Unmaking: Exploring Agency Through Unmaking

This thesis proposes that if people and local communities were more skilled in making and repair, they could be more resourceful with the objects around them, making it possible to engage in more sustainable practices. Such skills afford a revised pattern to the consumption of products, services and materials. The thesis explores an observed gap between a person’s sense of agency and their capabilities to act in more sustainable ways. Maker movements, Transition Towns, and other project-based learning organizations like Vancouver’s Citystudio and Costa Rica’s Earth University, are re-skilling people to live more sustainable lives. Communal learning and tangible skills build more self-reliant communities. These movements are seen as vital steps in a long path toward sustainable local and circular economies. Through a series of hands on ‘Unmaking’ workshops the research attempts to leverage our relationship to waste electronics and appliances as mode of exploration to discuss ideas of agency, capability and curiosity. By taking waste electronics and appliances apart, un-boxing the black-box, participants mindfully investigate our complicity in their existence, and ultimately develop new understandings and skills to collaboratively tackle their adverse effects. The act of Unmaking, not only provides a platform for discussion, but also gives participants an opportunity for co-learning driven by mutual curiosity. The heuristic nature of this research opens up an exploratory space for designers and non-designers alike that encourages a reflective practice. The resistance to adopt more sustainable lifestyles partly lies in a lack of understanding of our built environment, the resources and energies involved in its production, and a sense of value in the objects we encounter in our daily lives.