Never before as in recent years has the need for circular economy heightened sensitivity in our relationships with furnishings and objects. In London there is now an exhibition on the subject, featuring concrete examples. In R for Repair: London x Singapore, at the Victoria & Albert Museum from 17 September to 30 October, ten objects will be on view, repaired by ten designers, together with items from the first edition of the show, which made its debut in 2021 at the National Design Center in Singapore.
To reutilize, restore, repair objects having emotional value is a way of granting them a new look and new meanings while preventing waste. An old family table/chest repaired by the designer Rio Kobayashi, a grandparents’ camera redesigned by architect/artist Syafiq Jubri, broken glass from a Jewish wedding transformed by the artist Attua Aparicio Torinos. There is even an anonymous tea saucer pilfered by Jane Birkin from the famous Maxim’s restaurant in Paris in the 1970s, an amusing anecdote linked to a fashion icon, revisited by the designers of Studio Dam.
The people involved in the project submitted their broken goods, and then the designers moved forward with their creative repairs. The aim? To give the objects a new life, or a new form, fulfilling the desires of the owners.
In an age faced with problems caused by the global production of refuse, and with the need to rethink our relationship with things, stimuli and reflections emerge from the exhibition through the stories shared by the owners of the objects, bearing witness to their sentimental bond, and to the desire to preserve things through repair.
Presented by DesignSingapore Council, National Design Centre (Singapore) and the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), the exhibition has been curated by Studio Hans Tan of Singapore together with the studio of Jane Withers in London, as a London-Singapore exchange. It is part of the program of events of the London Design Festival, in coordination with Singapore Design Week.
