Why are we talking about 'Slow' Repairing?

At slowLab we found plenty of slow values inherent in the Repairing project initiated at Platform21, but we also felt the debate could be broader.

Hence our big, slow question: Why limit the idea only to products?
We think there are loads of things to repair, renew and regenerate in this world. That’s where Slow Repairing comes in.

We’re applying principles and practices of Slow Design to expand the parameters of the Repairing conversations initiated at Platform21. We want to open more radical conversations about RE-IMAGINING MATERIAL INTERACTIONS, including a re-think of the infrastructure and belief systems that got us to mass consumption in the first place. We’ll expose some of the ideas, proposals and real projects for SYSTEMS-LEVEL CHANGES that need to be adopted to renew our world and viably transition to a slower, more sustainable future. And we’ll explore several SLOW STRATEGIES for repairing human relationships, ways of communicating and collaborating, all with a view to COMMUNITY REGENERATION.

And the dialogues themselves are created in a Slow format, inviting small groups to discuss and debate.

Please join us for one of the next ones:

Friday 19 June: SLOW TRANSITIONS > Rethinking Systems
Restoring sustainable practices... Envisioning new local landscapes... Systems level strategies for relocating human values and transitioning to sustainability. Featured presenter: Debra Solomon of culiblog

Friday 21 August: SLOW COMMUNITIES > Renewing Social Relationships
Repairing/preparing people and societies for radical change… Re-imagining production, cross-cultural exchanges and collaborative creativity. Featured presenters: Bas Kools and Judith van den Boom

All gatherings take place at Platform21 in Amsterdam. For directions, look here>

Finding new ways and values

pictured here: Black Pudding project logo and the exhibition at Pantar social workshop

Stefanija Najdovska and Jolan van den Wiel of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie designLAB presented their project 'Black Pudding' at the Slow Repair Dialogue 'SLOW CONSUMPTION' on 29 May. Black Pudding is an upcycling project in collaboration with the Pantar social workshop, a clearinghouse for secondhand items the provides people who are out of work with a reason to stay busy, repairing and re-selling unwanted items. Students of the Rietveld designLAB, under the coordination of Sophie Krier, voted democratically to develop this project out of 20 core issues proposed by designLAB students. They worked alongside people at a Pantar recycling plant in Amsterdam, "looking for potential in not obvious items" and re-designing them as new products.

The result was a collection under the name Black Pudding, and the connection with the topic of Repairing is obvious: fixing and upgrading discarded items and thereby extending product life cycles. Less obvious is the impact of working alongside the people at Pantar, which revealed the productive potential of conversation and collaboration with people the students might otherwise never have considered working with.

At slowLab we believe that an important component of shifting toward more sustainable modes of production and consumption will be participatory models for including a broader community in the design process. Given that most design schools teach their students autonomy over collaboration, Black Pudding has given Rietveld students a positive taste of the reality that is to come.

"We forget the consequences of what we imagine"

"We forget the consequences of what we imagine." A striking and sobering statement by Ed van Hinte of Lightness Studios during the SLOW CONSUMPTION dialogue at Platform21. He also stated that being very very careful is the best way to make sure things don't go too wrong, he lamented the tendency for designers to patronize the rest of us, and he pointed out that "doing nothing" is probably the best way to slow down consumption (as long as you don't get depressed).

van Hinte's most recent book (and there are several that came before) called 'First Read This' is an inspiring while cautionary guide to systems engineering-- mapping dreams, failures and above all complexity in the implementation of large development projects.

SLOW CONSUMPTION > Re-imagining Material Interactions

pictured, clockwise from top left: Arlene Birt, 'Background Stories' sketch; Maria Blaisse, 'Bamboo moving meshes'; Monika Hoinkis, 'Living With Things'; Martin Ruiz de Azua, 'Human Chair.'


The weather was glorious and tempting on Friday evening, resulting in a more intimate group of 10 who gathered inside at Platform21 for the Slow Repair Dialogue, SLOW CONSUMPTION. The group represented a range countries (Netherlands, US, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Italy, and South Korea), bringing their diverse backgrounds to bear on the gathering.

After introductions and sips of wine, slowlab director Carolyn Strauss began with the assertion that SLOW CONSUMPTION looks beyond the everyday use of products to re-imagine material interactions. This includes addressing the larger flows that those products are part of, like consumption behaviors and motivations, imbedded cultural expectations, and local vs. global production models.

She showed the work of a handful of designers that challenge contemporary notions of consumption. Arlene Birt's ongoing project, 'Background Stories' upgrades product packaging to reveal the whole story behind the product. Judith van den Boom's social collaborations in China offer a slower approach to widely-accepted manufacturing practices by developing 'warm relationships' with the Chinese factories and workers who help make her products. Martin Ruiz de Azua's Human Chair questions whether material goods are always the best way to fulfill our needs.

Carolyn ended with the work of designer and materials innovator Maria Blaisse (NL), focusing on her most recent project Bamboo 'moving meshes' where flexible bamboo structures in intersection with human bodies enable us to envision more symbiotic relationships with the built environment. Blaisse contributed her poem, Vouwblad 5 (2008), for the consideration of our group:

"form forms forms
embedded in the material, the form reveals itself
to experience the freedom of not giving a name to things
to see what emerges from one form
inciting the flow of continuous creation "

Blaisse calls it a poem "to visualize that when one really takes care of all aspects of designing it will cause an energy that is connecting and creating coherence in architecture, fashion, products, music, dance... Repair will be natural and no one will every throw away the form." It's something like what slowLab network member Stuart Walker has coined 'evolving permanence,' and it's an idea that seems worthy of further reflection.