What can you repair at Platform21?

#1: DREMEL repair station
A Dremel is a multifunctional tool with which repairing becomes child's play: grinding, polishing, grating and drilling becomes effortless. There is a whole assortment of applications for this little machine with which you are free to experiment.
This station also offers the solution for Figurine Repair, for dolls, ceramics, toys, and small decorative stuff. Equipped with clay, LEGO, goldleaf, Jan Vormann's action figure limb repair bags, sea shells and a variety of spatula's, knives and scizzors.

#2 Skate Shoe Repairs
This is where repair meets a whole new level of necessity. Skate shoes cost about 100 to 150 Euros per pair. And even while they have been built to last, fanatic skaters wear them out in about a month. Since hardly any 16 year old is a millionaire, most repair tricks are hardly a luxury. We have plastics, super glues, tapes, innertube, stuff for stitching and SHOE GOO to accomodate these off-rank trics.
Not a skater? We encourage you to experiment with these materials on other types of shoes as well.

#3 Glass Repair Station
This highly experimental station is inspired on the work designer Helmut Smits made for Platform21 = Repairing. He used the leaded-window technique as an elegant repair technique to fix a broken window.

A window is one of those products people do not think of as being repairable. We want to prove otherwise. Therefore this station requires a curious attitude and lots of inventiveness. Solder, glueing coloured glass or tape, which technique you choose to use for your repair is totally up to you.

#4 Improvise-It-Yourself
Repairing often means making do with what you’ve got –improvising and experimenting.
With a little know-how and plenty of imagination, buro buurvrouw believes that anything can be fixed. Martin Bruining and Marieke Vromans took inspiration from age-old wisdom, clever tricks and ingenious solutions from the history of repairing.
The repairkits are for sale and, next to being educational and funny, also make great presents.

#5 Tape Station
Designer Rachel Griffin figured out that if you make products from the same material you repair it with, it will never look broken and old (or repaired for that matter). In this station you find a huge selection of tape, in all different sizes, colours, materials and for lots of purposes. Especially handy for furniture repairs.

#6 Wool Filler
Designer Heleen Klopper created wool filler, a beautiful method for filling holes in wool clothes. The edges of such holes are rarely clean-cut; they are usually surrounded by ladders, fraying or worn patches. The differences in thickness of fabric and openness of weave make felt the ideal solution. Felt, being non-woven, attaches easily to any open structure.

Fillers made for materials like wood consist of fibres and a chemical binder. Felt is different: it attaches mechanically by means of minuscule scales. Where once there was a hole, there’s now a new piece of fabric.

With a felt machine and wool in a rainbow of colours you repair your own sweaters and cardies. Repairing them not only gives them a second life, but also makes them more beautiful and unique.

#7 Darning Socks Station
It always seems to be your favourite socks that get holes in them. You can buy new ones, but they'll never feel quite the same. Fortunately, the skill of sock-darning is still with us.

Nienke Sybrandy and Eva Heisterkamp explain how to use this old-fashioned technique in a contemporary manner.
Use the video and poster as a guide, and try it yourself.

#8 Réanim
Reanimate, rejuvenate, reintroduce, rehabilitate, recycle, restore, rethink, cure... The designer becomes a doctor for objects, using his or her knowledge to increase the life expectancy of discarded pieces of furniture.

The doctor-designers of 5.5 use damage, weakness and alteration as means of creating. Their atypical remedies, amongst which are prosthesis and splints, are for sale in this station and will perhaps inspire you to give your own furniture the treatment it deserves.

#9 The Repair Hub
Technically not a Repair Station, the Repair Hub is where we collect all your favorite addresses for repair. We all know someone who can fix something and this is where you find all this personal information collected. If it is impossible for you to repair your item in Platform21, you will find a place where they know how to fix it in the Repair Hub.

A growing lcollection of fixed things, things waiting to be fixed, tools, materials. innovations and movies make the exhibition space into an inspiring and interactive place. The only problem is: we cannot do it ourselves. We depend on your knowledge, or experimental attitude, for this to work. So please bring some of your broken things and come fix them at Platform21=Repairing.

If you have a good idea for a repair station please don't hesitate to send it to us and hopefully we'll be able to add it.