Sustainability DCC Way: Fun Picture Break

Images from the sustainability presentations across Roti, Kapada, Makaan, Bijlee, Rojgaar. More to come.

Prof. M P Rajan































Prof. M P Rajan

DCC2009 Foundation: Focus on Sustainability

What is Design in the age of Global Warming?

DCC2009 Foundation: Focus on Sustainability
Prof M P Ranjan

Image: Foundation class of 2008 batch at the start of DCC2009 this morning in the new extended classroom.

The year has passed and once again we start with a new group of students in the NID Foundation programme who are looking at the Design Concepts and Concerns Course with interest and apprehension. We talked about this today in class and passed the mike around to hear from the students what they had heard from the NID grapevine about the course in the, good and bad, and the discussion was lukewarm. That is till we came to the current topics of interest, in the news, around the world and in India and about their awareness of these events and happenings and its importance to design education and action.

The ice was however broken when we talked about Slumdog Millionare, the movie and its effects being discussed in the media and in blogs about films and the Academy Award nominations. Heated debate followed and it gave us a window to show that on all issues we could hold different positions and some of these could be deep seated and others could be swung in one way or another based on the new data that was presented as well as the quality of the arguments offered in the debates that followed.

Image: DCC2009 class black board discussing “What is Design?” in the age of global warming and setting a stage for the theme of Sustainability.

The blackboard that emerged as Rashmi captured the words that emerged from various efforts of the students to try and define design show the slant that we have chosen to give this particular module. Students would be engaged in ‘visual sense making” as described by G K VanPatter in his NextD conversations and the focus of the course would be on the theme of Sustainability which we had started working on earlier this year for the World Economic Forum at the Design Charette in New Delhi followed by the NID workshop on Sustainability that culminated in the preparation of five posters on the theme which have been sent to Davos for the event on 29th January 2009 which we shall watch with interest. We talked about Victor Papanek and his visit to NID in 1979 as well as the India Report by Charles and Ray Eames in 1958 that makes this the 50th year of its writing. This gives us an opportunity to look back and look forward at India and its need for design in the context of the global financial meltdown as well as the global warming that makes the sustainability debate all the more important for all of us. The other words on the black board are self explanatory or can be cross checked on wikipedia and by google search..

Students have been asked to write their own version of the blackboard discussion and we hope to share some of the more interesting ones here on this blog tomorrow. We closed the day long session with the distribution of the two papers that I had prepared about this course, the first in 2002 for the Design Issues journal called the “Avalanche Effect” (download the paper as 55 kb pdf here) which was unfortunately not carried in the India issue that was published later and the second called “Creating the Unknowable” (download the paper as 50 kb pdf here) which did get accepted in the peer reviewed conference EAD2006 in Bremen, Germany in March 2005. We showed the Davos posters to the students briefly and we will discuss these in greater detail as the course progresses into the theme of sustainability in the days ahead. We propose to form groups tomorrow which will look at what the students already know from their lifetime experience about the topics assigned to them and the chosen topics are very political indeed, at least at the level of popular slogans in Indian politics – Roti, Kapada, Makkan, Bijili, and Rozgar – which stands for Food, Clothing, Housing, Energy and Employment in Hindi.

Image: A sneak preview of the five posters on sustainability which were sent to Davos was shared with the DCC2009 class.

Let us see how this course develops as we go forward from here. Promises to be exciting indeed.
Prof M P Ranjan

Sustainable Food solutions and Waste management

Image: Food wasted in a week: US Department of Agriculture. In India food waste starts from the field due to poor storage and transport facilities at the farm end itself.

An immense opportunity waits to be tapped with regard to Food waste. Enough cannot be said of the amount of waste that is generated in particular by the consumerist mentality of the current generations in terms of food and several aspects relating both directly and indirectly to the food industry. The primary problem that can be seen clearly is one of distribution. The cycle of demand and supply can be met with much greater ease if only a strong distribution network could facilitate it. In India, the land of contrasts, the issue is always one of extremes- Of simultaneous drought and floods, of slums and high rise buildings that share a wall, of children who study in the dim light afforded by the street lamps while others live in over-lit mansions and most strikingly, of starvation and excess.

