CFBI-NID: Bamboo for Grassroots Development:

CFBI-NID: Bamboo for Grassroots Development:

CFBI-NID (Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID), Tripura Bamboo Mission initiatives: NID IPRITI IL&FS TBM – bamboo craftsman training initiative at Bangalore.

Prof. M P Ranjan

Image 01: Workshop commences at IPRITI, Bangalore with bamboo craftsmen from Tripura and NID designers with technical inputs from IPRITI scientists.

The National Institute of Design (NID) through its Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID) and the Infrastructure Leasing and Finance Services (IL&FS) entered into an agreement to develop and deliver a bamboo based small craft industry initiative as part of the overall mission objective of the Tripura Bamboo Mission (TBM) that is spearheaded by the Government of Tripura. The IL&FS has extended their technical, financial planning and manpower expertise in furthering the mission objectives of the TBM and they in turn have cooperated with the CFBI-NID to move the bamboo furniture and product design initiative through a project format that includes product design, craftsman training as well as field training that would help seed and incubate the new micro-enterprises in the State of Tripura.

Image 02: Stackable Café tables and benches, a local to local strategy offered by NID to kick-start local entrepreneurship in the Agartala region.

The NID had entered into a MOU with IPRITI, Bangalore earlier this year to cooperate in new initiatives in bamboo product development with a special focus on laminated bamboo and bamboo mat board applications in a number of fields. In mutual agreement with all the partners we decided to bring the project with the IL&FS to Bangalore since the NID Bangalore campus is located just opposite the IPRITi campus in Penea, just next to the large CMTI campus on the very busy Tumkur road. This proximity and an already agreed platform of cooperation opened a new window for bringing the IL&FS – TBM project to Bangalore campus where the faculty and students of the Design for Retail Experiences (DRE) discipline were keen to explore bamboo as a future material for eco-friendly retail environments.

Image 03: Rubber wood gussets and planks used to upgrade bamboo furniture form another leg of the NID design strategy to leverage the availability of this new material from local production facilities in Agartala.

IL&FS has identified nine master craftsmen from the Agartala region to partake in the CFBI-NID design development and training programme and along with these craftsmen an IL&FS supervisor was deputed to manage the day to day programmes with the NID Bangalore coordinator Divya Darshan and Joint Project Head and NID Faculty, C S Susanth from the NID Bangalore Centre. Prof M P Ranjan as Head of the Project stationed himself at Bangalore from 17th September to 30th September 2008 for the design development and training components of the project that is being handled under the management of the NID Outreach Department located in Ahmedabad while NID Bangalore handled all the local logistics and project support systems through Shashikala Satyamurthy and Centre Head S Goshal.

Image 04: The ubiquitous “Alna”, a local clothes rack, offered in new design configurations using rubber wood gussets to support the “Local to Local” design strategy advocated by NID.

Dr C N Pandey and his team were very supportive and provided the space in their well equipped Bamboo Development Centre for the conduct of the workshop as well as provided some key training inputs in bamboo treatment and finishes that was organized as associated demonstrations and lectures. The NID design team of Prof M P Ranjan and C S Susanth was joined by other members from NID Bangalore including Divya Darshan and Niju Dubey who participated in the design and training activities on a regular basis. Further, three NID students from Furniture design discipline joined the team as experimenters and occasional trainers and they too developed their own understanding of the new material through their association with the workshop, the results of which will be seen in the future, I am sure. Of these students, Garima Agrawal has chosen to take the bamboo project as her major diploma project and she will be taking this initiation and travel to the field to commence her research and study at Agartala in the near future.

Image 05: Exhibit of all new bamboo products developed at the design cum training workshop at IPRITI as shown at the NID Bangalore lawns for the closing function on 30 September 2008.

