Design-o-logy

National Design Policy and more.

2007-12-25T16:20:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's been a year since I've written on this blog. And another Pune Design Festival 2007 was organised, this time with yours truly (me) being the Chairperson. I think when one is so involved in designing and doing other things related to design, one does not write that much on the subject. And this is a personal opinion out of my own experience.

A look at what major design events happened in 2007:
1. The National Design Policy got launched. (finally!)
The Government of India has finally taken a good interest in design as an important field like medicine, engineering,etc. And on 8th of February 2007, the Union Cabinet approved the 'National Design Policy'. For more details: http://www.designinindia.net/design-now/design-policy/index.html

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2. Pune organised the second Pune Design Festival 2007. Here's a gist:

Pune Design Festival 2007

(20th-24th November, Pune)
www.punedesignfestival.com

A festival organised and managed solely by designers for the design fraternity, industry and public to enable Pune become the Design Capital of India.

The Pune Design Festival 2007 saw many vertical components-
1. Design competitions for school (India's first design competition for school children), college and non-design students.

2. Workshops for students: The first on Culture and Design by Lisa Yong and Wai-Loong Lim of YStudio, USA; Mukund Athale, Sarvasva Designs Pvt Ltd and Anirudh Natu,Symbiosis lnstitute of Design. The second workshop was on Strategic Branding taken by Anil Chouhan, Onio Design and Sanjay Jain, MIT-ID. These workshops were held at respective institutes.
3. Visions Workshop: A brand strategising workshop for corporate, management, decision makers and SMEs. Conducted by Eero Miettenen, Design Director, Nokia Design, Finland; Pankaj Sapkal, Short-path and Balakrishna Mahajan, Ticket Design. Held at Multiversity School of Design.

4. Exhibitions:
- Pune, its heritage and culture by INTACH-Pune Chapter
- National award-winning works of Indian Institute of Interior Designers(IIID).
- Showcase of works by designers of Pune, under the umbrella of Pune Design Foundation.

5. Conferences:
Spanning two days, 26 speakers, 8 moderators and encompassing fields of design like Product and Industrial Design, Design Management, Business, Culture, Environment, Automobile, Usability, Interaction Design, Colour Trends, Design Education, Communication Design, Architecture and Music + Design.

The conference had insightful and inspiring presentations by Padmashree Dr.Vijay Bhatkar, Freeman Lau-Hong Kong Design Center, Eero Miettenen-Nokia, Bhargav Mistry, Lisa Yong- YStudios, Jos Oberdorf-NPK Industrial Design, Satish Gokhale-Design Directions, Latika Puri Khosla-Freedom Tree Design, Neeraj Chandra-Britannia, Sudhir Sharma- Elephant Design + Strategy, Dr.Dinesh Katre-CDAC, Anurag Sehgal- Experiential Design Lab, Pramod Khambete- Tech MAhindra, Ajay Jain- Renault India, Nachiket Thakur- Mahindra Composites, Kiran Kulkarni- TATA Motors, Abhimanyu Kulkarni- Philips India, Nishma Pandit-Ticket Design, Girish Doshi- Navkar Architecture Studio, Christophe Francois - Institut Superieur de Design, France, Nachiket Thakur- Bamboo Vishwa, Prof.Pradeep Pendse- Welingkar Institute, Ampat Varghese-Srishti, Anirudh Natu-Symbiosis, Sanjay Jain- MIT-ID.

The Grand Finale was a presentation by Alessi- represented by Chiara and Giovanni Alessi.

One of the highlights was the Design Honour 2007 given to Shrikant Nivsarkar, President IFI, for his contribution to the design field.
Moderators:
1. Dhimant Panchal, MIT-ID
2. Ashwini Deshpande, Elephant Strategy + Design
3. Sammeer Chabukswar- Persistent Systems
4. Anand Palsodkar, Elephant Strategy + Design
5. Manoj Kothari, Onio Design
6. Nachiket Thakur, Bamboo Vishwa
7. Hrridaysh Deshpande, Elephant Multiversity - School of Innovation
8. Harshwardhan Gupta, Neubauplan Machine Design Studio

The Festival was a great success by the very fact that a group of designers could come together to organise such a large event and have such great content. And this being the second year only of Pune Design Festival; it still saw a huge number of eminent Indian and international speakers.

