Roundtable : a discussion about design/repair

The roundtable was an opportunity for the editors, as a group of design academics investigating repair, to explore themes raised by the chapters of this book. The exchange of experiences and opinions gathered individual and collective responses concerning design's relationship to repair, community and grassroots approaches, activism and decoloniality within the context of repair. The conversation started with a question: how can culturally diverse communities contribute to an understanding of repair cultures and design-led repair? The various responses coming from the editors help identify how repair integrates with design in relation to the past, present and future conditions of waste, the burden of maladaptation caused by poor design, and how transdisciplinarity could positively impact design, production and planned obsolescence. The discussion concludes with a shared acknowledgement of repair, in its broader, ontological and expanded sense, being too important to be ignored by governance, legislation and industry. In this context, design researchers must raise the stakes in terms of supporting the sustaining and adaptive role of repair in precarious conditions, globally and locally.