Repair, Social Design, Street tailors, Product longevity, sustainability, decolonising know-how, accessibility
Long abstract:
Street tailors located ubiquitously in the nooks and crannies of the city pavements, in Ahmedabad, India, form an invisible workforce that keeps the repair, repurpose, reuse and recycle narratives of sustainable plausible and real in this part of the world. These agents of longevity, repurpose and customization; mostly work in isolation – forming a 'community of the practice of repair.' They challenge the factory-made goods – by prolonging its life, they challenge the factory worker tailor by surviving on the edge literally. The street-tailor as a repairperson generates a new value to old ‘things’ through repair, recycle, repurpose and reuse. This case study approach is used for imagining a form of inclusive design which is based on the acceptance of multiple worlds of creating. This unique and ubiquitous livelihood adds to the sustainability paradigm while calling on design practice to be open-ended.