Architecture and Design- the old and new!

Let’s start with the new beginnings…

India finally has it’s own body for the Design Industry. Called the ‘Association of Designers of India’ (ADI), the initiative of forming this body began a year ago, when the Pune Design Foundation and AIDI, Bangalore members decided to dissolve their respective local bodies and come together to create a pan-India body for Design. So history is being made and the Facebook group, within a matter of few days only, has a membership of 300+ designers, all raring to come together and work for Design and it’s promotion.

The ADI will be formally launched on February 10th, 2011 during the inauguration of the Pune Design Festival.

The Pune Design Festival or PDFest as it is more popularly known as, is in its 5th year and promises to be a wonderful collaboration between different design fields, with various events lined up.

Mukund and I from Sarvasva are proud and honoured too, to have been part of the founding body of both – the ADI and the PDFest. What glorious times we live in! And I’m sure, this is just the beginning of more to come.

Look up ADI on www.associationofdesignersofindia.com (the site is still coming up, will keep you all posted) and PDFest on www.punedesignfestival.org.

On another note, I have been doing a month’s course on Indian History/Archaeology and Architecture and have been learning so much of what makes this great country; including some of the renowned teachers who are taking time out to lecture and share their work and viewpoints. I especially wanted to do this course so that I could further supplement ‘Pune Walks’ (the heritage walks that our firm conducts) with the knowledge from experts.

And while I have been seeing the extreme passion and care being taken for projects in archaeology, I have failed to see the same happening in the heritage conservation/ restoration segment, especially here in Pune. And what is saddening more so is the huge gap between the ancient history (archaeology) and the modern times; which makes the middle segment of history/heritage all the more so important. And hence required to be respected, saved, documented, conserved, restored and maintained. Not retrofitted with the new only, or with the modernistic idea of what we think these buildings /structures should be. Because, if these structures are not going to be part of our present and future, we will in the long run have no link to our immediate past.

And the past is important for the future to exist.

- Darpana.

Pecha Kucha Night, Pune. Vol- 1. A review.

Pecha Kucha Night Pune – Vol 1.

Couple of hours to go before the first Pecha Kucha Night in Pune, and all of us at Sarvasva Designs were going crazy over looping all presentations and checking, rechecking the same. Mukund, my co-Director at Sarvasva was at the venue with Manasi and setting up the screen, checking the sound system and getting the venue ready.

I for one, had not been nervous till the D-day had dawned. We had everything in control, or so I thought, completely focusing only on the presentations, while my team ran around working on the rest of the event details. Of course, later on, my excitement and nervousness combined became a potential time bomb ready to explode.

We had a surprise guest that day, an experienced Pecha Kucha Nighter… all the way from UK – and who had his presentation ready to showcase again. So we thought, why not?! Let’s begin with his presentation as a prelude to the actual Pune PKN. Which is why, Supriya from our office, was on her way to pick up the presentation. All of this, just few hours before 20:20pm, the scheduled time.

When we reached the venue, we were actually pleasantly surprised that people were on time. In India, we joke about the IST (Indian Standard Time), which can differ from a mere 5 minutes to couple of hours from the actual scheduled time. In this case, things were on time. So began our first PKN in Pune.

Our basic round of introduction was short and sweet because Mark and Astrid and the Tokyo team had created a wonderful video on PKN that made my job easier. And what was lovely was the personalized touch. It had “Hello Pune!” all over it, making us very welcomed, and very much part of the large family PKN is.

The prelude of course began with our surprise guest of the evening- Sunand Prasad. A well-known architect and founder of Penoyre & Prasad, UK; Sunand is also the ex-President of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and we were glad to have him present because it set precedence for the next 11 presenters, of how to actually speak in 6m.40seconds. His presentation was that of an ingenious concept he had thought of – the recreating and setting up of the now non-existent, but still famous Crystal Palace.

We then officially declared the first volume of Pecha Kucha Night –Pune as begun.

Taking the cue from Sunand, next spoke Shrikant Nivasarkar- one of the most influential architect and designer from India, and also the first Indian to become the President of the IFI (International Federation of Interior Architect / Designers). He talked about the process of creating an ergonomic and eco-friendly chair through his topic, ‘The Story of a Chair’. His in-depth knowledge and also passion for furniture design came across through his brilliant work.

Our third presenter for the evening, and arguably one of the most atypical kinds of personalities we had that evening was Pankaj Sapkal. An industrial designer by profession, Pankaj has great know-how of many things under the sun…one of which he shared with us. His topic being ‘Diet & Creativity’, which had the audience hooked on, amused as well as curious.

Falguni Gokhale, our next presenter, is a well-known graphic designer. But she is an equally good or better painter. And her presentation took us through her journey as a painter, amidst various colours, textures, styles of painting…one better than the other. She didn’t speak, she didn’t have to- her paintings spoke more than enough.

Completely different in nature of topic was that of our next presenter. Suhas Deo, an architect, left the audience spell bound through his presentation on ‘Orchids’. One would never have thought that there could be such a large variety, and growing right here in India. And Suhas’ love for the plant shone through, allowing us all to be absorbed in that magic.

