IF you are a designer of any kind, you have perhaps heard the words ‘artist’, ‘designer’ or just simply even ‘creative’ used fairly interchangeably to describe who you are or what you do. One may assume that this is owing to the fact that the boundaries within design itself, and between art and design, are blurring continually. However, it is also entirely plausible that the general populace, whether in Ahmedabad or other parts of India, still perceives the trade of design and its effects in their own lives as largely ambiguous.

‘Is it by design or default?’ is a question I’ve often heard my father, Dhun Karkaria, ask of decisions, institutions, products, services and situations. He is from the first batch of undergraduates from the National Institute of Design, and like his peers and those that taught him, approaches design with a zealous clarity that is spellbinding. It is thus through this inconspicuous phrase or question that one might begin to address the ambiguity that shrouds design. ‘By design’ implies that the act of designing is intentional and purposeful. We lay emphasis, not on the novelty of an idea or solution (as popularly perceived) but rather on the problem from which it was born, with intent and purpose at its root. Novelty, originality or ‘innovation’ – a term touted far too often for its own good – may then be a resultant by-product.

I choose the word idea in a considered manner. It is from reading Bob Gill, the famous American graphic designer who said, ‘Please never use the word, concept. Great thinkers like Einstein and Newton think of concepts like relativity and gravity. And, of course, there are film producers and car makers with their dopey concept films and concept cars. We, humble graphic designers, never get concepts. Only ideas.’ In drawing up a caricature of ourselves, it is a stinging reminder of the humility in design (lest we choose to fly away in our concept cars). Design at its core, or as it was intended, is not ostentatious and all-assuming; it is inquisitive, unassuming, appropriate, carefully considered and, of course, humble.

 

It is with this humility that I venture into the terrain of design in the city of Ahmedabad. One cannot speak of design in the city without addressing that with which it is synonymous: the National Institute of Design which was set up in 1961. In the 1950s, a young and independent India sought to look within itself, coping with the effects of decolonization and industrialization that was fast gripping the country. As the pace of industrialization accelerated, it was with a sense of urgency that the Government of India expressed the need to address issues of living standards, and that of (potentially deteriorating) consumer products, and the possibility of an institute of industrial design was put forth.

Pupul Jayakar, founder of the Handicrafts and Handloom Exports Corporation of India (HHEC), was the chief catalyst who convinced the Ministry of Industry of this need. Since a previous model didn’t exist, the Government of India, with sponsorship from the Ford Foundation, invited Charles and Ray Eames here in 1957 to examine the problems of design and development and advocate a programme for the proposed institute. It was after three months of travel, including to the most remote parts of the country, and interactions with numerous people from various fields that ‘The India Report’ was birthed. A document that is most relevant and insightful even today, the report spoke of the change in kind rather than degree that India was undergoing. It meticulously fleshed out how an institute, its programme, staff and trainees should be equipped to deal with the urgent issues of ‘food, shelter, distribution and population’. It is through the ethos of this document that not only NID, but design as we know it, has come into being in India.

 

During their travels through India, Charles and Ray Eames met with Gautam and Gira Sarabhai. Gautam Sarabhai had a keen interest in education, specifically Frank Lloyd Wright’s method, and had interacted with names that would make any present-day designer’s jaw drop – Frank Lloyd Wright of course, Frei Otto, Buckminster Fuller, Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, to name but a few. He embraced unconventional methods of education and adopted the ‘Bauhaus postulate of learning by doing’ as his philosophy, which later significantly informed the ethos of the new institute.

Gira Sarabhai (his sister) had trained under Frank Lloyd Wright, and was no stranger to the subtleties of modern design and architecture. One might argue that she still has the keenest eye. As is the case with most things that are significant, there was a timely coming together of people and events to set the wheels in motion. As a result of the efforts by Pupul Jayakar, the Eamses, and Gautam and Gira Sarabhai, the National Institute of Design came to be located in Ahmedabad.