What will it take towards creating a food network that will be sustainable worldwide? The answer is complex on many levels and yet calls for immediate consideration, action and solution. With the liberal policies of globalization undeniably linking everyone together through good times and bad, no one is spared the consequences of the actions of the other. There are many simultaneous and conflicting consequences that arise as a result of our agricultural policies and the technology that is implemented. On one hand, there is an increase in yield per unit of land as a result of which there is less requirement to cultivate new land. This leads directly to facilitating the sustenance of numerous natural life forms and securing their habitats. At the same time, this comes at the cost of permitting enduring harm to natural resources such as water and soil by imbuing them with immense quantities of prolonged chemical exposure and this leading to a speedy deterioration on these fronts.

The immediate challenge confronting us now is in increasing the production of food to be able to meet the demands of the future without any harmful impact on the environment. Another significant challenge in this realm is to ensure that everyone has access to adequate food to live a fit and fruitful life.

In order to be able to live up to the needs of the future and tackle them successfully, a strategy must be concocted that will encompass the relevant policies and the technology required that will enable us to eradicate food uncertainty, food shortage, and undernourishment in a manner that is in harmony with an ecologically sustainable management of natural resources.

There is a need to connect with the learning that we garner from such a macro-perspective and an understanding of the global phenomenon, in order to apply this newly gained knowledge into our own immediate surrounding. Discipline begins at home and in this regard there are numerous examples of food waste that we can see all around us- our very own canteens and cafeterias, home kitchens etc are huge opportunities for creating a sustainable system of waste food recycling which can cater towards fulfilling many constructive and urgent needs of communities around us. Within this large spectrum of the food chain from pre-process to post-consumption to disposal, waste generation and utilization exist innumerable opportunities that make not only ethical and social sense but also have the ability to generate several layers of economic independence.

Attached are a few links of relevance in this regard.

http://www.p2pays.org/ref/12/11104.pdf

http://www.wastedfood.com/

http://www.cambridgenow.ca/npps/story.cfm?id=1114

http://www.foodbeforefuel.org/

http://naturalspecialtyfoodsmemo.blogspot.com/

http://localfoods.wordpress.com/

http://www.foodtimeline.org/

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Browse/DietHealthSafety/

Urban Farming

This striking image of urban agriculture is from Havana, Cuba. I read in an article that the only MacDonalds in Cuba is at the Guantánamo Bay naval base, which belongs to the US. Cubans on the other hand, enjoy a superior diet, with access to fresh nutritious fruits and vegetables, cereals herbs, etc They have an agricultural system which is largely self sufficient and does not depend on industial farming, pesticides or fertilizer, and is almost entirely organic. They also have a special food culture where communities of people farm together and are close to the production of their food.

How this came about is briefly something like this - following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, Cuba suddenly faced a severe food and energy shortage, since the economic support which included food subsidies, farm equipment, petroleum, pesticides and so on which it had enjoyed came to an end, leading to a period of great hardship.

With limited resources, no subsidies, no Soviet oil for tractors, fertilizer and pesticide, the government decided to prioritize food production, through substantial research and a search for affordable alternative farming techniques. These included many back to basics practices – vermiculture, natural composting, inter cropping, natural pesticides and bio fertilizers. In addition land was redistributed into small and large worker managed collectives, and farmer's markets opened to sell excess food crops.

By 2004, fifteen years later, 35,000 acres of urban gardens produced 3.4 million tons of food. In Havana which is home to 20% of the country's population, 90% of the city's fresh organic produce comes from local urban farms and gardens. The country is beginning to take on legendary status as a model for sustainable agriculture and local food production.