The design strategy outlined by the team this time looked at the building of products and systems that had a “Local to Local” character since the craftsmen while being very skilled at bamboo work were still to learn about being entrepreneurs and learn to manage a business enterprise on their own. The IL&FS and the NID design team are providing handholding and mentoring supports as part of the next stages of this project and in this the making of local products would bring a degree of self confidence to the crafts entrepreneurs since they could learn from direct experience and use their local knowledge to build their business experience. The major product category chosen for this strategy was the local “Alna” an ubiquitous clothes rack usually made in wood and found in every home in the Eastern Region of India as well as all over the Northeast of India. We therefore designed a wide range of “Alna” type products to demonstrate product diversification and the possibility of customization of a basic idea to generate variety. The other products included benches and tables that could be used in domestic situations as well as in local café’s across Agartala region, which by the way is a huge local market that is attracting many furniture makers from New Delhi and Mumbai. These are local opportunities that the Tripura craftsmen can learn to address in their process of learning a trade which they could then sharpen and refine to address more sophisticated markets in other cities in India as well as in the export sector, once their level of confidence has grown to manage these with comfort and quality.

Image 06: The closing function attended by Director IPRITI, Il&FS Managers, Coordinator Tripura Bamboo Mission, Centre Head NID Bangalore and Head, Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID and the design and craftsmen teams.

Another major design decision was the use of rubber wood in combination with bamboo for several of the products. In an earlier collection we had designed all bamboo furniture as part of our “Katlamara Chalo” strategy where the joints were made using round holes drilled with a flat-bottomed drill bit and secured with bamboo dowels and bamboo counter pins. This joint was used once again for all the bamboo pole joints and all bamboo components were kept straight without the use of any bending that is commonly associated with bamboo furniture. The rubber wood components were of two types, plates for surfaces and shaped gusset members for particular joints between bamboo frames. This way the bamboo craftsmen could obtain the rubber wood components from the new and growing rubber wood industry in Tripura and offer value to their customers with the added functionality of smooth surfaces and precise gusset joints that are also visually modern. This strategy had us seeking the help of Sandeep Mukherjee for the precise manufacture of the gusset components, drawings for which were prepared on cad software by Niju Dubey. Several ranges of “Alna” were developed using these special gussets and as we go forward we anticipate an enlargement of the range with the addition of new components as dictated by the design scheme and the functionality required. The Tripura craft scene is now sufficiently sophisticated to accommodate this shift to outsourced components as they develop their marketing strategy in the days ahead and this would also help them fetch a better price in the market and provide value to the customer who is being exposed to many imported products of high quality.

Image 07: The new “Alna” and other products at the lawn exhibit at NID Bangalore for the closing function.

The training programme culminated in the production of several new designs that aligned to the product strategy proposed by the NID team and at a concluding function at NID Bangalore on 30 September 2008 we conducted an exhibition of all the products at NID Bangalore which was visited by George Jenner, Chief Coordinator of the Tripura Bamboo Mission, Sharmishta Mohapatra, Senior Manager and Advisor – Trade Facilitation, IL&FS, New Delhi, Dr C N Pande, Director IPRITI, Dr S Goshal, Centre Head, NID, Bangalore and all the crtafts trainees and the NID design team with the students of the NID Bangalore and they were hosted by Prof M P Ranjan, Head, Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID. At the concluding function the dignitaries spoke to the audience about bamboo and its role in the future as well as the strategies of the Tripura Bamboo Mission and the plans and activities in the coming years. These provided new opportunities for all partners to use their skills and knowledge for the development of the bamboo sector in Tripura and in the process bring overall development to Tripura State, particularly in the rural areas that have been deprived of industrial development over the years. Plans and now afoot to send our teams to Tripura for the next phase of the project that includes the setting up of micro production units with the use of an appropriate set of hand held power tools and the hand-holding supports from the IL&FS teams in finance and marketing support in the field. NID designers will work closely with these craftsmen to realize the objective of getting these new products to market and in the process establish the confidence levels of the crafts entrepreneur as well as help maintain quality of production with the use of simple manufacturing strategies that are embedded in the design programme.

Prof. M P Ranjan

Design Happenings in Bangalore: Two Weeks at NID Bangalore

Design Happenings in Bangalore: Two Weeks at NID Bangalore
Prof M P Ranjan

Image 1: DCC models about food at NID Bangalore: Climate, Geography and Culture.

