Two Indian Design Schools in Businessweek's top 60 design schools

Image: Design Concepts & Concerns presentation at Bangalore NID
I just got back from a two week teaching stint at NID Bangalore R & D Centreand the theme for the DCC course was "Sustainability and Social Equity" with a focus on the design opportunities in the supply chain across three major sectors of impact in rural India namely, Fresh Farm produce, Dairy and Poultry products and Handcrafted products. The students of the Design for Retail Experience and the batch from Design for Digital Experience participated in this course. The presentation of the course was well attended by professionals and NID alumni managing to get away from their busy Friday evening schedules to attend the show and talk at NID Bangalore. We were happy to receive several students from the Srishti School of Art and Design and the evening was stimulating for our students who shared their design oppportunities and models with the visitors.

Image: Visitors at the NID Bangalore Centre interacting with students after the presentation.
When I got back to Ahmedabad I had to make my Sunday evening visit to the Crossword bookstore and picked up a copy of the current issue of the Businessweek as well as the WIRED magazine with the Ethanol story on its cover. Businessweek too had solar energy as a cover plug and design was once again in vogue. NID Ahmedabad is listed among the leading world schools of design and the online link to the Businesweek story can be seen at their website here. The National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad and the Industrial Design Centre, Mumbai are on the BW's interactive list from India.

Image: Gautam Gira Square at NID Ahmedabad seen from inside the building
The foundations for the design excellence for both these schools were sown by the visionary siblings, Gautam and Gira Sarabhai who managed the NID in the early years after the writing of the Eames India Report and helped train the first faculty of both these schools in the fortmative years of design in India. Their contribution to Indian design has not been fully explored or written about and we will need to look back at the various landmarks that have led to this current state of recognition of excellence. I will explore some of these landmarks in the days ahead and try and piece together a fascinating story that is still clouded in mystery since very little has been published from India about design and its history, particularly in education.

Image: NID Bangalore R & D Campus
Having just returned from the NID Bangalore campus after the two week stay there it is now time to start yet another course for the fifth batch of Post Graduate students in this semester and our theme of sustainability is not misplaced since we now have the Nobel Prize for peace looking at action in this sphere and it is also a theme for a breakout session at the ICSID IDSA 2007 conference in San Francisco. last year I had presented at the IDSA 2006 in Austin Texas a show titled "Giving Design back to Society: Towards a Post-mining Economy". This show can be downloeded from this link here (download pdf 812 kb show and the text summary as pdf 42 kb here)