British Council on Design Cities Debate

British Council on Design Cities Debate

Prof M P Ranjan

Image: The British Council Arts and Architecture page with the participants from the BRIC nations at the Design Cities Debate: Ruy Ohtake: Brazil, Denis Cherdantsev: Russia, Professor M P Ranjan: India and Ou Ning: China.

The voice files of the Design Cities Debate at the Design Museum in London are now available from the British Council Arts site at this link here below:
Audio version of the Design Cities Debate.
Or download the 44MB mp3 file directly from here.
and their page on the event and the participants is here below:
Advocate Biographies link
Other links to the event are here below from the earlier posts on Design for India.
Design Week on Bangalore: “Design City” of the Future
Prof M P Ranjan

Design Week on Bangalore: “Design City” of the Future

Design Week reports on the “Design City” debate in London

Prof M P Ranjan’s papers

Image: Screen shot of the Design Week website reporting the success of the “Design City” Debate in London.

Adam Welch reporting from London has carried a report in the Design Week of 8 January 2009 about the Debate at the Design Museum in London that was held on the 15th December 2008. Adam Welch was amongst the audience that polled at the end of the four nation debate that involved Sao Paolo, Moscow, Beijing and Bangalore.

Read more about the event and the outcome of the debate on the Design Week website here.

Other links to the event are from previous posts on this blog at the links below:
1. The Design Cities Debate and pdf of presentation

2. Bangalore as Design City of the Future

3. BBC Radio features Bangalore and Beijing

4. Design & Politics: “Jaago Re” Initiative from the Jaanagraha in Bangalore

Prof M P Ranjan’s papers

BBC Radio on the Emerging Design Cities: Bangalore & Beijing featured

Design Cities from the BRIC Nations on the BBC Radio: Bangalore & Beijing featured
Prof M P Ranjan Papers

Image: The Design Museum lecture hall before the event. Prof Ranjan and Denis Cherdantsev in the foreground with Ou Ning from China and George Pegasiou of the British Council, London in the background of classic Eames wire chairs that were set up for the audience.

The morning session of the Design Cities Debate started with a visit to Bush House in London for a scheduled interview for BBC Radio along with Deyan Sudjik, Director of the Design Museum. Mark Coles of the BBC conducted the interview and set the tone for the discussion on the Design Cities Debate that had been set up by the exhibition at the Design Museum in London later in the day on 15th December 2008.

The full interview as it was broadcast on Tuesday, 16th December 2008 can be listened to at this link here (BBC interview link page) and those who wish can download the interview as a QuickTime file from this BBC interview download link here. Andrea Kidd was the producer at the BBC who had spoken to me in the preliminary tele-conversation that explored the scope of the discussions at the final interview and Mark Coles sat with the visitors in the small recording studio around a round table while Andrea could be seen through the glass wall while she managed the recording console on the other side.

This experience brought back fond memories from a far away past in my childhood in Madras since I used to then listen to the BBC World Service on shortwave radio every night before bedtime and on the hour (GMT) we heard the chimes of the Big Ben followed by the announcement “… broadcast from Bush House, London”, and here I was at Bush House London to attend the Design Cities interview with Deyan Sudjik of the Design Museum and Ou Ning from Beijing. The BBC interview was broadcast on the evening of Tuesday, 16th December 2008 and it is available online from the Arts and Culture module called the Strand on Tuesday, and the broadcast can be downloaded or listened to at this link below:
The Strand – Tuesday page Go to archives and look up the 16th December , Tuesday page to listen to the broadcast.

Listen to the broadcast here (26 minutes for the full three part module or the last third for the Design Cities discussion.)

The Design & Architecture team at the British Council had proposed this event to the Design Museum and it was through the support from the British Council in London and India that I managed to travel to London to participate in this exciting event.

Prof M P Ranjan Papers

Design Cities Debate: Bengaluru at the Design Museum, London

Prof. M P Ranjan's papers

Design Cities Debate: Bengaluru at the Design Museum, London

Image: Opening slide of my presentation in London at the Design Museum pitching for Bangalore, nay "Bengaluru" as the emerging design city of the world, provided the design community and the local political leadership get it right in the days ahead.