I have been in Bangalore, nay Bengaluru now, for over ten days and have been conducting the Design Concepts and Concerns Course (DCC) for students of three disciplines at the NID Bangalore Centre. The theme continues to be food and the assignments have gone through a small transformation. The first assignment had three groups looking at the macro aspects of food and the economy across the broad fields of influence under the heads of Climate, Geography and Culture. The first assignment ended with the three groups having explored the chosen areas through brainstorming and some supporting research ending in the production of a visually rich model that could help in the “visual sensemaking” process as defined by the NextD Leadership Institute.

Image 2: DCC team presentations at NID Bangalore

Each group came up with compelling presentations that revealed a great depth of information carried by the team members and they were all able to produce rich models and make their presentation to the faculty and students at NID Bangalore. The Geography group used a compact model of the continents which revealed both their knowledge as well as their areas of ignorance about the world of food, since the North American and European regions were better represented than the South Americas and the African continent. The climate group divided the world into zones along the longitudes and used one table surface for each zone to capture a picture book of “Poloroid pictures” just as a returning traveler would have shared their vast journeys with their clansmen in the past. The third group had everyone holding their breath with their stunning portrayal of culture using their knowledge of India and the variety of foods and their associations with religious and cultural affiliations. The three dimensional display was well classified and translated into banners each that covered one major category of food and a central display mapped the three major religions that dominate the Indian landscape.

Image: Neelam Chibber with Prof. Ranjan at NID Bangalore and with students of the DCC class.

Neelam Chibber who visited the NID campus briefly to see the bamboo workshop at IPIRTI across the street from the NID campus was quite taken in by the presentation of the culture group and she has commissioned the team to make a refined set of banners about food and culture for her new stores in the now revised Industree Crafts stores that are taking shape in her back office operation of scaling up and diversifying her already successful operation to bring value to Indian crafts at the grassroots level. The Industree Crafts Foundation as well as Industree Crafts Pvt Ltd is being transformed after taking strong roots in Bangalore and I will bring this story to this blog when Neelam is ready with her new and revised offering. Industree Crafts Foundation and the business wing Indistree Crafts Pvt Ltd. works on a Fair Trade principle with over 15,000 village craftsmen across seven states and the Northeastern Region of India and it grew from a small investment of Rs 12 lakhs (1.2 million Rupees) to reach a valuation of over Rs. 15 crores today and growing further by the day. Neelam worked with Gita Ram of the Crafts Council of India and Poonam Bir Kasturi in the early days to nurture a lofty thinking organisation and has shown us that design and social equity can bring good value for all partners. You can download a pdf article about their Fair Play principles from this link as a 688 kb pdf file titled "Fair and Just".

Image 3: Swiss design team conducting a workshop at NID Bangalore

The Swiss design team of industrial designer Frederic Dedelley and design journalist Ariana Pradal conducted a one day sensitizing workshop for all the students at NID Bangalore when they shared the Swiss Design experience through a slide lecture which was followed by a hand-on workshop aimed at creating a designer Letter Opener by direct action on materials and ideas. The evening saw an exciting presentation of over 50 different design offerings which were stimulating and showed the students the dominant design activity of product diversification with the use of micro detailing and form giving that are central to a designers bread and butter operation in their dealings with industry.

Image 4: Guided tour at the Swiss Design exhibit at Bangalore Max Muller Bhavan.

I got to visit the Swiss Design exhibition, Criss+Cross at the Max Muller Bhavan in Indra Nagar and also to take the guided tour offered by Ariana Pradal. I was joined by my daughter, a Bangalore based Graphic Designer, Aparna Ranjan in this very informative tour and later we sat together for a long chat with Frederic Dedelley on various issues and directions in design for India and the world.

Image 5: Bamboo workshop at IPIRTI with Tripura craftsmen for the IL&FS project.

The IPIRITI based bamboo development workshop had nine craftsmen from Tripura along with two of our mastercraftsmen working on my new designs that used a combination of bamboo poles and rubber wood components under the supervision of NID Bangalore faculty and long time bamboo colleague, C S Susanth. The IL&FS team included a supervisor and their senior officer S Matouleibi who manages the field activities of the Tripura Bamboo Mission in Agartala, Tripura. We developed a collection ten new designs with a focus on a “local-to-local strategy”, where we selected products that would have a ready local market in the Tripura region which in turn would facilitate start-up entrepreneurship amongst the bamboo craftsmen who need to develop their self confidence through some mentored development initiatives by the design and finance teams in the field.