The Executive Committee of the Festival was:
1. Darpana Athale, Chairperson, Pune Design Festival 2007.
2. Nachiket Thakur, Vice-Chairperson, Pune Design Festival 2007.
3. Satish Gokhale, President, Pune Design Foundation
4. Ashish Deshpande, Vice-President, Pune Design Foundation
5. Sudhir Sharma
6. Mukund Athale
7. Hrridaysh Deshpande
8. Prakash Khanzode
9. Samyak Pungaliya
10. Pankaj Sapkal
11. Balakrishna Mahajan
12. Nishma Pandit

Sponsors: Principal Sponsor -Sakal; Industry Partner- MCCIA, Associate Sponsors- Think3, MIT-ID, Forbes Marshall, DSK School of Animation,Gaming and Industrial Design, Vishwakarma Institute Creative-i, Competition Sponsor- Symbiosis Institute of Design
Supported by: Designindia, NID, Intach-Pune Chapter, IIID, Kyoorius Exchange.
Organised by: PUNE DESIGN FOUNDATION.www.punedesignfoundation.com

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Pune Design Foundation

Pune Design Foundation is an association of design professionals & thinkers from Pune and surrounding region determined to make Pune as the design destination in India.

Pune Design Foundation has Communication designers, Industrial Designers, Usability & interaction designers, Accessory designers, design & brand managers, design researchers and design educationists as its members.

Mission of Pune Design Foundation is to promote the cause and awareness of design as a necessity to good living and better business. The ‘Foundation’ believes that Pune region has strength of around 500 design professionals, a number that is bound to increase due to growth in the engineering, Auto and IT industry in this region.

Pune Design Foundation aims to;

1. Create a strong network of designers and create a platform for sharing design thinking and case studies

2. Increase the awareness of “good design” amongst the “people” and ”industry” thru out-reach programs, events and museums.

3. To spread design awareness at school level so as to inculcate design thinking in young minds as well as provide structured guidance to improve higher design education.

4. To undertake design of public convenience as a key program to elevate general life of common people

5. To identify and help integrate regional cultural values, crafts and traditions.

6. To link up with national and international bodies to help promote the Pune region as a design destination.

7. To become a voice of the design professional community at government policy level.

The Pune Design Foundation has been instrumental and has actively participated in the formation of the “National Design Policy” which was unveiled this year in February 2007.

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3. CII_Design Summit

This was in Bangalore and the focus was on the National Design Policy largely. But with a great presence of international designers, this summit also saw a focus on 'innovation' as the next word instead of design. Brand Experience, Culture, Design 3.0 were some of the other buzz words.
The next Summit is slated to be in Pune. :)

A long hiatus...

2006-11-22T08:14:00.000-08:00

...but one can't stop blogging!
It becomes an addiction, irrespective whether people read your blog, miss you when you were not active in the cyber world and even wonder where you have disappeared.

Currently am writing on 6 blogs- 3 of which are design-based. And all because the design activity in Pune has become a whirlwind affair that has literally catapulted the industry here.

I'm talking of the Pune Design Festival 2006 held obviously in Pune the last weekend. An unique thought process wherein for the first time the design industry has come together to build a foundation of professionals in the field and like-minded academic institutions and corporates. So the festival was conceived and executed by the Pune Design Foundation group, as of now comprising 9 design companies and 2 academic schools based in the city. My company being one of the design firms there. :)

The best part of this festival and foundation being established was the overall synergy within the design firms, as opposed to the normal competitive attitude most designers have. And the following statement is being made very objectively and not as a Punekari, but the attitude is a city-based one. When I used to work with a architecture magazine from Bombay, I used to often visit Pune and meet the architecture fraternity here and was amazed to see that there was(still is) a wonderful co-existence between the firms here. They would visit each other often, look at and share their views on the other's projects, gather as a group and talk design, share ideas, visit different cities and other architecture practices... something I've never seen people in other cities do. In Bombay, there are people who are close-knit and share work, but not to this extent.