I was invited by the British Council, London to participate in the Design Cities Debate at the Design Museum in London on 15th December 2008. On my way in here I wrote the following note to the DesignIndia discussion list since there was a raging debate already going on there based on the DNA news report that talked about my intention to speak about Bangalore as the potential Design City from India. The Design & Architecture team at the British Council had proposed this event to the Design Museum and it was through the support from the British Council in London and India that I managed to travel to London to participate in this exciting event.

My presentation slide show titled “Bengaluru: the making of a Design City” can be downloaded as a 2.4 mb PDF file from here


I quote my post on Design India below:

“Dear Uday and Friends…

I am sitting in the lounge at Sahar Airport and have some time now to respond to all the very interesting discussions that came out of this thread on Design Cities and now on the Design Capital.

I agree with you entirely that the concept of a capital based on a designer centric view is indeed an ego trip for the profession which is perhaps the last thing that we need to do in a climate of extreme lack of understanding of the core ideas of design as we know it today.

I was excited when the British Council in London invited me to participate in the Design Cities Debate to take place at the Design Museum in London on 15th December 2008 since this would give us an opportunity to explore the idea of design as it would and perhaps could apply to the shaping of a city of the future here in India. For me this was not a call to see which city had already arrived there or which one had the most designers and design related companies, however these would be an influencing factor, but not always relevent, since sometimes design is better off without designers.

Design for me is a basic human activity as well as a professional activity performed at many levels by a variety of professionals with their vast range of skill sets and an equally wide range of motivations and intentions, some deep and profound and some definitely shallow and short term, all of which may be needed and necessary based on the complexity and the context that is being addressed.

My approach was therefore to look at this as an opportunity to articulate what would be the attributes and necessary ingredients for a city to be called a design city of the future in India and then I looked at which city in my opinion could make the grade in the near future provided the necessary conditions and the public and political support could be mobilised to meet this end. All cities have the possibility to be called a Design City if they are able to meeet the conditions that I hoped to articulate in the process of this debate.

I chose Bangalore because I know it best and have been associated with the city from my childheeod visits in summer and I also see some very exciting things happening there that is far beyond the service provided by the practicing design studios, a sort of taking the design abilities and getting critical things done through the use of design thought and action in the public space. Here, I will comment that Poonam Bir Kasturi's Daily Dump is a shining example of such work that has the possibility not just to transform Bangalore but all cities in the world if the success here gets replicated in each local situation with the necessary local adjustments etc. Similarly the amazing success of Industree in mobilising 15000 women in rural India using local grasses and skills to provide fair employment and a hope for the future is another great example that is still work in progress.

Bangalore has also had two great scale building examples with R+K going to WPP and IDIOM joining Kishore Biyani and these show the way forward to meet the huge responsibility that design and designers have to deliver in India today. The other design entrepreneurs in Bangalore and the design schools for a platform that can catalyse huge change in the public space and for me this is very important. Design for industry has been harped upon for may years and I am not very impressed by these achievements. However social good that can reach the aam aadmi or the man in the street is still a far away dream it seems. The IT sector in Bangalore provides us an opportunity to use web2.0 tools to reach public needs be it services or local assiatance in local governance. Bangalore with the Janagraha and other public domocratic institutions are working together with design to help transform.

Yes, political will must be brought into the equation if massive change is to be achieved in geting the city to feel right for its citizens. The quality that Christopher Alexander has called "The Quality without a name", in his Timeless Way of Building", it is not Fashion but a durable and amazing quality that can be felt but cannot be seen or explained....

This for me comes back to the flower garlands that are made everyday in Bangalore and in many Indian cities, handmade strung flower by flower to make an ephemeral thread of fragrence that is worn on the head or offered in prayer on a daily basis. Nature has provided the abundance of flowers to Bangalore which is indeed the flower power of the world and the Rain Tree with its wide arching branches and its equally complex roots shows systems that we need to learn from so that our democracy can work as a designed offering to transform the city to a Design City of the Future. Bangalore can indeed show the way and I do hope that all our cities and villages will follow suit or take a runaway lead in a win win world of tomorrow.