Image 6: Visit to Quetzel Design Pvt Ltd

This project and the strategy to use some rubber wood components had me driving all the way across Bangalore from Penea to Sarjapur Road for a visit to Quetzel, a furniture design and manufacturing firm started by two NID graduates, Sandeep Mukherjee and Sarita Fernandes. The company has grown from humble beginnings to be one of the finest furniture manufacturing firms in India that can compete with the international brands that are now entering India across all the parameters of marketing and design. Sandeep and Sarita were both my students in the Furniture Design faculty and NID and I feel quite proud to see their massive and refined industrial venture which has been built at a time when design was ignored by both government and industry alike, which is something that I had called attention to in my paper of 2001 at the first National Design Summit organized by the CII and NID in Bangalore. My paper was titled “Cactus Flowers Bloom on the Dessert” to draw attention to the extremely hostile economic and policy climate in which design was passing through and things have not changed much even today, although we have come a long way as a profession today, but no thanks to either the government and to the established industry, who have steadfastly ignored the design community in India while they have run after international collaborations at a huge cost to our economy and to the tax payer alike. Download paper here 123 kb pdf file and visual presentation here in two parts: Part 1 – 3.6 mb pdf file and Part 2 – 4.6 mb pdf file

Image 7: Visit to Trapeze Design Studio at Koramangala

On our return from our long drive to Quetzel and back I took Matouleibi to visit Trapeze, a graphic design studio at Koramangala which was set up by two NID graduates, Sarita Sunder and Ram Sinam. An exciting small studio with a row of Macs on one side and an impromptu photo studio and a table tennis facility on the other. Trapeze has an impressive range of clients from across several sectors and their work in print and web design has set standards for Indian graphic design industry in spite of their small and cozy studio size and very personalized format of operation.

Image 8: Book launch function at Crosswords for Dr Darlie O Koshy and his book “Indian Design Edge”.

The week closed with another interesting event which I will write about in some detail in a future post since it will need the time and space to read, reflect and comment about, in a balanced manner, if possible. This event was the launch of the new book, “Indian Design Edge” by Dr Darlie O Koshy, Director, National Institute of Design through the Roli Books Publishers at an evening event at Crosswords Bookstore on Residency Road, Bangalore. The event saw the main speaker Dr Sadagopan, Director IIIT, Bangalore (Tripple IT Bangalore) wax and wane about the virtues of design from the aesthetics to the usability of the Apple iPhone and his profuse praise for Dr Koshy’s many achievements in his 8 year long career at NID as its Executive Director for the first five years and later as its Director for the past three years after a terminiology change that has left us all puzzled if it is a move forward for NID or not. I bought three copies of the book for myself, my wife Aditi Ranjan and my daughter Aparna Ranjan so that all of us designers could come up to steam quickly on Dr Koshy’s offering to the design publishing space in India, which by the way is very starved of any kind of serious publishing and this particular offering will be lapped up by the much starved Indian and international design public, I am sure. Dr Koshy is also a Board Member of ICSID, the International Council of Societies Industrial Design, and by the way my blog “Design for India” has been showcased by the ICSID blog in the education section last month particularly for the Tata Nano debate that it had hosted when the product was launched with much fanfare early this year. Ratan Tata has written the Forward for Dr Koshy’s book and the Tata Nano appears on the dust jacket as well as on the contents page of the book as a symbol of Indian design success.

