R for Repair: London x Singapore

Originally starting with an exhibition in Singapore in January 2021, the project sits within a growing landscape of initiatives designed to encourage a repair culture. As we address global waste output and the need to rethink our relationship to objects, R for Repair embraces our attachment to things and explores how creative repair can both preserve meaning and breathe new life into our possessions. In place of a mindset that replaces something that is no longer of use with something new, we should, instead, encourage a repair culture.

Presented by DesignSingapore Council, National Design Centre (Singapore) and the V&A (London), the R for Repair project returns for a second edition – this time at the V&A, co-curated by Hans Tan Studio (SG) and Jane Withers Studio (UK), as a London x Singapore exchange shown during the London Design Festival 2022.

For R for Repair, members of the public have been invited to submit broken objects accompanied by the story of why they are attached to them. These are then given to designers for creative repair - often giving the objects a new persona or form while respecting the owner’s attachment to the object.

The exhibition will include ten items repaired by ten different designers drawn from Singapore and the UK, alongside three repaired objects from the original exhibition in 2021. All final repaired objects will feature in an exhibition at the V&A from 17 September 2022. Everything on display will be returned to the owners thereafter.

Part of London Design Festival at the V&A
#LDF22