This essay translates the ceramic repair method kintsugi into an ethic for architectural renewal under the climate crisis. Using visibility, re-valuation, and relationality, it reads retrofit as supplement, not replacement, while confronting the risks of regulation, appropriation, and displacement.

Starting from a cracked ceramic plate in the studio, the essay treats kintsugi not as a decorative metaphor but as a method for making repair decisions. It keeps the break legible, reinforces it, and allows the history of use to become part of the object’s value. Drawing on Tim Ingold’s theory of “making”, it argues that repair is a negotiation with material uncertainty rather than the execution of a perfect blueprint. From this, it distils three transferable principles—visibility (readable interfaces between old and new), re-valuation (seeing existing fabric and lived networks as resources), and relationality (repair as long-term care rather than a one-off completion). These principles are tested through the renewal of Tour Bois-le-Prêtre housing tower, where an additive strategy expands space and environmental performance while maintaining residential continuity, making “supplement, not replace” an operational alternative to demolition.

The speculative position is that repair ethics only become real when they enter institutions, including compliance checks, liability chains, funding logics, and tenancy rights. The essay therefore reframes kintsugi as a practical ethic that continually asks governance questions: who carries responsibility, who benefits from value uplift, and how to resist both romanticised aesthetics of brokenness and renoviction masked as improvement.

Physically and graphically, the essay is conceived as a compact repair-manual booklet: short, instruction-like sections paired with diagrammatic plates. Silver-line graphics trace cracks across pages, connecting craft-scale steps to building-scale details.