Click the image for a video impression of the forum.
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It’s not only personal needs that affect whether people repair objects or recycle them, but also business decisions and culture. That was the overarching conclusion of this year’s Premsela Design Forum in Milan, held on 22 April during the city's design week.
Designers
Piet Hein Eek and
Satyendra Pakhalé, Corinne Poux-Bernard of
Hermès, and
Platform21’s Joanna van der Zanden conducted a lively debate on repair at Milan’s Romeo Gigli Café. Their discussion explored the practice’s necessity and limits in a time of economic crisis.
Platform21’s current project,
Platform21 = Repairing
, provided the theme for the forum. It was the latest in Premsela’s series of annual presentations and debates held each year during
Milan design week for an audience of international press.
“Repair should be part of product design,” said the Amsterdam-based furniture and product designer Satyendra Pakhalé. The challenge, he said, is to tailor complex industries, such as electronics, to society’s needs. He pointed out that in his home country of India, repair is seen as adding value. There, people improve and personalise objects even if they aren’t broken.
But individuals should also be more careful with their possessions, Pakhalé said. If CDs cost €50, we’d be less quick to make mistakes during burning and throw them away. We could learn from people in poorer countries, who treat consumer goods with more respect, he said.
Dutch furniture designer Piet Hein Eek said it’s a misbalanced value system that allows people to feel comfortable in a throwaway society. He argued that whether they choose to repair things depends largely on price. Today, labour is expensive and goods are cheap, and we haven't yet exhausted our raw materials, so throwing things away is easy. Eek said that we must adjust our attitude to life, work and natural resources and reconsider what wealth really is. Time with loved ones and protecting the environment – not just money – are important.
Corinne Poux-Bernard, Hermès’ director of innovations, said sustainability can be linked to emotional value that leads people to preserve cherised possessions. Hermès products last for generations when their owners treat them carefully and pay for repairs, she said. And a treasured object tells a personal story, with every mark, blemish and repair holding a memory.
Eek argued that either emotional or financial value must be sufficient for repair to be seen as worthwhile. “If you pay €10,000 for a table and there’s damage of €100, it’s worth repairing. If the table was only €90 and the damage is €100, it’s not worth repairing.”
Joanna van der Zanden, artistic director of Platform21, disagreed, pointing out that when a hiring a repairperson is expensive, people can find out how to fix things themselves, for example on the Internet. She suggested designers should supply repair instructions along with user manuals.
Eek insisted that sometimes recycling is better than repairing, such as for objects that lack personal meaning, are impossible to fix, or can’t be mended without environmental damage. The decision of whether to repair depends on multiple factors, he said.
“Every reason you can give for repair, for us, is good enough,” replied Van der Zanden. All that mattered, she said, was that motivation was present. “If you look at the economic crisis as part of a mentality, then repairing could be part of a change in mentality.”
The Romeo Gigli Cafe, where the Premsela Design Forum took place, also hosted the Design Academy Eindhoven's exhibition
Dutchness
, as well as shows by ArtEZ, the Arnhem Academy of Art and Design; Scholten & Baijings; Thomas Eyck; and Stuffed.
Dutchness
even had its own shop, curated by Judith ter Haar.
Dutch designers and brands were out in force all over Milan again this year for design week. Premsela provided comprehensive information for visitors and the press at
Design.nl/salone. Visitors could use Google Maps to see where the shows were and compile their own design routes. This year for the first time, mobile phone users got their own interface,
Mobile.design.nl.