Delhi is another topic altogether. The politically inclined city makes its views very strongly felt even in the design group. People are secretive, fiercely competitive, will not allow anyone go ahead of them, extremely insecure of their clients, work and space... leading to a society that is wary of every other person who is termed a 'designer'. They talk of knowledge-sharing on one hand, but will not disclose the name of their structural engineer, lest he be 'poached'!

And these views are being said out of experience and very close observation. An example that happened to ‘yours truly’… a Pune-based client asked my firm to be part of the ongoing work in terms of execution as it is convenient, economical and one can also keep a good check on the project if the design firm is from the city itself. We were asked to meet and collaborate with the designer, who’s based out of Delhi. We did meet him as designers first and were in turn met with silence, a very cold attitude and a sense of thousand walls coming up around and between us. Basically we realised that he felt we were competition to him! Then when we said the client asked us to meet, he was flabbergasted, sweated a bit and was in a hurry to leave…so we finally had to convey to him that we were only planning to execute his project and not take his job from him. That is when he relaxed, just a little bit, and muttered something to the effect that he may not mind and will get back. Phew!

Why are people so insecure? In a field that is only going upward and in leaps and bounds, there is definitely work for everyone. And finally is this not the age to come together and build?

A paper on Indian Architecture.

2006-09-10T23:44:00.000-07:00

Influence of Hindu India on Islamic Architecture.

India had been subject to invasions from as early as the 3rd century BC, but the powerful assimilative capacity of Indian culture had absorbed the culture of the earlier invaders - the Greeks, the Huns and the Sakas. The same phenomenon did not take place in the case of the Islamic culture; and though there was some kind of absorption it was not complete. The reason for this was the attachment of each to its own religion. The Muslim religion was militant and aggressive, while the Hindu religion was spiritually tolerant indeed and flexible, but obstinately faithful in its discipline of its own principle and was standing on the defence behind a barrier of social forms. Yet, mutual contact brought about an interchange of ideas and mutually influenced each other to a great extent. Underneath the ruffle and storm of political strife, there developed a mutual respect for each other and this manifested itself in many fields.

Islamic architecture in and around Delhi retained much of the characteristics in both form and detailing of Persian Islam, with only the court at Delhi able to attract and pay the best Muslim architects and artisans from abroad. As one moves away from the main power centre, the regional Islamic satraps – whether governors of the Delhi Sultanate or newly-independent Sultan – patronized an architecture which slowly began to assume a very different identity. This identity was not constant throughout, but varied from place to place, and depended chiefly on :
a. the distance from Delhi, which determined the level of dilution of ‘pure’ Islamic principles;

b. the economic condition of the regime, responsible for the quality of finished and materials used;

c. the local artisans available in the region and their specialization and experience; and

d. local Hindu architecture, which served as direct or indirect inspiration for Muslim examples.

If the Qutb Minar merely had sinuous carving which hinted at the Hindu craftsman at work, examples further away from Delhi illustrated both a riot of carving as well as formal aspects directly influenced by Hindu architecture. The main areas that produced a substantial body of architecture and can be said to have evolved a ‘style’ of their own are Gujarat, Punjab, Bengal, Malwa, some parts of south India and Kashmir.
A fusion of cultures - Indo-Islamic Architecture

"On the one hand was the rhythmic mind of the Hindu, on the other the formal mind of the Musulman." The quote from a venerable early architectural historian serve to highlight the utter difference between Muslim and Hindu building types. There were other variations apart from the merely formal: the presence of carving in Hindu temples which was forbidden in Islam, decorative lettering on mosques and tombs which was unknown in Hindu art and architecture, the Hindu propensity for a single stone and the Muslim penchant for inlay work. However in spite of this wide gulf, over the years a certain symbiosis did come into being between Muslim designers and master-builders and the Hindu craftsmen who carried out their bidding. Both benefited from the other's knowledge and what slowly evolved was a distinct new style of architecture - Persian in inspiration but very Indian in execution. Long referred to as Saracenic, it is now more properly termed Indo-Islamic.