Image 9: Visitors at the book launch function at Crosswords, Bangalore

There was a bash across the street from Crosswords organized by a local fashion group to falicitate Dr Koshy on his publishing achievement but I did not gate-crash this bash at the Taj Gateway but chose to have a quiet dinner with my daughter Aparna along with two very interesting young designers from France and Germany, two girls who have chosen to work in India since it offers them real challenges unlike the well established and stable design climate in Europe today. We sat a Coconut Grove and got a sense of what foreign designers liked in India and how they had coped with the challenges of Indian living, both rode mobikes in Bangalore and have worked for over two years in a umber of very interesting assignments here in Bangalore. I am sure India can accommodate may more such international adventurers in the 230 sectors of our economy that is today starved of design offerings due to policy myopia in government and in industry. The design scene in India is indeed changing rapidly and this si an exciting time to be working in and in writing about design for India. Mireille Arnaud, the girl from France, is working with some stone craftsmen from a village called Shivarapatna in Karnataka and she has helped them build contemporary concepts that can take their skills to new markets in India and overseas. This is the kind of cooperation that we had envisaged when Aditi and I had embarked on the research for the book “Handmade in India” in conversations with Jogi Panghaal one of our prominent collaborators and several of our faculty colleagues at NID. India can offer creative opportunities of Indian and international designers to work closely with Indian craftsmen to build a creative economy which could be the future for many of the Indian crafts if our policy initiatives are managed in the right direction. On the other hand, Christina Hug from Germany, is working as a creative director in a local design firm with her focus on graphics and communication having traveled to India after field experiences with the Greenpeace Foundation in many countries.

This week I get back to NID Ahmedabad with a good feel from Bangalore since so much has happened the past ten days and the stay was useful and productive. I look forward to returning soon to Bangalore, the city of Rain Tree avenues and a still wonderful climate, if we manage to keep it that way, Nano or no Nano!


Prof M P Ranjan

Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID): News in 2008

Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID)

A brief report for Academic Year 2007 to 2008

1. Bamboo & Cane Development Institute:

Governing Council meets at Agartala in June 2007 and March 2008. Prof. M P Ranjan attended the Governing Council meet of the BCDI at Agartala in June 2007. The Institute that was set on a new curriculum and infrastructure plan is now being managed by the Office of the DC (Handicrafts) Government of India. :more about the design intentions:

Download BCDI Reports listed below:
1. Achievement Report 2004: NID-BCDI – pdf file 21 kb
2: BCDI Feasibility Report December 2001 – pdf file 371 kb
3. BCDI Curriculum 2002 - 2004 – pdf file 3.9 mb
4. BCDI Curriculum Review 2004 – pdf file 3.0 mb

2 Bamboo Products Exhibition in Germany:

The Ifa-Gallerie in Stuttgart, Germany hosted an exhibition of selected Interior Designers from India as part of their “In Site –Indian” exhibition where five bamboo prototypes representing five collections of designs developed by the NID teams were on display for two months. The exhibit moved to the Ifa-Gallerie in Berlin before being returned to India in October 2007. :more about the Exhibit:

3 Tripura Bamboo Mission:

Prof M P Ranjan continued as advisor to the Tripura Bamboo Mission (TBM) through the year and visited Tripura in June and December to attend the meetings of the Tripura Bamboo Mission that is being managed by the State Government with the aim of reaching bamboo based development strategies to remote districts of Tripura. :more about TBM:

See the Katlamara Chalo website links here and download "Katlamara Chalo Documantation: Rural Development Strategy Report" as three part file below:
1. Katlamara Chalo: Background and Macro-Micro Design Strategy – 12.3 mb pdf file
2. Katlamara Chalo: Product and Technology Strategy – 15.6 mb pdf file
3. Katlamara Chalo: People and Application Strategy – 18.8 mb pdf file

4 IL&FS collaboration under the Tripura Bamboo Mission

In December 2007 CFBI-NID signed a “Statement of Intent” to assist the IL&FS and the Tripura Bamboo Mission by providing design supports and expertise in a collaborative mode. This SOU was signed in the presence of the Chief Minister of Tripura and follow-up meetings have taken place in New Delhi and Ahmedabad based on which NID Outreach Department has submitted a detailed proposal for a training cum entrepreneurship development project that is based on the CFBI-NID collection of designs as well as new student diploma projects that would be taken up in the current academic year. The project will commence in May 2008.:more about IL&FS projects:

5 CBTC, Guwahati MOU operation:

Due to lack of funds the MOU with the CBTC, Guwahati is lying dormant during the academic year 2007 – 2008. In the previous year CFBI-NID had participated in a National Exhibition at the Pragati Maidan as well as contributed to the Bamtech Conference and Festival organized by the CBTC in Agartala in December 2006 as part of this ongoing MOU. Discussions have been initiated with the National Bamboo Mission to obtain funds to set up a design centre in Guwahati in partnership with the CBTC and wit the support of the NEC, Shillong.:more about the CBTC, Guwahati:

