Roasted Tomato Dip

I came across this recipe for Roasted Tomato Dip today on Laurie March's website, WildernessCooking.com. I think I'll have to head to the grocery store to pick up some shallots and tomatoes then give the recipe a try.

I've made a shredded pork dish of Laurie's and it was great. We ate it fresh rather than dehydrating it for camping use but I'll have to make it again and dehydrate it for use next summer.

While perusing the Wilderness Cooking blog, I also came across this link to home-made hot sauces. It looks like I'll have to pick up some chiles while at the grocery store too!

By the way, you might also like Laurie's other sight: Outdoor Adventure Canada.

Update: Jan 29 '08 - I made the "Tropical Fire" hot sauce from the web site mentioned above on Saturday and it turned out great. I now have about 3 litres of a sweet mango-tasting hot sauce. It was made with double the mango, banana and kiwi from what was called for in the recipe, but no papaya (papayas in the local grocery were too expensive) and spanish onion instead of scallions (scallions were also too expensive). It has lots of kick, but is not too hot and very flavorful. I would rate the heat a 6 out of 10.

Poverty and Design: Concerns for the design policy implementation in India

Image: Exploring design opportunities in the supply chain of dairy products with a focus on achieving social equity. Model was built by a group of students as part of the DCC course at NID Bangalore Centre to examine the structure and possibilities that were afforded by the sector.
Many approaches used in India seem to me to trivialize the whole matter of "wicked problems in design" (as defined by Horst Rittel) and place design far below planning and economics in many ways and this may need to be corrected through a better understanding of design processes as well as what the discipline can be asked to do. While everyday dilemmas that stem from inequity and prolonged poverty situations in our country these are talked about as everyday rhetoric within the framework of politics these are indeed "wicked problems". This statement is true in as much as our not being able to find any adequate solution in spite of many years of planning and from whichever angle you may approach it, we must admit that there are those "truly wicked problems" since they are a challenge that defy simple solutions. These kinds of problems are indeed in desperate need for design thought and innovative action, if we are to find any solution at all, but design however is rarely called upon for finding solutions for such problems in India, except in certain limited areas such as finding new applications for local craft skills in the handicrafts sector or the preparation of smart graphics for some lost cause that is in need of mobilizing either funds or public support. Yet another avenue is the channel of corporate social responsibility where guilt funding is mobilized from industry to address some limited objectives in education, vocational training or subsistence support through a combination of planning and grants through macro schemes that produce doubtful results in any case, but guilt is redressed since something was done in a fit of helplessness.
Image: One of the many scenarios created by students in the Design Concepts and Concerns course last year dealing with the design of micro-enterprises for self-help groups.
I am generally optimistic about the ability of the serious and committed design user – be they the entrepreneur, administrator, professional or student, and not just the trained designer – to be able to use the tools and concepts of design that we have gleaned over years of reflection and use in a manner that could be effective particularly where many of our traditional planning and macro and micro economic processes seem to fail. In my view these failures may be primarily due to an absence of innovation that are integral to the planning processes and the very absence of the use of design imagination since design is not yet on the national agenda unlike science, technology and management. Here I see a critical role for design thought and action to be mobilized in the arena of poverty alleviation processes by addressing the ability of rural and urban poor in the process of getting out of poverty themselves and being able to stand on their own feet with their dignity and self-esteem intact. This particular concern has been articulated with a great deal of clarity by L C Jain in his SEMINAR paper on globalization where he draws on the lessons of Gandhi as a way forward for setting planning (and design) objectives for India as well as for others with similar problems at places across the globe. A tall order, but I believe one which is do-able.

It is with this insight that I have been including the macro-micro perspectives inside design education particularly when we are introducing students at NID to design thinking as part of the Design Concepts and Concerns course that I teach at the design school in Ahmedabad, and now in Gandhinagar and Bangalore. Last semester, in Bangalore we asked the group of students to examine the design opportunities in the supply chain of large and local retail operations so that they could enhance the social equity aspects of the exchange which could be made to go in favour of the poor in an equitable manner and in a spirit of fair trade. Besides the skill building and sensitizing assignments that come from the traditional basic design courses we have been looking at expanding the vision and sense of concern for both environmental sustainability as well as to deal squarely with the pressing issues of social equity in the basic objectives of design action in numerous sectors of our economy. The threat and perception of global warming and climate change have now been taken quite seriously as a major area of focus in design education. However social equity and making an impact on poverty alleviation is yet to find a core space as a serious area of focus in many design projects done by design students, particularly since we are unable to find effective sponsorship for those who wish to pursue these objectives on their own initiative. It is here that we will need to use government development challenges to chanalise design inputs to those who need it the most but cannot afford to mobilize on their own volition. Design is a natural human ability and if we were to let people use it themselves, this too may be a solution as I have tried to argue in my IDSA presentation last year in Austin Texas, titled "Giving design back to society: Towards a post-mining economy", which can be downloaded from my website at this link here: (this link downloads a pdf file 812 kb in size)