Our first poetry session began with Nidheesh Tyagi, editor of a well-known local newspaper. His timing was accurate- just three seconds before the allotted time limit, Nidheesh finished the last of his poems- which he had dedicated to his daughter.

Another senior journalist, and senior editor of a renowned newspaper, Sunanda Mehta took us along with her on her journey to ‘Greenland’. It was wonderful seeing the beautiful icescapes, the small little witty notes that Sunanda had posted about her trip, and the overall beauty of a country very different from our own.

BEEEEEEEEEEEER BREAK! Which was opposed by many- but we told them that we had to break- we must follow rules! So we had a short ten minute break to allow people to relieve their legs and whatever else, meet up and interact and also check out the venue and drinks (which incidentally was not beer).

But as quickly as they had dispersed, the audience was back on their seats to take some more of Pecha Kucha. Which started off with an interesting presentation on ‘Chinese Gardens’ by Varsha Gavandi, a landscape designer. Details of materials, planning, water bodies and more were introduced during this talk.

The next presentation was a splash of colour, text styles and great Indian music. Sanjeev Joshi, architect and artist, showed his calligraphy and water colour paintings, on the soundtrack of Vande Mataram by A.R.Rahman. It had the crowd going oohing and aahing and asking Sanjeev to take workshops.

Priya Sarukkai Chabria is a poet and novelist, and also was our ninth presenter of the Pune PKN (not including Sunand). She recited few of her poems before putting on a soundtrack of a beautiful poem called ‘Spirit of Water’, which had music playing in the background of the poetry recitation. There was a complete hush in the venue as this track was played, creating a very ethereal and uplifting feeling to the evening.

Our host of the evening was Christopher Charles Benninger, a renowned and extremely respected architect in India. It was his office courtyard that was turned to become the venue of our PKN. We had actually gone to invite him to be one of the presenters, and a talk on venues, or lack of them, with Ram, the Managing Director at CCBA- Christopher’s firm, got us this beautiful space as the very befitting venue for the first PKN in Pune.

Christopher was the next presenter, after Priya. And he showed a very crisp film on building a ‘green’ and sustainable architecture, city and life.

Our last presenter or rather presenters, as there were two of them, were young Kathak exponents- Kaveri Agashe and Sheetal Kolwalkar. Kaveri spoke about the nuances of the dance and then they both gave a brilliant performance, marking the end of the night with a big bang.

When I thanked the audience for coming and bid them goodnight, I could sense the imperceptible disappointment of the crowd because the night was over. But overriding that was the buzz of anticipation for the next PKN, as well as the joy of experiencing the first here in Pune as well as the variety of topics.

And finally, that was all we wanted… for everybody to enjoy this first PKN and support us for all the next ones to come- which was evident through the comments left by the guests… Yeh Dil Maange More! (This heart wants more… )

Twitter on…

Mukund and I just joined Twitter recently, and simply love the format. It’s so easy to connect to everybody and be updated on not just people, but even happenings, events, companies and more. With just a line, you are in touch with someone, somewhere.

I think ‘making connections’ is the key to everything in the future.

At Sarvasva, we believe in this future and have therefore taken up many initiatives towards it. The very talked about ‘Pecha Kucha’ is one such event. Just yesterday, the Indian Express newspaper carried an article on the same and our initiative of getting it to Pune. http://epaper.indianexpress.com/IE/IEH/2009/07/02/INDEX.SHTML

‘Design Intersect’ is another such event. Aimed to be a ‘people to design’ connect, the idea is to throw open design to public through various installations, exhibitions and A/V presentations. This is not to preach or lecture about design, but just to let it be stimulated into the senses. A lot of people in India are not aware of what ‘Design’ is, or how it can affect our everyday lives. And very few designers even bother to push it beyond the realm of the office and client space. But design has been and is about social impact. And if we cannot think to make that connection with the public realm, we are missing out on the key element to design.

Connecting alumni from college is another interesting exercise we have got into. Our college, the Academy of Architecture, is 52 years old and we never had an alumni reunion, leave aside an alumni association. Thanks to great connectors like Facebook and Orkut, we were able to get in touch with 300+ ex-students of the college and organised a grand reunion party for all batches. The power of connection, Jai ho!

Coming back to Twitter. If you just read through the many tweets, especially of responses to a particular tweet, it’s crazy how much information is within your reach and also how you suddenly get updated and are also in the global scene of things, all within minutes. Its as if the future is unfolding around you, and you are a part of that important moment.

You can reach me on http://twitter.com/DarpanaSarvasva to know more on what Sarvasva is upto.

Cheers,
Darpana.

DNA Pune_ interview. 3rd June 2009

History in the making for Indian Design

Dear All,

Last evening, 30th May ’09 saw a group of designers getting together to initiate and form the first national body of designers of India. It was just a preliminary meeting, but one that will consequently set the precedence for any action that will be taken in this regard.

This initiative has been taken by the Pune Design Foundation (PDF) and the Association of Indian Design Industry (AIDI).

We had Shrikant Nivasarkar, President IFI, who joined in as friend and advisor.

Will keep you all updated as we progress.
Warm regards,
Darpana.