6 Collaborative projects with IPIRTI, Bangalore:

Prof M P Ranjan had meetings with scientists and the Director of IPIRTI, Bangalore to explore collaborative projects in areas of mutual interest in the bamboo sector. The IPIRTI is located next to the NID Bangalore Centre and the Bangalore Centre faculty too has shown interest in exploring the application of bamboo mat boards and laminates in the Retail Sector as an eco-friendly substitute to wood and wood based materials. Further the area of low-cost housing is another area of focus where the collaboration could provide synergy between NID design expertise and IPIRTI technology expertise. IPIRTI has excellent facilities for prototype making which would be an asset that NID students and faculty can use as part of the collaboration that is proposed. Project proposals have been discussed and are in the process of being finalized.:more about NID IPRITI initiatives:

7 Training programmes and resources for crafts entrepreneurs:

A number of training programmes for various groups of crafts entrepreneurs has been organized by the Outreach programmes at NID under the ICIC activity centre using the design collections that have been developed by the CFBI-NID activities. These can be given an impetus to reach further through publications and web based sharing, which is being explored during the current academic year.:more about NID Bamboo Intiatives:

8 Bamboo based co-creation initiatives in South Gujarat:

The State Government of Gujarat has shown interest in using expertise in a number of development projects in South Gujarat. Prof M P Ranjan attended a number of meetings of the Gujarat Bamboo Mission as well as held discussions with the State Tribal Development Department and an NGO called Eklavya Foundation to leverage NID design and bamboo expertise for development initiatives in South Gujarat. Proposals are being developed with the Outreach activity to get student involvement in these proposed projects. State Government is interested in setting up new Institute for rural development in South Gujarat, which would be part of the ongoing discussions with the partner agencies to initiate sustained development.:more about bamboo and rural development:

Download UNDP Vision Report 1999 from link below:
From the Land to the People: Bamboo as a Sustainable Human Development Resource – pdf file 1.5 mb

9 Collaboration with other States and with other agencies and future projects:

The CFBI-NID continued to receive requests for information and expert supports for a variety of initiatives being carried out by other States as well as Institutions at various times. We have shared digital resources and publications to seed the continued research activity across various regions of India and this collaboration although it does not bring in immediate financial gains it has generated a lot of goodwill and opened up opportunities for future collaboration. In this effort we are in touch with the activities in Uttaranchal (Uttarakhand), Karnataka, Kerala and Orissa. Several schools of architecture have shown interest in sending their students for field training and research which will further the larger goal of bamboo based development in India.:more about bamboo initiatives at NID:

10 Publications: Books, CD and Web based resources for development of bamboo sector in India:

The CFBI-NID has plans to create and produce a number of print as well as digital resources that will help disseminate the vast design resources that have been generated by the various teams of faculty and students as part of the broader development agenda of the bamboo sector which is a very critical rural development as well as employment potential activity for rural and urban crafts communities. The research effort that started in 1978-79 that resulted in the publication of the comprehensive book titled "Bamboo & Cane Crafts of Northeast India" has been followed up with numerous reports and design catalogues that were made available as CD-ROMs and digital files online. Download the book in pdf 34.7 mb here. These proposed publications will help fast track the flow of critical knowledge resources for the development of the bamboo sector as well as act as an example of how the use of design can facilitate sustained development in other sectors by example. We will be exploring the sourcing of funds to support this activity in the current academic year.:download bamboo and design papers from this site...more to come:

Bamboo Mat Boards from IPIRTI: A material waiting for innovation

Bamboo Mat Boards from IPIRTI: A material waiting for value added applications
Image: NID team at the IPIRTI’s 5 year old demonstration bamboo house.
The Indian Plywood Industries Research and Training Institute (IPIRTI) is located just across that road from the NID R & D Centre in Bangalore. The IPIRTI was set up in 1962 as an autonomous society registered in Karnataka and its major stakeholders are the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the plywood and panel board industries that are its members. It offers education and training programmes in wood and plywood technology as well as conducts research in a wide range of technology and application areas dealing with a host of wood and wood derivatives including plywood, particle boards as well as fibreboards and a number of other composites aimed at particular applications. The Bamboo Mat Board was one such significant achievement of the IPIRTI.

