Friend of Green&Blue, Katie Tregidden is an author, journalist, podcaster and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design.
Having written five previous books, Katie is now launching a sixth which illustrates the contemporary culture of repair.
Broken: Mending and Repair in a Throwaway World is the sixth book by award-winning craft and sustainability writer Katie Treggiden, with a foreword by The Repair Shop’s Jay Blades.
Tackling the topic of repair, Treggiden explores the societal, cultural and environmental role that repair plays through five in-depth essays, before celebrating and profiling 25 artists, curators, menders and re-makers who have rejected the allure of the fast, disposable and easy in favour of the patina of use, the stories of age and the longevity of care and repair.
‘We live in a single-use society, where fashion is fast, disposability is the norm and it is easier to replace than to repair. We don't need to mend things anymore – and yet we do. What is it about Homo faber – man the maker – that cannot resist fixing what is broken? This book explores that question, at a time when an enquiry into what mending means has never been more urgent.’ – Katie Treggiden, Broken: Mending and Repair in a Throwaway World.
Treggiden’s introduction to the book provides an accessible, knowledgeable and fresh perspective on the topic of repair, connecting the personal to the systemic, calling for change and providing context for what follows.
The book explores the different roles and reasons for mending in a world where it is often easier to replace. While the restoration of function is naturally one of them, the objects featured are rarely mended solely for pragmatic reasons, shows repair as a form of activism; repair as a medium for storytelling; and repair as path to healing, both personally and at a community level. The last chapter examines the sustainable issue behind repair and the need to repair the natural systems humanity has taken from, exploring regeneration as a form of repair.
Amongst those profiled is Green&Blue’s Co-founder and judge of the Dezeen Sustainability Awards Category 2022, Gavin, whose mission for designing with real purpose has been at the heart of everything Green&Blue does;
‘We wanted to design for the unspoken client, for something bigger that doesn’t necessarily have its own voice,’ says Christman. ‘When you set those sort of parameters, you know that you can’t mess it up – this is really quite important.’ - Gavin Christman, Green&Blue
This is a book that asks us not only to mend the things we own, but also to take to task what is broken in our culture, systems and society. It is only by acknowledging this damage that we can construct new orders; to tell new and better stories.
Broken: Mending and Repair in a Throwaway World asks us to remain hopeful that a better world is possible and then work every day to make it so.
You can preorder the book here
