Light

Evening aarti at Benaras, amongst my most memorable trips. The prayer to the river Ganga happens every day. That evening was stormy and windy and some brave people were sitting on boats and watching and swaying in the wind.

What do I want?
I know and I don't
What do you want?
I don't know if you know

We stand on the thin ledge
of unknowing
one false step
and we plunge
into certain knowledge
that we don't want to know

design yatra 2009

Design Yatra 2009, Mumbai

(These are my personal impressions, they are somewhat arbitrary and one sided)

I attended the first 2 days of design yatra, the first time for me. This is its 4th year, and this year, one day was introduced for product and interior design.

There was a strong dutch flavor to the event, as they were partners, looking for collaborations and work and we saw several presentations made by them.

Since i had only worked with not-for-profit craft organizations so far, my experience with 'industry' was limited, and i was keen to get a feel of what happened on the other side.

The first and easily the most impressive of the presenters was Ross Lovegroove, the celebrity product designer who works in the UK with clients all over the world. He spoke beautifully, had great pictures and had obviously done this many times before.

He talked about his work, the processes he follows. He was interesting because he follows the grand tradition of 'form follows function'. He is obsessive about the minutest details of his work and spends years on each project. He showed us pictures of his studio which is amazingly clean, where everyone has to wear sports shoes because he cant bear the sound of any other shoes on his tiles. The quintessential egoist, perfectionist, 'genius' designer.

The interesting phrase he used was 'mass individualism' where every product he designs is mass produced, but is so self effacing that it changes with every user using it.

Someone in the audience did ask him about what he thought of design in India (the chaos being the absolute opposite of everything he worked with) and he spoke of toilets made from discarded PET bottles etc.

Raphael van Amerongen from Merkx Girod (architect) was very clear and precise, and showed one interesting transformation of a very old historical building into a book shop. It was fascinating to see all the 'before' pictures of the place. The other interesting work was what they did in several museum exhibits - they had used aluminum foil to cover one wall, that seemed quite irreverent to me.

The other two architects (((Rob Wagemans of Concrete Architectural Associates and Markus Pretnar of 3Deluxe) who spoke that day were more edgy - they did lots of stuff, but what left an impression was their restaurant and night club spaces. One concept that both showed was to use beds for guests to lie and eat on instead of chairs and tables which was 'fantastic' in their words. Ho hum, the old dhaba idea, i thought.

A huge amount of money, talent and time is spent in designing these spaces and experiences, the core idea being in how to use technology to make the most abstract and psychedelic atmospheres that addled patrons could interpret more personally.

Still, it was fun to go 'behind the scenes' and see how these things are done.

Another interesting work was a breathtakingly beautiful building, the Leonardo Glass Tube designed for a glass manufacturer.

The aesthetics and what had to be done to achieve that totally sublime 'look' was crazy, to me as a third world designer working on the bottom line. Still we have our Taj Mahal i suppose.

What bothered me underneath was that much of the work was very up-to-the-minute trendy, cutting edge etc., but what happens when the minute passes?

Jacob van Rijks definitely struck a chord, as he showed examples of how people could be involved in large projects and have a say in how they lived. He spoke of large housing developments, buildings that could be individualized. Again the processes he showed were interesting to me.

The next day had graphic and identity designers. (list below)

Paul Hughes of Lava was an amazingly good speaker.

An interesting project he showed, was using masks as 'corporate' identity for a film festival, and using computers to make them infinitely variable. The idea of a single logo is now outdated and an identity designer should aim at a far more flexible idea of identity. Which is good. I thought of the numerous rip-offs we do in India, remember colgate?

I was disappointed by Priya Paul's presentation (The Park). She claimed to use a lot of 'design' and spoke of green hotels etc, but there was little evidence. Of course the bottom line is good business, but are good business and good design so far apart? They do definitely meet, I know, but not here.

Shanoo Bhatia showed us her work in the J&K Bank, where she used local motifs and craftspeople. The work she did with Lakmé seemed too temporary to be serious design.

Rodney Fitch of Fitch
Arno Twigt ofQUA
Barry Schwarz & Koen Van Ovoorde from Addikt
Paul Hughes from LAVA
Hugo Van De Bos from Koeweiden Postma
Priya Paul of Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels, India
Ben Terrett from Really Interesting Group