Image: NID team at the two-story bamboo house at IPIRTI.
In 2001 the IPIRTI set up that Centre for Bamboo Development at its main campus in Penea to explore and conduct research into new and valuable applications using bamboo as a sustainable material for the future. Bamboo is a very commonly used raw material in India for local housing and for the production of a very large range of traditional products particularly in, but not restricted to, the Northeastern Region of India.

Image: The two-story bamboo house at IPIRTI
Our own book titled “Bamboo & Cane Crafts of Northeast India”, M P Ranjan, Nilam Iyer & Ghanshyam Pandya that was published by NID and DC (Handicrafts) in 1986 was based on fieldwork conducted by the author and his team in 1979 to 1981. It documents hundreds of bamboo products and structures from bridges, houses, baskets and household appliances all made with bamboo as a primary material. This book was reprinted in 2004 as a resource for Traditional Wisdom from the communities of the Northeastern Region of India. Starting with this massive documentation that was done with a design intention of trying to understand the traditional material as a source for new and contemporary applications that could create employment and business opportunities for the people of the Northeast we went on to explore numerous product applications in our continuing journey of research and design explorations at the NID and the Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID. A low-resolution pdf file of this book can be downloaded from this link (pdf file 34.7 MB) here.

Image: NID team examining the finger jointed board at the IPIRTI test lab
The Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID has over the past several years explored and published a very wide range of applications and a number of approaches for using the bamboo species available in India. These explorations can be seen at these web links here: Bamboo Initiatives, Bamboo Boards & Beyond, BCDI Agartala, and Katlamara Chalo – to name only a few. In all these explorations we have created several hundred new product designs and through the Bamboo and Cane Development Institute (BCDI) at Agartala we helped train hundreds of master craftsmen who could disseminate the design collections to other crafts communities. (download file “Achievements of BCDI” as a MS Word file 736 kb from here. The Bamboo Initiatives catalogue too captures this range in summary that can be visually appreciated and the reports on the BCDI, Agartala would give an idea of the objectives of the institute as well as the curriculum and training strategies that were explored there. These reports can be downloaded as pdf files from these links below.
BCDI Feasibility Report, 2001 (pdf file 372 kb)
BCDI Curriculum Structure, 2004 (pdf file 3 MB)
BCDI Curriculum Review, 2005 (pdf file 4.7 MB)

Images: The modular bamboo mat board house at IPIRTI
The IPIRTI on the other hand has been active in bamboo for many years particularly in the creation and popularization of the bamboo mat board that is made from hand woven bamboo slivers that are then pressed in a plywood press and several layers of mat are impregnated with resin to create a very strong and useful sheet material. While the technology for the bamboo mat board has been available on the market for several decades now it is still to gain wide acceptance as a major material in a number of product categories that it could be used for. This is what brought us to IPIRTI yesterday from the NID Bangalore R & D Centre. My colleagues Sushanth and Sashikala accompanied me on our visit to the IPIRTI and we met the Dr C N Pandey, Director IPIRTI and his colleagues Jagadish Vangala and K Shyamasunder who took us around the campus and gave us a preview of the bamboo based houses that they had built to prove the concept. While these are technically and structurally sound demonstrations they are far from perfect from an aesthetic and functional standpoint. It is here that we feel that collaboration between the scientists from IPIRTI and the design teams from NID could make a great deal of difference. Since the NID Bangalore Centre has commenced PG programmes in Design of Retail Experience we proposed that the first project could focus on exploring new and exciting applications for bamboo mat boards in the fast growing retail sector. The Indian Retail Sector too needs to desperately reduce its carbon footprint and the use of bamboo in a sustainable manner can contribute positively in this direction.

Image: NID team at the workshop in the IPIRTI, Centre for Bamboo Development

The CFBI-NID and the IPIRTI are therefore exploring areas of cooperation that could be mutually beneficial and set up a platform for sharing knowledge and expertise that could bring out exciting new results that can make the quality of the mat boards both visible as well as attractive to the retail sector and to the broader market in the days ahead. Housing and modular architecture would be another area of cooperation that will be explored in the days ahead.