Stories

Why the humble screw — not glue — decides whether the things we own can be loved for decades.

Four hours, thirty-one broken appliances and one retired engineer who refuses to give up on a 1978 toaster.

Mei Tanaka talks to Joop Hendriks about fifty-two years at the bench and the parts nobody makes anymore.

One wool sock, mended eleven times, and what it tells us about scarcity, love and grey yarn.

A walk past bike shops, scrap yards and one very organised man with a van.

Riding the N7 from Zuidplein to Centraal with nurses, cleaners and a man carrying a cello.

The internet has a sound, and it lives in a converted warehouse in the port.

A baker on why she has not seen a sunrise from outside in nine years — and why she does not mind.

Counting lit windows in Delfshaven at three in the morning, and guessing at the lives behind them.

A delta city makes peace with the thing that could drown it — and pretends not to think about it.

Twelve people, forty pumps, and a flood plan printed on paper just in case.

Measuring a city one cubic metre at a time, on a dial nobody reads anymore.

Four hundred tools, one basement and a membership card that costs less than a drill bit.

An argument for keeping fewer things, and more people, within reach.

Mei Tanaka meets the woman who lends tomatoes, beans and marigolds from a drawer in the public library, and asks only that you bring some back.

A stamped cardboard record of one reader’s year, found inside a second-hand novel.

Twenty-four hours with a sound meter on a street of trams, bars, sirens and one very patient florist.

Scales through the wall, the same sonata every evening, and why I would miss it if it stopped.

An acoustic engineer spends his weekends recording the quietest places in the city. Mei Tanaka asks him where they are.

Standing under a warning siren during its monthly test, and watching a whole city pretend not to hear it.