What I have learned about poverty over some years of trying to address their solutions through the use of design in many parts of India and in quite varied situations is that planners and economists here do not seen to have a clue about how this can be rooted out altogether although huge sums of money and political fire power is expended with this as the stated objective of both governments as well as the non-governmental sector which is quite active in India and some of these have done remarkable work with and without the use of design.

Jeffrey Sachs in his book "The End of Poverty: How we can make it happen in our lifetime" offers his insights about how one can use economics and policies to move forward but unfortunately the word design is not in his lexicon while innovation is mentioned in passing without much depth or discussion, which I find hard to understand. However I see this as symptomatic of the view taken by many of the worlds' statesmen and administrators who keep grants and aid at the top of their agenda and with very little or almost no emphasis on design as a way forward in such situations, and I believe that they do not have faith that design can indeed solve such "wicked problems".

When we were working on a new curriculum for the setting up of the BCDI, Agartala (Bamboo & Cane Development Institute) that had a mission of addressing the problems of poverty and development in the Northeastern Region of India using bamboo as a resource we looked at the various parameters that would be needed to bring about lasting change in the condition of the local farmers and bamboo craftsmen of the region. From our explorations we did find the creation of new products as a way forward using innovation to generate value. But far more that that we discovered that the people who had lived in poverty and economic and political subjugation for a long period need far more than mere education in skills to make these new products but we felt that they needed a mindset change that could only come from a growth of self-confidence and in a form of "cognitive expansion" which is the term proposed by my colleague, Rashmi Korjan, when she helped me on the curriculum development task at the BCDI in 2001-02. Our experiments at the BCDI, it seems, became politically potent and we were not permitted to continue our work at the Institute by the officials who found all kinds of excuses to scuttle our intentions. Some of this design work and the curriculum development and its application over the two and a half years in which we managed the Institute are available at my website and on my blog, "Design for India" (here) and more will be added in the days ahead.

The hallmark of our new curriculum for craftsman in the bamboo sector and I believe for all our rural poor would be a mix of skill and useful abilities with a good measure of confidence building and "cognitive expansion" that only good and wholesome education can bring to these affected people. We are continuing to address these pressing problems and they are as "wicked" as they come, but the faith that design can answer many of these due to the integrated nature of its offering is still lost to the government and political leadership and we must find ways to change this lacuna sooner if not later.

The problems that I speak about is not unique to India and I find that the discussion raised by David Stairs on the Design Observer blog in his comments about the Cooper Hewitt Exhibit "Design for the other 90%" and another post there about the "Project M" raises important issues about the use of design in such pressing circumstances which are quite ignored by most design schools except for appearances in competitions and conferences, in a very superficial manner. Dori Elizabeth Tunstall has raised another aspect of this debate on her blog as well, and I am in full agreement with her and with David Stairs, although my critique may take other examples in the ambit of our larger debate. The Index Awards were announced in Copenhagen in August 2007, which is very prestigious and very rich by any global standard. However my question is, does this event represent the current global understanding of the "Design Way" as expressed by Nelson and Stolternman if we take the Nobel Prize as a benchmark for achievement in the sciences and in economics? Is there another level that Design can offer beyond the debate that was set of in the mid 70's by Victor Papanek? Some of us living in the "Real World" may feel that there is still a way to go before we can see the light.

I would love to see some sustained debate on these matters as well since so many design users are experienced and come from so many fields that impinge on design research, and design action. I have recently made a post on the durable contribution of the Eamses in India on my blog and also about the many exciting explorations that are taking place across the world in a search for directions and strategies that can be used to address the "wicked problems" of which we have in huge measure in India and all readers of this blog post are welcome and share in this huge design opportunity. The "real world" is a "wicked place" as we can all see that even in Hale County, Alabama, located as it is in the worlds richest country, poverty is not located in the South alone. So it is clear, that this is not a South-South problem as the UN agencies would say in their diplomatic parlance. It is a global problem and we need to explore the use of design in addressing these classes of problems and our policy initiatives must take cognizance of the role design and innovation can play in these kinds of problems. The National Design Policy and its implementation is a good place to locate this debate and an appropriate avenue through which these applications of design can reach those sectors and areas that need and can benefit from the use of design in the empowerment of people in their attempt to get out of poverty with dignity and a sense of self worth.

