Hardware Stories: DIY practices as more-than-human material activism

In relation to an understanding of the symbiotic nature of living organisms, the project “Hardware Stories” is presented as a counternarrative to modernist hygienist standardization. It is a set of diegetic prototypes of construction elements, with relative manufacturing and maintenance tools, and is showcased through a floor component. This work questions how much the mechanism of production of architectural construction materials, with its quality control mechanisms and the economic scale that its implementation requires, actually prevents any form of alternative approaches. The project proposes to consider DIY practices as a form of mundane resistance that can empower multiple actors as a practice of material activism. Through the description of material sourcing, properties, manufacturing processes, and installation, this visual essay aims to explain how these enable to conceive different relationships of cohabitation that are critically framed through the concept of “domestication-as-rewilding”, introduced by anthropologist Anna Tsing.