalization – could truly become a key element in the future of twentieth-century social housing neighborhoods.

18Finally, Latitude Platform (Federico Broggini, Marco Ranzato, Andrea Bortolotti and Davide Cauciello) presents a submerged world, in both the literal and figurative sense, that must be confronted as one would confront an underworld: transforming it into a space of imagination. Through a visual essay, the authors highlight the pervasive and ‘hostile’ nature of cellar flooding in Brussels’ Saint Antoine neighborhood. Fragility, in this context, results from human responsibility, climate events, and relentless environmental processes, which have led to continuous, provisional, and large-scale reparative actions – initiated both individually and through solidaristic policies, both with and without municipal support. In their conclusions, the authors seem to see these forms of self-regulation as a plausible response to what Donna Haraway describes as the human need to “stay with the trouble.”

 

19The second quadrant consists of contributions that maintain focus on processes and intentionality. In these essays, fragility is understood as a condition that can be incorporated into design theory; the reflections are conducted in academic settings, for educational purposes, or to document ‘exemplary’ experiences in both methodological and contextual terms.

20Steven Jackson’s considerations, delivered with emphatic tones as ‘lessons’ on the concept of repair, are infused with concrete hope and an openly emotional optimism. “To repair will mean leaving idealism and purity behind,” Jackson writes, persuading us that the path of repair is an unavoidable collective psychological challenge. James Ritson’s reasoning, full of militant optimism, likewise frames fragility in terms of “opportunity” – cumulative and planetary. “What may have been considered problematic in the past, through a different framework, may now be seen as immensely beneficial,” Ritson writes at the beginning of his article. His is a true apology for reparative practices, demonstrating that in the “broken world” we find ourselves in, innovation doesn’t mean novelty but rather “revolutionary changes” and “evolutionary changes.”

21Silke Langenberg, Matthias Brenner and Orkun Kasap advocate for a radical revision of teaching methods aimed at ‘sustainable natives’ – a generation that, at least in the landscape represented here, seems to conceive of remedy, care, and maintenance neither nostalgically nor subversively, with an affective ambivalence that gathers resilience and resistance under the same banner. At the theoretical level, the idea is that the way forward lies in intergenerational and interdisciplinary exchange. The most effective reparative strategies, adaptable for interventions on both historic buildings and more recent constructions, emerge from the combination of traditional knowledge and new technologies.

22The Syrian mud-domed dwellings described by Wesam Al Asali and Iyas Shahin are living architectures that inhabitants maintain through cyclical actions of care and repair. They belong to a vernacular tradition where fragility is a generative design principle situated within a broader ecological and cultural continuity: “When a building is no longer needed, its decay is intentional and seamless, returning from soil to soil.” Here fragility is a constitutive element, part of a complex system of relationships among material intelligence, intergenerational knowledge, and cultural practices of maintenance and repair.

 

23The third quadrant brings together what are, in some ways, the most established disciplinary investigations: stories of designers who have made fragility their theoretical cornerstone and individual projects that have invented novel solutions to singular problems, prioritizing large-scale effects and processes of transformation – not only physical but also behavioral. These are specific results that, even if part of more complex or incomplete changes, constitute firm foundations for a possible theory of design.

24Within this line of research sits Matteo Tempestini’s contribution, which uses the work of French studio BAST to reflect on the social dimension of the ecological transition. Through minimal, tailored interventions on ordinary structures (garages, cellars, barns), BAST has consolidated the architectural language consecrated in France by the work of Lacaton & Vassal, where scars, additions, and all transformative actions are made explicit with ease. Drawing on Ivan Illich’s theories, particularly his “principle of conviviality,” the author interprets several BAST projects as models of the reparative strategy through which use value takes precedence over material value.

25With a similar approach but in an entirely different context, Pietro Alfano and Silvia Narducci view waste as a resource and decline as part of the life cycle, interweaving human stories (death) with those of architecture (discard). Two exemplary and ‘marginal’ stories about structures at the end of their life cycle, revived through informal practices, provide an opportunity to reflect on the symbolic character of repair in architecture. In these stories, fragility seems to serve primarily to accept the transience of both things and bodies. Director Brent Green, in documenting the house-construction site that Leonard Wood built and transformed to ‘care for’ his terminally ill wife, highlights this symbiosis between existential and material fragility. The other story probes the operational dimension of building with construction waste, using humble and obsolete techniques. Erika Henriksson’s Likbodsprojektet, which involves converting a mortuary into a community space, seems to demonstrate the inseparability of ecological, contextual, and relational practices, but also of material and psychological care.