Design for India: Posts that are linked in content and intent to this one:
• The Eames impact on India:
• The NextD Institute, New York:
• The Creative Economy for India:
• The Mayo Clinic and Design for Medicine:
• Design Concepts & Concerns Course blog

Richard Flohil on Music

"If you can't make music, try to help make music happen."
- Richard Flohil

Let's just say I can't make music.

CII-NID Design Summit, Bangalore 2007: Focus on the National Design Policy

The CII NID Design Summit 2007 was kicked off in great style by Uday Dandavate, Design with India, with the screening of two song sequences from Bollywood in the sixtees and from the current crop, the first showed Nutan doing a homely Garba dance and the other with Bipasha Basu in Omkara, a stark reminder that we have all come a long way since Independence. Yes, India is changing and we expect it to change even more rapidly in the days ahead since the world has just crossed the urban rural ratio going in favoutr of the urban settlements for the first time since the dawn of civilization.In the India Report of 1958 Charles Eames had warned us about the nature of this change. He says – ”… we recommend that without delay there be a sober investigation into those values and those qualities that Indians hold important to a good life, that there be a close scrutiny of those elements that go to make up a “Standard of Living”. ……”. He goes on to say in an insightful manner that …” …One suspects that much benefit would be gained from starting this search at the small village level.”
We are now in the fag end of the year 2007, almost 50 years after the tabling of the Eames India Report, and at the CII-NID Design Summit we had a report from the CII National Committees on Design that was set up to discuss the proposed implementation of the National Design Policy that was announced by the Central Government on the 8th February 2007 and this statement was part of the conference handout. I do wish that this statement or recommendation could have been made available much earlier and to a wider audience of designers and industry and that these recommendations were debated and discussed to the extant that they should be if they are to become inclusive as well as effective. Vikram Kirloskar, Chairman of the CII National Committee on Design spoke briefly about the five broad planks that were considered by the committee and these are listed below:
1. Competitiveness of Industry by Design
2. Design for Culture, Society and Environment
3. Design for Education
4. Branding /Promotion of Design through Media
5. Design Policy implementation including setting up of Design Parks. Venture fund for design

No mention of the village that Eames had warned us about, but we are already 50 years ahead, so things must have changed on the ground, the population is streaming into our urban centres – but the big question is – is this the good life that Indians are aspiring to live? Is this so? I personally do not think so nor is this an inevitable direction, since we can design our future if only we set out to examine the possibilities, by design. At the end of the session on the National Design Policy I was able to ask a question to the Secretary, DIPP Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion who are charged with the responsibility of implementing the policy. I quote, “How are you planning to bring the other Ministries of the Government on board the National Design Policy since all of them need Design and not just Industry, particularly in the areas on Rural Development and Education to name only a few?” – unquote. During this session the member secretary of the AIDI (Association of Indian Design Industry) too offered to partner with Government in furthering the objectives of the NDP and the Secretary immediately suggested that the AIDI get in touch with the Ministry after the conference to initiate necessary action and set up a platform for such cooperation, and I do hope that the AIDI will act on this invitation and make sure that the voice of the design industry is an integral part of the ongoing dialogue on the NDP.

The other interesting sessions that I attended included the dialogue between Kishore Biyani and Bruce Nussbaum that was facilitated by Uday Dandavate. Kishore Biyani, it is evident from his submissions, is very clued in on what design can do for the retail industry that he represents and he has a clear conception of how he proposes to use design to face the huge diversity of India and the Indian consumer. He is one CEO who understands design and I do wish we could see more of his ilk following suit. Ratan Tata, on the other hand is a designer and architect, who was not present at the conference but his impact was certainly felt since there were whispers in the corridors of the great under 100,000 Rupee car (sub-one-lakh car for the masses) being talked about in awe and great respect. I however am surprised and not moved by such a shallow understanding of the transportation aspiration of the Indian citizen while Bangalore and its infrastructure is being visibly choked to the hilt by private automobiles and two-wheelers and the city and in particular, the axis road to the conference venue, is not able to take it anymore with the traffic inching along at a snail’s pace. It is here that the design policy should look at the macro level of the system and see how public transportation can be designed offered at a high quality and such irresponsible adventures as the “sub-one-lakh car”, a great feat of engineering however, are not foisted on the unsuspecting Indian villager and urbanite alike. We need to raise a debate and some of these questions are political, and these are design questions at a systems level. The Politics of Design as the Ulm School Foundation is now discussing it should inform National Policy, but is the Planning Commission listening?