With warm regrads

M P Ranjan
from the Clipper Lounge at Sahar
14 December 2008 at 11.55 am IST”

UnQuote

I am now in London and getting ready to join the other invitees from Brazil, Russia and China (The BRIC Nations) at an interview with BBC Radio at Bush House London and later in the day at the Design Museum for the Debate in the evening. I look forward to the event. More later.

M P Ranjan
Blogging from London
15 December 2008 at 7.30 am local time

Prof. M P Ranjan's papers

Royal College of Art (RCA): Linkages with NID & Indian Design: Contemporary Influences (Part 3/3)

Royal College of Art and the contemporary Indian designers

Picture: Singanapalli Balaram and his Rural Bicycle designed at the RCA as a student project.

Just as NID had trained the first generation of design teachers for India in the 60’s and 70’s some of these leading teachers and some from the second generation were further trained at the RCA in the 70’s. The first to head to London was Prof Singanapalli Balaram who was deputed from the NID for a year long training at the RCA in 1971. He returned to India and worked at NID till he retired from the Institute after which he has moved to Coimbatore to set up a new school of design there called the DJ Academy.

Singanapalli Balaram, RCA, Industrial Design Engineering, 1971.
Home at DJAD, Coimbatore:
Balaram at DJAD:

The IDC was set up in 1969 by Prof Sudha Nadkarni who himself was a student of Hfg Ulm but his students from IDC went to the RCA in the early 70’s to come back to teach at IDC, IIT Mumbai and at the IIT Delhi where another school of design took root.

Lalit Das, IIT, Delhi (RCA, School of Industrial Design Engineering from 1972 to 1974)
Biography:

Kirti Trivedi, IDC, IIT Mumbai (RCA, School of Industrial Design Engineering from 1972 to 1974)
IDC, IIT Mumbai:
Hindu Architecture:
IDC Publications:

K Munshi, IDC, IIT, Mumbai (RCA, School of Industrial Design Engineering in 1974)
Workshop on Product Innovation:

Dhruv Mistry, MA Sculpture RCA 1983
Biography link:

Shilpa Ranade, IDC, IIT, Mumbai Head of Animation at the IDC also stuidied at the RCA.
Interview in Animation Express:

This early round of RCA scholars from India was followed by a stream of very talented designers from NID, most of whom were from the NID’s undergraduate programme and they are listed below with discipline, year and some web links appended below each person.

Picture: Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien at their studio in London

Nipa Doshi, MA (RCA) Furniture, 1997.
British Museum:
John Lobb: Apprentice Shoes:
I.D. Magazine:
Moroso:
Norsk Form:

Nagraj Seshadri, MA (RCA) Industrial Design, 1998.
Core77 1999 Heavyweight Design Champion:
LinkedIn Profile:

Priya Prakash, MA (RCA) Computer Related Design, 2001.
O’Reilly Conference:
Priyascape blog:
Nesta Award:

Diana Irani, MPhil (RCA) Constructed Textiles, 2002.
Constructed Textiles:
Nesta Award:

Pratap Bose, MA Vehicle Design, 2003
RCA Degree Show 2003:
Box Car comment:

Bikram Mittra, MA Design Products, 2007
Bikram Mittra profile:

Animation has been a dominent area of collaboration in recent years. Nina Sabnani participated in the Helen Hamlyn conference for Design for our Future Selves in 2005 and several RCA faculty and students from RCA Animation Department traveled to India and interacted with NID faculty and student teams under an ongoing relationship under an MOU between the two schools.
Helen Hamlyn conference :