In Mumbai Dr Ramesh T. Doshi, has done pioneering work in developing techniques for terrace farming. On his 1200 sq.ft. terrace in Bandra he grows – lady’s finger, eggplant, leafy vegetables, coconut, pomegranate, chickoo, guava, spices and more. Dr Doshi is an economist by training, and spent many years marketing fertilizer. It was only after retirement at the age of 61, he began experimenting with farming – first at his farm near Pune, and subsequently on his terrace in Mumbai. Dr Doshi's agriculture is done he says using solar energy, only organic compost and pesticides, and controlled amounts of soil, water and labour. He does his planting in closed large diameter polyethylene bags or metal drums, this minimizes the need for water as little water is lost in evaporation or leached underground. He uses sugarcane waste from the local juice vendors and all the organic waste from the neighbours to make compost, through a patented process of rapid aerobic decomposition by thermophilic bacteria. Dr Doshi believes that urban community agriculture is a solution to the problems of collecting, transporting, and disposing urban waste besides of course the access to fresh nutritious food.

Dr Doshi has been sharing his farming practices through demonstrations and trainings. One of his students was Preeti Patil. She is the catering officer at the Mumbai Port Trust Central Kitchen where she has developed a terrace farm using the techniques she learnt. The Kitchen provides food to canteens in the Port Campus daily feeding about 3000 employees. All the waste generated in the kitchen is used in the terrace garden, and all the produce which includes tomatoes, gourds, brinjal, radish, spinach, guava, chikoo, pomegranate, lemon and even cherries is used in the kitchen. She is now working on a project to teach these farming techniques to street children in Mumbai.

All over the world there have been long traditions of farming intensively within and at the edge of cities. Over the last century, with the industrial farming revolution needing large tracts of land, farms have moved further and further away from the city. With the spiraling costs of food and fuel for transportation, coupled with concerns about food security in a rapidly urbanizing world and a widespread appreciation of the superiority of organic over industrial produce, - urban farming is being re-looked at as a possible answer.

Several interesting initiatives along these lines are afoot -

http://www.fallenfruit.org/index.html

http://archinect.com/features/article.php?id=50581_0_23_0_C

http://www.lfa2008.org/event.php?id=57&name=GrowBags:UrbanAllotments

http://www.dott07.com/go/food/urban-farming

Loading Image

Click anywhere to cancel

Image is Unavailable

Loading Image

Click anywhere to cancel

Image is Unavailable

Water Harvesting and Village Study Visualisation

Village Study Visualisation Water Harvesting: As a Case Study Presentations in the DCC Class
Image: Sumiran presenting his Village Study Maps and Models to the DCC class today.

The DCC2008 class was given a treat today with two very inspiring presentations from two NID graduates, Sumiran, a graduate from the SUID programme in Gandhinagar and Dinesh Sharma, a graduate in Product Design from the NID, Paldi campus. Sumiran shared the work of his team on the manner in which they carried out a village study in a selected location with the intention of visualizing the data in an expressive model such that it could be the foundation for a new web based system that could help understand the resources and aspirations of any village in India. The Data Visualisation team had chosen Sahpur village in Gandhinagar using Google Earth as a reference resource and due to many attributes that this particular village had for carrying out their survey. He shared the strategies that the team had adopted as well as the lessons that had been gleaned as insights from their experience. This reflective presentation was also intended to give the Foundation students a platform for their own reflection on their Environmental Perception experience at Dholka town as they went further with the various assignments during this DCC course. The whole area of design opportunity mapping and then modeling these in the form of an associated set of icons and symbols that were used to capture the insights on a map that had some basis for suggesting a new software proposal that could be applied to many other situations was explained as a case study.