Dr Koshy, Director NID, said all the right things and Bruce Nussbaum was duly impressed as he has stated in his blog-post at the Innovation section of the BusinessWeek Online. Shailajeet “Banny” Bannerjee called for new kind of leadership education for India using design at its core and once again Bruce Nussbaum has a detailed post on his talk at the conference besides one on his own keynote at the CII-NID Summit. In the second session two speakers held my attention. These were Ignacio Germade from Motorola who talked about design Transformation through innovation. His purpose for using design were clear and insightful as a four stage agenda as follows:
1. Discovering Opportunities – Need great processes in design thinking.
2. Facilitating Collaboration – Being good at storytelling.
3. Prototyping Propositions _ Making ideas tangible and visible to all.
4. Inside out branding – Not as icing on the cake since people want the cake and not just the icing.

Very stimulating indeed. The other significant talk of the morning was by Kingshuk Das from IDEO, Paolo Alto who talked about design connecting to the traditional wisdom of India and thereby creating great value, refreshing ideas that are both realistic as well as exotic. GK van Patter was of course stimulating but you can get his talk and the details of his philosophy from his website at the NextD site here. The NextD journal and the methods that he proposed are all available for review at their website link. There were some very boring presentations or should I say sales pitches by companies, which should not have been allowed by the organizers, and we must see that this is not repeated next year even if the companies concerned make a contribution or sponsorship to the conference.

Besides these the presentation by Uday Salunke, Director of Welingkar Institute of Management was very encouraging since now management schools too are looking seriously at Design and they with IDIOM are designing the next generation school called WE-School which we had a glimpse in Sonia Manchanda’s presentation. Of the case studies one stood out for its brilliance and excellence of execution and this was Lemon Design’s presentation by Dipendra Baoni of a new honey packaging and branding strategy that had created quite a stir at the conference. There were several break-out sessions but I did not attend these but I am sure that some of the other participants will share their experiences in the days ahead. In the final analysis it was a good conference, quite unreachable due to the remote location and horrible traffic at Bangalore, but a great meeting place for designer friends but with a huge gap due to very low presence of Industry CEO’s, which should be our objective for the next time around if design is to find a place in the Indian landscape alongside management, finance, science and technology.

I moderated a very interesting session (for me) along with Maoli Marur, Editor of Kyoorius Design Magazine where we had five Indian students and one international student who was working in India to give their insights about the future of design. I will leave it to others to comment on this session and I am sure that this should be a regular feature at the future summits and we must thank Uday Dandavate for insisting on having this event and makiong sure that it was not forgotten in the husstle and bustle of talking to Industry and Government.

Design as Research: Path to Knowledge Creation & Critical Insights

Design as Research: Path to Knowledge Creation & Critical Insights download 36 page pdf file 1.1 mb here.
I was invited this afternoon to lecture to a batch of PhD candidates at the CEPT University and I chose to speak on the topic of “Design as Research: A path to Knowledge Creation and for Critical Insights”. Many design schools and University departments are asking their teachers to acquire PhD qualifications and almost all of the candidates are required to go outside the design discipline to make the transition to a higher qualification if they are to be promoted. However there is little appreciation of the inherent research capacities that are embedded in the design process itself and most designers are required to wander outside their core areas of competence in search of a PhD qualification to further their career as a teacher in design. The question whether the qualification would make them better teachers of design is not in the frame of reckoning and I felt that our understanding of design has in recent years moved far enough to ask for a degree of clarity on this front.

Many design thinkers, have in recent years, made available valuable insights into the role of design research and this occasion gave me the opportunity to revisit some of their writings and to put together my own arguments on the nature of design as it is seen today by some of us and what it could be in the days ahead. In my search for published resources I did not need to go far from my own room since I had been gathering a number of current resources on design thinking and design research and my office has a mini-library that is fairly up-to-date on this particular topic. It gave me the platform to connect the discussions that have been going on the few discussion lists that I am a member of with particular reference to the PhD-Design list which is a platform where over 1200 design professors have been debating these very issues over the past few years and their discourse has been a source of great inspiration and learning for me. The other list that I participate in is the AnthroDesign list, which has many designers, ethnographers and anthropologists; all discussing tools and techniques of design research and this too has been a very stimulating platform of rich learning.