Picture: Anab Jain at RCA in 2004

According to Professor Sandra Kemp, Director of Research at the RCA, I quote from her email communication “Our strongest link with NID is through our Animation Department: - the RCA MA Animation course has had a working teaching exchange going for some years now. Over the years several Animation 2nd year students have been in Ahmedabad for 2 week teaching experiences at the NID Animation undergraduate course. All students enjoyed their stay in India a lot and they all came back with valuable experience. In return the MA Animation course had several exchange students on the course, such as Lucky Vakharia in 2007. The Head of Department, Professor Joan Ashworth and the AHRC Research Fellow Deborah Levy have both visited NID to run workshops, along with one of our Visiting Lecturers, Christine Roche. UnQuote

The following NID graduates have done their animation or media related courses from the RCA in recent years.
Sandeep Channarayapatna, MA Animation, 2004
Teheran Film Festival:

Anab Jain, MA Computer Related Design, 2005
Anab Jain website:
Anab Jain RCA portfolio:
Anab Jain's new website

Meghana Bisineer, MA Animation, 2006
Meghana Bisineer resume:
At RCA summer show:

Pooja Pottenkulam, MA Animation, 2006
Pooja Pottenkulam RCA showcase:

Anitha Balachandran, MA Animation, due to graduate 2008

The previous two posts about the linkages with RCA London can be seen here. The Early Years: Linkages with NID & Indian Design and next the Linkages with NID & Indian Design: Major Influences

Royal College of Art (RCA): Linkages with NID & Indian Design: Early Years (Part 1/3)

Royal College of Art, London and its significance to the world of design

Picture: Prof M P Ranjan in his office at NID. Pic by Darrag Murphy and Gisele Raulik

I have written about the strong linkages between the German design schools of the Bauhaus and the HfG Ulm with their education philosophy and teaching methods at the National Institute of Design earlier. I have outlined these influences in some detail in my paper that was presented at the DETM conference at NID in March 2005. The paper and presentation can be downloaded from here. (Paper pdf 69 kb) (Presentation Show pdf 2.5 mb)

While these two German schools have had a huge influence on world design, especially in the educational space, we will need to look at the influences of the Royal College of Art (RCA, London) in the shaping of world design as we know it today and in particular I will use this occasion to look at the influences of the RCA on Indian design education and research.

Picture: The great London Taxi (left) and The Royal College of Art on the web.

According to the RCA communication, I quote:

"The Royal College of Art is a very special kind of ideas factory.

It is the world's only wholly postgraduate university institution of art and design which specialises in teaching and research, offering MA, MPhil and PhD degrees across the disciplines of fine art, applied art, design, communications and humanities.

Over 850 masters and doctoral students drawn from all around the world interact with a teaching staff of over 100 professionals, all being leading art and design practitioners in their own right. It is therefore one of the most concentrated communities of artists and designers to be found anywhere on the planet.

Along with an impressive roll call of visiting professors, lecturers and advisors, students are given first-class opportunities for major collaborations with cultural and industrial partners. It all adds up to a creative environment that's unrivalled elsewhere."

UnQuote.

Historically, the events that led to the construction of the Crystal Palace in 1850 in London and the conduct of the Great Exhibition of 1951 launched the industrial revolution and also set the stage for the entry for design as a major partner with industry of the day. The British Government took cognizance of this influence and decided to invest in design and art education to help the process of assimilation of these new ideas into industry so that British industry continued to hold a leadership position in world trade with the use of these special skill sets.

The Royal College of Art was set up in 1837 as the Government School of Design with the charter of training designers for the industry as a national responsibility. The history of the great school has been captured and made accessible through the book “The Royal College of Art: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Art and Design”, by Christopher Frayling, Barry & Jenkins, London, 1987. I will not repeat what the book does admirably, that of documenting the illustrious students, Professors and administrators of the school but try and explore the connections between this great school and the NID, which was the first design school set up by the Government of India.

In the two following posts I will expand on the major influences during the formative years of Indian design movement and in another post deal with the contemporary influences with exchange and collaborative between the RCA and Indian design schools, particularly the NID. The second post deals with the formative years of Indian design while the third post with the contemporary exchanges and the creation of new generation of international designers from India.