Stone, S., 2022.

Make-Do-and-Mend

This chapter explores the connection between mending and interior architecture. It examines the practice of building reuse and compares it with the common tradition of handing clothes down from sibling to sibling, or family to family, and it looks at the process of altering clothes or buildings as they become unfashionable or outgrown to accommodate the distinctive expectations of different generations. The interiors, buildings, collections of buildings, and their immediate built environment may provide a perfect fit, but it is possible for these buildings and contexts to be adjusted, or tailored, to accommodate the needs of the new users. The reuse and repair of articles of clothing is a well-known practice. The analogy of this process can be applied to the discipline of interior architecture. A deliberately light-hearted British film made by the Ministry of Information shows the substitution and conversion economies that prevailed during World War II.