26Another set of architectural projects lies at the heart of Kiel Moe’s reflections. His form of “operative militancy,” conveyed here through construction experiences, suggests that the extractive paradigm can be challenged through obsessive attention to detail and a rigorous understanding of the immanent relationships between materials and resources. Where construction is now managed in generic, abstract ways – through what Moe calls a ‘hylomorphic’ model, rooted in a human conception of inert matter – the reparative model instead relies on synchronizing design with contingent and more fragile conditions.

 

27Lastly, the fourth and final quadrant addresses the condition in which fragility is recognized in all its unplanned, conjunctural complexity. Here, fragility becomes a situated circumstance with political weight, marked by conflict and difficult to resolve.

28Guy Trangoš examines how the inherent fragility of urban infrastructure exacerbates social and spatial inequalities. His central proposal is to acknowledge and ‘instrumentalize’ fragility as a strategic design condition, enabling architects to develop localized, resilient, and socially responsive interventions that break away from fragile, centralized systems – systems that are not neutral, but political instruments.

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Bibliography

Bloch, E. (2019 [1954]), Il principio speranza: Per un mondo migliore, Milano, Mimesis.

Carson, R. (2002 [1962]), Silent Spring, Boston, Houghton Mifflin.

Fisher, M. (2009), Capitalist Realism. Is There No Alternative?, Portland, Zer0 Books.

Friedman, Y. (1972 [1958]), L’architettura mobile: verso una città concepita dai suoi abitanti, Alba, Edizioni Paoline.

Harvey, D. (1989). The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Oxford, Blackwell.

Kuhn, T.S. (1999 [1969]), La struttura delle rivoluzioni scientifiche, Torino, Einaudi (ed. or. The Structure of Scientific Revolution, Chicago, The University of Chicago, 1962).

Meadows, D.H., Club of Rome, Potomac Associates (1972), The Limits to Growth, New York, Universe Books.

Simondon, G. (1958), Du mode d’existence des objets techniques (On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects), Paris, Aubier-Montaigne.

Schrödinger, E. (2025 [1943]). What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell, London, Cambridge University Press.

Stiegler, B. (2018), The Neganthropocene, London, Open Humanities Press.

Tiezzi, E. (2001 [1984]), Tempi storici. Tempi biologici, Roma, Donzelli.

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List of illustrations

Title Issue Map
URL http://journals.openedition.org/ardeth/docannexe/image/5688/img-1.jpg
File image/jpeg, 339k
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References

Bibliographical reference

Daniele Campobenedetto, Cassandra Cozza, Francesca Frassoldati, Daniele Frediani, Caterina Padoa Schioppa and Michele Rinaldi, “Everyday Resistance”Ardeth, 15 | 2024, 8-15.

Electronic reference

Daniele Campobenedetto, Cassandra Cozza, Francesca Frassoldati, Daniele Frediani, Caterina Padoa Schioppa and Michele Rinaldi, “Everyday Resistance”Ardeth [Online], 15 | 2024, Online since 01 January 2026, connection on 14 April 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ardeth/5688

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About the authors

Daniele Campobenedetto

The Editorial Board of “Ardeth” – redazione [at] ardeth [dot] eu

By this author

Cassandra Cozza

The Editorial Board of “Ardeth” – redazione [at] ardeth [dot] eu

By this author

Francesca Frassoldati

The Editorial Board of “Ardeth” – redazione [at] ardeth [dot] eu

By this author

Daniele Frediani

The Editorial Board of “Ardeth” – redazione [at] ardeth [dot] eu

Caterina Padoa Schioppa

The Editorial Board of “Ardeth” – redazione [at] ardeth [dot] eu

By this author

Michele Rinaldi

The Editorial Board of “Ardeth” – redazione [at] ardeth [dot] eu

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The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) may be subject to specific use terms.

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