The Guilder

Long description

The Guilder is an online platform that matches broken objects with people who can repair them.

The Guilder facilitates a local repair network and community exchange. It is a system that demonstrates the capacity to extend the material life of objects and make repair simple, more convenient and cost effective, through the availability of tools, knowledge and skills within local communities.

How it works?

Incoming broken objects are matched with repairers within The Guilder’s network, creating a repair chain of worthy non-monetary exchanges. The value of the exchange is up to the individual. For example, people have had rattan chairs fixed in exchange for a repaired vacuum cleaner, or an umbrella repair was exchanged for a dishwasher repair. For repairs that cannot be swapped directly, The Guilder creates a chain of repairs throughout the community, where favours are completed in a what goes around, comes around fashion.

The Guilder tracks repairs by a credit system, one point per repair given and minus one point per repair taken, an individual can accumulate unlimited positive points but is limited to three negative points. Thus an individual is unlimited in repairs they can offer, but can only take three repairs before needing to offer something back to the community.

Exchanges are documented and archived through photographs and stories which communicate the ethos of the platform and lower the repairability threshold. 

Additional Images