Image: Dinesh Sharma explaining the concepts and business processes developed for the Furaat Rain Water Harvesting system that he designed for an Ahmedabad based company.
Dinesh Sharma on the other hand took the students through a very inspiring case study of the Furaat Water Harvesting system design and the business models that the company had explored to realise their design vision as well as their plans going forward. Dinesh told the group that the promoters of the company had come into this particular activity after the 2002 riots of Ahmedabad had completely destroyed their former business of tube well drilling and the two brothers had to literally build a new business from scratch. It is here that they started looking at water harvesting as a business opportunity as well as an avenue to make sense in society. They had approached Dinesh and his design-consulting firm, Isiliye Design, to help in cost reduction and product detailing to start with. However after he got involved the entire system was built from ground up as a new and innovative offering that addressed all the systems level complexities in a manner that the construction became simple, the costs were reduced at many stages of production, transport and maintenance and the product was made modular and easy to use and manage. Dinesh also spoke about the philosophy and ideology that has driven this project from the very beginning and the practical business aspects that were kept in mind while the projects were being designed and executed in the field. Today over 500 installations later a whole new set of insights have been developed and a lot of conviction about the direction have come about as well.

This presentation also came as a useful peg on which the concept of Design Opportunity could be understood by the students and the DCC model for perception and imagination was shared with the class. The rich Q & A session that followed set the stage for the follow up work that would be done by the groups of students and we look forward to their group presentations in class tomorrow.

Design Opportunities in Water: DCC2008 Assignment

Design Opportunities in Water: Looking at the five Indian village types as part of this course
Image: Furaat Water Harvesting system designed by Dinesh Sharma an NID graduate in Product Design.

Yesterday we talked about water and the need for the design community to look closely at this resource that is becoming increasingly scarce as population increases and we tend to use more technology to extract this very limited resource in an unsustainable manner. The key word is sustainability and with imagination and design creativity we can and must find ways to reduce, recycle, recharge and reform the manner in which we think about and use this precious resource. Anita Roddick in her book “Troubled Water” tells us how critical water is to sustaining human life. She says, I quote, “Water is more fundamental than any other substance on Earth: You can live three weeks without food, but without water you’ll be dead in three days.” UnQuote

We also talked about the conversation that Hazel Henderson, futurist, evolutionary economist and author had with Daisaku Ikeda, president of Soka Gakkai International, a Buddhist association to promote peace in their book titled “Planetary Citizenship”. Here the attitudes that were needed to shape values, beliefs and actions for a sustainable world are discussed as an extended dialogue that covers insights form both authors from over 80 years of individual experiences. Their belief that the individual can shape a sustainable world is at the heart of this dialogue. Water is a repeated theme across the book and the need to conserve, share, and protect water as a critical human resource is repeatedly addressed across the many themes that are discussed by these visionaries.

We talked about the work done by Dinesh Sharma with the Furaat Earth Pvt. Ltd. In Ahmedabad over the past three years and used this as a starting point for our collective brainstorming about what the design community could do about this very critical resource, particularly for our village economy. The traditional wisdom of the manner ion which water has been used in the dry regions of Gujarat and Rajasthan have shown many sensitive and durable ways of conserving and using water for the benefit of society. These were also ecologically sensitive and have held the local populations in good stead for the past hundred and even thousands of years. The village pond is a critical method that has been used in all our villages to recharge the ground water as well as to hold surface water for use to feed cattle, for agricultutre as well as for washing and other tasks. The village wells are usually located near the aquifers that are fed by the ponds through a slow filtration process that works unseen below the surface of the pond.

We also spoke about two of our graduates in Baroda (Varodra), Mala and Pradeep Sinha, who have a textile design company which recycles and reprocesses all their water before it is let out into the environment in a high quality discharge. Pradeep had designed India’s first commercially available water filtration system using the Reverse Osmosis process. The e product was launched by the Baroda based company and soon thereafter Symphony took up the marketing of these products on a nation wide franchise agreement.

The task given to our student groups was to brainstorm and research the whole area and come up with design opportunities that can be taken up by seniors across all the disciplines at NID in the Industrial Design, Communication Design and Digital Design disciplines. The presentation is scheduled for the 12th March 2008.

