Running concurrently with Milan's Salone Internazionale, London-based Italian designer Martino Gamper set up a workshop at La Rinascente to repair household items in front of passers-by, bringing focus to the highly skilled fixing process that can be taken for granted when goods are sent away.

The workshop, dubbed In a State of Repair, included other artists and was spread across eight storefront windows, each featuring different categories of products, from toys, bikes, chairs, and electronics to clothing. Members of the public were able to interact with the designer by bringing their own belongings in to be transformed through the art of repair.

Gamper hopes the installation will ‘encourage people to keep their belongings rather than discard them, to improve what they buy rather than throw it away’. The artist is concerned about the consumer’s experience beyond the point of purchase, and finding out what happens to the product after it has been worn out. The workshops amplify the concept seen at his Serpentine exhibition in London, “Design is a state of mind”, which explores how the purpose of objects’ functionalities vary based on the owner.