Sistering: A Glossary for an Interdependent World
Elif Erez
bags is a repair-centered, interdisciplinary design collective founded by Cynthia Deng and Elif Erez in 2017. bags is currently based between Querétaro, Mexico, Istanbul, Turkey, and Lausanne, Switzerland. bags works across installations, publications, workshops, speculative infrastructures, thinking through narratives, temporal multiplicity, and situated standpoints with a reparative lens that prioritizes social and ecological care.
Since 2017, bags has collaborated on "Care Agency: A 10-Year Choreography of Architectural Repair," built the Brook Hill Bothy, and led workshops at Harvard GSD, Tecnológico de Monterrey, the AHRA conference ‘Building Ground for Climate Collectivism: Architecture after the Anthropocene,’ and the international conference ‘Archipelago: Architectures of the Multiverse’, among others. Their writing has been published in Log, Harvard Urban Review, Disc Journal, PAIRS Journal, Yale Paprika, TAD Technology Architecture and Design Journal, and Building Diversity. Their work has been exhibited at the Turkish Pavilion of the 2018 Venice Biennale, the Seoul Architecture and Urbanism Biennale, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture, among others.
Cynthia holds a B.A. in Architecture from Yale University and a dual M.Arch I / M.U.P. from Harvard GSD; her research focuses on the politics of waste, materials, and circular and solidarity economies. She is an assistant professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey.
Elif Erez holds a B.A. in Architecture from Yale University and a dual M.Arch / M.Des from Harvard GSD and is registered as architect with NCARB in California, USA; her research focuses on the decarbonization of the built environment through policy and infrastructure that enables repair and reuse, and is currently a doctoral candidate with RIOT Lab at EPFL Lausanne.
Sistering: A Glossary for an Interdependent World grows directly out of bags' ongoing research into repair, interdependence, and feminist spatial practice.
Sistering is defined as “To strengthen (a supporting beam) by fastening a second beam alongside it.” For us, sistering is more than construction lingo for structural support. In a field dominated by patriarchal norms and toxic extractive processes, the term ‘sistering’ opens up a portal. An expanded definition can define a multiscalar methodology of design and repair oriented towards feminist, interdependent, and regenerative futures. In this glossary, we explore all the ways that sistering can become part of our design lexicon.
Sistering involves two or more ‘sistered’ parts - one old and one new - in intimate relation, and is contingent upon their interdependence - they are stronger with one another. Sistering is characterized by relational continuity, constant give and take, and shared loads to collectively hold up a whole. Sistering is structural interdependence with what already exists—it opens up sites for new relationships in place, without starting anew.
This glossary is an ongoing research project that compiles many other scales and modes of sistering - from the spatial to the social, from the interpersonal to the infrastructural. In addition to glossary entries of various sisterings, we also plan to include guest entries, interviews, case study projects, and mini-manuals on how to sister. Through these instances of what sistering is and can be, we hope to invite readers to recognize and engage in everyday interdependencies and solidarities - in spatial practice and beyond.
The term ‘sistering’ was originally the basis of our joint thesis project in 2020, on a possible radical future of architecture as care work. We have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from students and colleagues on these ideas, especially following the publication of a piece on sistering in Yale Paprika. Our dream is for this publication to also become an exhibition, an intimate symposium, and a pedagogical agenda implemented through design studios and workshops.