DESIGN SPECIAL...India’ s Tryst with Design

 India’ s Tryst with Design 

The world needs a fresh design aesthetic and is looking to India for inspiration. We can make a start by creating spaces for people, turning waste into opportunity and organising design events and fairs

    It is 2013, and we in India need some urgent design rethink to radically reimagine our future. How can an old civilisation transition into a young future? Can a restless youth channel technologies, minds, resources to create a vibrant future on top of the layers of some of our most fundamental challenges like hunger, hygiene, education, inequality, gender imbalance, social inclusion, etc? And, how can design help in all of this? Here are some challenges and solutions that emerged from the ‘Design Thinking for India’ panel and 600-strong audience (who gave their suggestions after the discussion) recently hosted by the India Design Forum:
Indian Design Voice
India has always been a blender of many influences. It has turned out many smoothies in the past. But as the pace of change has accelerated, what is poured out challenges every rule of aesthetics. One long-term solution is to seed in creative intelligence, design sensitivity, aesthetic sensibility very early. Right from primary education. It’s more important than art and civic education. Besides, we need to build conversations and forums around the topic to nurture it. It is important to respect our multi-culturality, our many artistic, spoken and written languages and yet create a distinct Indian idiom of design. And demonstrate it through our products and spaces.
Spaces for People
Infrastructure is designed for people. Or is it? It is time to proactively create some broad outlines for urban design that improve our daily interaction and experience with and within our cities and get the voluntary commitment of those leading the rapid urbanisation efforts. Leadership and practitioners must rise to the task, and create a protocol, a call and a manifesto and put it up there in the air, as open source. The National Innovation Council could lead the initiative, and invite the best design minds to create options and templates and upload them on a website — simple and effective designs for urban toilets, cost-effective small houses, design interventions and graphic overlays for flyovers that are people friendly, furniture designs for public spaces, designs for parks etc. And until Urban Design has its own ministry, the ministry of urban development could convert its corporate website into an open source for India’s development, with its people, for its people. For designers and architects contributing their time, this could be the best way to showcase their abilities. For NIC, this could be innovation demonstrated.
Wasted Opportunities
What is that one resource we have in abundance that is completely manmade? Waste, of course! We need to see an opportunity in waste and flip our nastiest challenge into our biggest opportunity. Perhaps this is a bottom-up idea — waste innovation, waste economy, waste fund, waste systems, waste products anyone? Having a solid waste policy in place is a great first step. But why not incentivise the conversion of refuse into energy and solve two problems at once. Every city could do with a waste power plant, with an urban garden around it (like Nek Chand’s Rock Garden) along with a waste fair to educate the next generation about issues involving waste, bringing in art, innovation and entrepreneurship to show them how to be creative with their waste. The technology (waste to energy) exists… it was developed in Bangalore, but implemented finally in Malaysia, thanks to bureaucratic hurdles. Time to take away the barriers and do a complete about-face to not just usher in but celebrate the waste economy!

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