(This is a rough cut introduction to a paper on Hindu influences in Muslim architecture. The idea is to observe the architectural language of both religions with respect to each other.)

Design Yatra, Goa (September 7-9,2006)

2006-09-06T10:05:00.000-07:00

Few products designed by my firm.

2006-08-30T03:51:00.000-07:00

All copyrights of designs and images belong to Sarvasva Designs Pvt Ltd.

Let there be light!

2006-08-28T10:13:00.000-07:00

The first of my 3-part article- that got printed in Femina Book of Interiors, Bombay Times and Pune Times.

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Light = Life.

“Ever since we crawled out of that primordial slime, that's been our unifying cry, "More light." Sunlight. Torchlight. Candlelight. Neon, incandescent lights that banish the darkness from our caves to illuminate our roads, the insides of our refrigerators. Big floods for the night games at Soldier's Field. Little tiny flashlights for those books we read under the covers when we're supposed to be asleep. Light is more than watts and footcandles. Light is metaphor. Light is knowledge, light is life, light is light”. The quote coming from well-known Emmy Awards-winning creative team of Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider… an apt summation of what is, one of the most integral elements in our lives.

When we move into a new home or refurbish the existing one, one of the top things in our ‘to-do’ list is to ‘get lights’. And unless we have an architect or a designer involved, most of us would randomly pick up lights and fixtures that please our aesthetic senses, and probably suit the room’s too. ‘It’s functional as long as it provides light’, is what we tell ourselves. But light is more than just an idea of brightness.

Although it's often treated as an afterthought, good lighting can make or break your home. We may spend hours poring over paint charts, but it's actually the light that shows off a space to its best advantage. Light has the power to alter the appearance of a room or zone without changing it physically. It can be used to accentuate individual functional spaces in an area as it directs our view and draws our attention to details. Light can also be used to influence perception as it is a great tool to divide and interpret rooms so as to emphasise areas or establish continuity between the interior and exterior spaces.

As one uses colour to create a look for a room, likewise changing the lighting can alter the visual dimensional feel of a space. Good lighting can make the home feel spacious, clean and welcoming. The key is to create a flexible scheme that takes you comfortably through the day and all the different uses of your room. At the flick of a switch, you should be able to transform it from a bright, vibrant living space to the setting for a romantic dinner for two.

There are basically three kinds of lighting- ambient, accent and task lighting. There is a fourth type too called decorative lighting, but the former three take care of most of our lighting needs.

Ambient light:
As the name suggests, ambient or general lighting provides illumination and a comfortable level of brightness for the entire room. This basic form of lighting is typically seen as the starting point for lighting a space or a room as it replaces sunlight. It is fundamental to a lighting plan as it makes up the "base" amount of light in a room; and creates a bland flat effect.
The type of light source selected for ambient light depends on the type and use of the space or room. However, if you supplement general lighting with some or all of the other types, you'll end up with a great, flexible scheme. While most of the time ambient light comes from the fixtures listed above; in certain applications, it can be the culmination of all of the accent, decorative, and task lighting that produces the total ambient lighting.

Lights for ambient lighting: Recessed downlights, ceiling lights, uplighters, valance lighting(a system that includes both up and down lighting), wall lights, cove lighting (light fixtures that are mounted into a shelf on the wall for indirect lighting), soffit lighting, wall washers, sconces, surface-mounted lights, pendant lights, track lights, chandeliers, under-cabinet lights and portable fixtures.

