VIRTUAL: Livable Cities – New York

Abstract

This paper uses a cross-case evaluation of design projects that engage maintenance processes, to contribute to the emerging discourse on the role of maintenance in sustaining and shaping designed space. Urban landscapes are created from living materials and shaped by human use. Maintenance and stewardship are essential actions that produce and sustain these landscapes over time. Designing maintenance allows designs to adapt in response to context, and to be stewarded as spaces of environmental service through enhanced soil health and ecological biodiversity. Though maintenance requires specific, local knowledge, it is often considered “unskilled” labor. In the, US, installation and maintenance is predominantly performed for low wages by immigrant workers and people of color. Engaging maintenance allows designers to expose and challenge hierarchies of labor and knowledge. Through brief case studies, five approaches to maintenance as socio-ecological practice will be identified and discussed: subversive stewardship, social land care, ecological docents, designed maintenance, and environmental care labor. Through examples from across the United States, the design approach, compensation, and program structure will be discussed in relation to the targeted and observed outcomes. The paper will conclude with a discussion of how maintenance processes can be integrated to design pedagogy and suggests pathways for continued research.