Many of the current thinkers and those who have done considerable research on the topic of design research and its unfolding trajectories are here on these lists and many who may be lurking on these lists too occasionally make significant contributions through their occasional offerings that provides a rich source of intellectual stimulation. I have been encouraging my students to observe these exchanges as best they could and to draw from these current insights about the state of the art in the profession and in academia. In India the DesignIndia list too has been a platform that connects many design professionals who may otherwise be disconnected from the world of design discourse.

For my lecture I was able to cull together insights from a number of published sources and the key arguments came for one key resource, which is the book by Peter Downton, Design Research, RMIT, 2003. I appreciated Downton’s position that, I quote, “Design is a way of inquiring, a way of producing knowing and knowledge, this means it is a way of researching”.


I built my own arguments on these statements and drew additional inputs from a comparison of the positions taken by Herbert Simon, in The Sciences of the Artificial, MIT Press, 1969 and the counterpoint offered by Donald Schon, in The Reflective Practitioner, 1983. The lecture explored the relationship between knowledge production in the sciences and what is produced during the design process. At NID we have developed our own models of the design process as part of the Design Concepts and Concerns course that is offered to all our students at the graduate as well as the post graduate levels. These models gave me the context for exploring the relationship between the various stages in a systems design journey and the corresponding types of knowledge that they generated. While we now have an appreciation of this phenomenon the design profession as well as the academia is still quite uncertain about the validity of their time tested processes and seek to get support and validation from the scientific discourse which is not quite able to fathom that complexities of the design way.

Here the quote by Alain Findelli in his introductory note to the Design plus Research conference at the Politechnico di Milano in 2000 draws our attention to the critical statement by Klaus Krippendorff as he bemoans the lack of faith that designers exhibit in their own knowledge and convictions.

“Probably the most notable pathology of design discourse is its openness to colonisation by other discourses... From within designers are groping for new conceptions and uncritically adopting the perspectives of other discourses invite into their discourse paradigms that may prove disabling in the long run, and incoherences that could break a community apart and systematically erode its identity” Klaus Krippendorff.

This gave me the occasion to discuss the recent books by leading design thinkers around the globe, all of whom have dealt with the changing nature of our design understanding as well as provided some very significant insights about the nature of the design activity as well as its role for humanity in the near and distant future. Research in design and about design are themes that are explored and the findings are helping shape a new identity for design as a field of research.
1. Tomas Maldonado, Design, Nature, Revolution, Harper & Row, 1972
2. Silvia Pizzocaro et al, Design plus Research, Politechnico di Milano, 2000
3. Peter Downton, Design Research, RMIT Press, 2003
4. Nigel Cross, Designerly Ways of Knowing, Springer, 2006
5. Bryan Lawson, What Designers Know, Elsevier, 2004
6. Klaus Krippendorff, The Semantic Turn: A new foundation for design, Taylor & Francis, 2006
7. John Thackara, Wouldn’t it be great if…we could live sustainably – by design?, Design Council, 2007

Design and Design Research needs to discover their core offerings that cannot be substituted by any other form of scientific or academic research and then build a framework of confidence and conviction to offer their own discourse that can make the dream of building sustainable futures as a desirable direction for all of us as John Thackara has been demonstrating through his initiatives with the Design Council, UK as well as through his Doors of Perception initiatives in Europe as well as in India. Designers need to embrace design and the design journey with conviction and we will be able to then convince countries and governments to use this discipline to address the complex issues that confront all of us in our daily lives. Many of these cannot be solved or addressed by our known science methods and design must take centre stage if some of these truly wicked problems are to be solved at all. The paper and model of the design journey as well as the styles of thinking in the design process can be downloaded from this link as a pdf file 271 kb size.

My presentation to the CEPT University PhD class can be downloaded as a pdf file 1.1 mb size from this link: “Design as Research: Path to Knowledge Creation & Critical Insights”.

Last year my lecture to the CEPT PhD candidates was about the Ethics of Design Research. The visual presentation of that lecture can be downloaded from this link as a pdf file of 58 kb size.

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.

Merry Christmas!

I've been very busy at work lately, getting home late and sometimes coming back after the kids are asleep. I've also been out in the shop before work & after everyone's asleep trying to finish the Christmas presents I am building for the girls (shhhh... don't tell them but I'm building a doll cradle for each of them). Lots of trial & error, plus as usual everything is taking about ten times longer than I figured it would. Last night they were glued & screwed together, and the holes filled with plugs cut using a Veritas plug cutter. After trimming the plugs used to fill the screw holes early this morning and some final staining I should be varnishing them tonight with any luck. Then tomorrow I can varnish again, and maybe again of needed. Then hopefully the varnish will mostly cure by the time we leave for Christmas.