In this paper, we examine the way interplays within and between material and symbolic works contribute to maintaining an institution over time. Drawing on a historical analysis of the Parisian Metropolitan Railway entrances over a century, we highlight five forms of interplay: triggering, bolstering, constraining, combining and self-reinforcing. Our analysis offers a process model revealing how this great variety of interplays is progressively arranged into various sequences. Those various sequences of interplays contribute to progressively mesh together the material and symbolic works and sustain the institution over time. Our paper refines our understanding of the role of institutional work and its interplays in institutional maintenance, allowing us to consider symbolic and material works as of similar importance for maintenance. In so doing, we develop a more nuanced view of institutional maintenance, as a certain purification of the institution can be needed for the latter to be sustained over time.