Scenarios for making the City a Creative Place from NID Paldi Batch 3

Scenarios from the Festivals & Culture group

Scenarios for a Creative City from NID Paldi batch 3
Students of the Toy Design, Lifestyle & Accessory Design, Animation Film Design, Film & Video and Ceramic Design programmes at NID Paldi campus formed the third batch of the DCC course. They were assigned four areas to investigate and develop concepts after building shared perspectives through a process of brainstorming, categorisation, modeling and metaphor building. All the groups looked at the issues dealing with the Strategies for building Creative Cities in India. They had to make sense of what they saw was happening in Ahmedabad and build a shared understanding of these developments through a process of making sense of the data that was available at hand. The four areas assigned included Healthy Sports in the City, Art Infrastructure for the City, Public Education to make the City a Creative Place, and to Enhance the Festivals and Culture of the City all to be examined from the perspective of sustainability and creativity. The selected scenarios developed by each of these groups is shown below. Click each image to enlarge

Scenarios from the Healthy Sports group

Scenarios from the Art Infrastructure group

Scenarios from the Public Education group

This batch included 50 students from the Post Graduate disciplines of Toy Design, Lifestyle & Accessory Design, Animation Film Design, Film & Video and Ceramic Design programmes at NID Paldi campus.

Scenarios for sustainability from NID Paldi batch 2

Scenarios for sustainability from NID Paldi batch 2 (one from the Learning group)
Students of the Transportation & Automobile Design, Product Design, Apparel Design, Graphic Design and Strategic Design management programmes at NID Paldi campus formed the second batch of the DCC course. They were assigned five areas to investigate and develop concepts after building shared perspectives through a process of brainstorming, categorisation, modeling and metaphor building. All the groups looked at the issues dealing with the Sustainability as a Principle for Design Action in India. They had to make sense of what they saw was happening and build a shared understanding of these developments through a process of making sense of the data that was available. The five areas assigned included Learning, Food, Health, Play and Mobility all to be examined from the perspective of sustainability. The scenarios developed by each of these groups is shown below. Click each image to enlarge.

Scenarios from the Learning Group.




Scenarios from the Food Group.



Scenarios from the Health Group.



Scenarios from the Play Group.



Scenarios from the Mobility Group.



This batch included 64 students in all from the Transportation & Automobile Design, Product Design, Apparel Design, Graphic Design and Strategic Design management programmes at NID Paldi campus. Some of their scenarios are shown above.

Scenarios for sustainability from NID Paldi batch 1

Scenarios for sustainability from NID Paldi batch 1
Students of the Furniture Design and Textile Design programmes at NID Paldi campus formed the first batch of the DCC course at Paldi this semester. They were assigned three areas to investigate and develop concepts after building shared perspectives through a process of brainstorming, categorisation, modeling and metaphor building. All the groups looked at the issues dealing with the Future of the Retail sector in India that are being transformed rapidly by the entry of big players and corporate entities and soon to be made open to multinationals as well. They had to make sense of what they saw was happening and build a shared understanding of these developments through a process of making sense of the data that was available.

The first group looked at Fresh food and organic food was the area addressed by them through the process described above.






The second group looked at issues of sustainability in Home Electronic products and opportunities for the retail sector.





The third group looked at the area of Provisions for the home through local shops and examined the sustainability issues that could be explored and envisaged as viable scenarios that could be taken forward.



In many cities and metros the small scale retailers are getting agitated by these rapid changes and are asking for a review of government policies in these sectors. Some very contentious issues and political opportunism has resulted in a lot of protest but few ideas have emerged as to what alternatives we have at hand and if we had these alternatives shown as visible scenarios these could inform some of the policy changes and gat political acceptance from the affected people as well. Can design thinking and action help show some of these alternatives which can then be debated and used to inform the decision making process and this too after we examine the issues of sustainability and social equity which are at stake in this area.

Shown above are some of the scenarios prepared by the individual students who worked in teams in the early stages (as described earlier see link here) and in the final stage of this two week course they explored five design opportunities which they personally felt had value and merit. One of these design opportunities was then taken forward as a scenario visualisation exercise in the process of learning design thinking and action as part of this course in Design Concepts and Concerns at NID. Some selected scenarios from each of these groups are shown here. In all this batch was composed on 30 students, all at the post Graduate level and coming from very different backgrounds.