Accent Lighting:
Generally considered one of the "layers of light" when lighting a space; accent lighting is directional light aimed at an object or feature in a space. It is a way to make something stand out in the space, to create a visual separation. This kind of lighting accentuates, creates a mood and adds interest to a room by highlighting or spotlighting certain areas and objects, such as paintings, walls and collectibles. Accent lighting gives texture, focus and shape to ambient lighting by adding depth and shadows in some areas while pools of light in other spots. Accent lighting highlights specific features of a room, such as cabinets, ceiling beams or artwork. It can create visual interest in a room by highlighting architectural features, such as a mantel or the texture of a wall
Lights for accent lighting: Wall washers, sconces, track lights, spotlights, under-cabinet lights, table lamps.

Task lighting:
Any activity or area that needs relatively high light levels focused on it requires task lighting. This type of lighting helps one perform a specific activity, such as cooking, reading, writing, sewing or playing games, by concentrating light in a particular place. Task lighting is an efficient way to provide light on reading materials or similar difficult-to-see objects. It is especially important to select a task light that does not provide a direct view of the light bulb. It is equally important to place the task light in a position where the person does not see a reflection of the light bulb in the task (e.g., on a computer screen). Task lights can include one of a variety of light bulbs, including linear fluorescent, compact fluorescent, incandescent, or halogen.
Lights for task lighting: Valance lighting, pendant lights, under-cabinet lights, lights that plug into the wall including desk lamps, swing arm lamps, table lamps and floor lamps and portable fixtures.

Decorative Lighting:
Light fixtures of the space themselves that draw attention to themselves, such as chandeliers or candles, thus adding character to the room, form part of decorative lighting.

As Accent lights illuminate special features in a room such as artwork, architectural details and furnishings, creating visual interest and drama in the space; when planning a lighting scheme, you should plan the accent lighting first. Next, identify task lighting. Then if additional light is needed, more fixtures can be added for general illumination or ambient lighting. All three types of lighting systems can work together to fulfill the lighting needs of a room. Once you've considered what types of activities will be taking place in a room and what type of lighting is needed, you can decide what fixture will best fit your needs.

When you walk into a store, there’s a plethora of lighting fixtures available. But before making any decisions about your fixtures, make sure you find out if there are any restrictions on the types of fixtures that can be used in any specific room. Sometimes things such as ductwork, insulation or ceiling height can affect whether or not a fixture can be installed properly in a room. When deciding what lighting to use in your new home, there are a number of things to consider:
o How each room will be used.
o What fixtures are appropriate.
o Energy efficiency.
o Cost.

A good, energy-efficient lighting system uses less energy, is more economical and meets our visual needs. A lighting system includes lights (light bulbs), light fixtures (luminaires) and controls (switches, dimmers, timers and motion detectors). The right lighting scheme can make a bland room exciting. But with so many fixtures and fittings available, it can be difficult to decide which type to use where.

General thumb rules for lighting your home:
o Have natural and general lighting in every room, in the form of windows or skylights.
o You can never light a room as efficiently as the sun so think of electric light as an atmospheric background - it can create a cosy environment or a really dramatic one. Plan the lighting needs of your house room wise and in layers from ceiling to floor, so you have the right kind for your different needs.
o As far as possible, place switches at the room entrances.
o Have a socket or electric point in the middle of the room, preferably near the floor, so you don't have trailing wires across the floor.
o Use compact fluorescent light bulbs rather than incandescent lights, which last longer and reduce lighting costs by 70 percent.
o Illuminating wall surfaces can highlight the vertical spatial borders. Depending on the room, one can have a uniform light distribution that focuses on the wall as a whole, or an accentuating, grazing light to give the wall a structure through patterns of light.
o Light-coloured walls and ceilings reflect the light much more than those painted a dark colour. So choose the lighting accordingly.
o Architectural features such as ceiling mouldings can be highlighted with uplighters.
o Floor illumination emphasises objects and pedestrian surfaces like stairs and corridors and also do not cause direct glare on the eye.
o Remember: never to put a higher wattage bulb than the fitting instructions suggest; and buy the highest wattage allowed then control it with a dimmer.