It becomes imperative to look at this rich and fascinating history so that one can understand the context within which design in Ahmedabad exists today. As a second generation designer whose parents are both from early batches (first and third) of undergraduates from NID, but isn’t herself a product of the institute, I end up playing the role of an outsider looking in, but also an insider who is privy to a lived history that is part of this institution, and it is from this vantage point that I write this piece.

In my first thoughts and explorations on pondering the role of design in Ahmedabad, I was perhaps naive and too quick to jump to a line of inquiry that was almost judgemental. With the preconception that owing to NID and its founders, Ahmedabad was once a hub where the who’s who of design came, I asked pointedly what design had done for the city (with the implication that it was little or naught). Surely, Ahmedabad is no longer synonymous with being the hub of design, let alone good design. What on earth happened, I wondered.

 

I was dealt a swift blow by the senior designer in the house (Dhun) that rid me of all naivety and any trace of judgement all too quickly. I retreated to my room and books to lick my wounds and find better lines of questioning, let alone answers. If we asked why design had not outwardly or visibly impacted the city despite the presence of a premiere design institute, we would also have to ask the same of other institutions: were there noticeable effects of physics and space research, management, communication, fashion, urban planning and textile liberally strewn over the city owing to PRL, ISRO, IIM, MICA, ATIRA and CEPT? It would be pompous and well beyond my years to attempt to provide definitive answers or make overarching statements on the impact of design on the city or the lack thereof. So what I attempt instead is to look at the wonderfully curious relationship the two have had over the years, by hopefully posing better questions.

As proposed in The India Report, NID was destined to be at Fatehpur Sikri, but when the Ford Foundation found it unsuitable, the governing body was moved to Bangalore. Gautam and Gira Sarabhai being crucial to the committee, found it inconvenient to have to travel there often, and so the operation was shifted to Ahmedabad. In 50 Years of the National Institute of Design, Pritzker Prize Laureate B.V. Doshi alludes to Ahmedabad as a small city that is well connected with a congenial, cosmopolitan populace, thus suitable for hosting this institution. At the time, the Calico Mills in Ahmedabad had already begun to integrate design by slowly and thoughtfully combining the old and inherited with the modern and the new.

 

But what if the National Institute of Design had been in Bangalore or Fatehpur Sikri? Would design in India be the same as we know it? More pertinently for the purposes of this piece, it would be worthwhile to ponder if Ahmedabad would then be as we know it – would it have continued to be a far more (as compared to present) ‘tradition oriented society’ where decisions are instinctive and automatic rather than intentional and behaviours, impervious? If we were to look at the city as an incubator of sorts, did it provide a propitious environment within which design could grow and thrive?

Perhaps Ahmedabad is akin to the tomb that still stands proudly within NID today. Centuries ago, it was presumably used as a sarai by travellers and caravans as a place to halt and rest. For years now, prospective design students have been coming to Ahmedabad to learn and unlearn. Some stay, most leave, halting only until the road leads them elsewhere – a layover one could think of as between flights. And fly they do. Whilst they do halt, their exchange is one that is fascinating. While Ahmedabad no doubt provides a remarkably compelling playground in the form of the old city with its mystifying yet systematic pandemonium, students or trainees scurry all over making the most of it. They’re quick to seek out craft and craftspersons of all kinds, dying trades, and even obscure little businesses and shops, to satiate their appetite while they are here. The fact that some of these crafts, businesses, and unique trades have not been completely obliterated or become irrelevant in this time of instant gratification can be attributed at least in part, if not entirely, to this community of curious, eager beings in the process of sprouting their design wings.

 

One cannot view design in isolation, devoid of context and unconnected to social and societal threads. To use M.P. Ranjan’s analogy of an iceberg (the parts of it that are above and below water), there is an aspect of design that is visible and tangible, but there is also one that is perceived and felt. What happens to a city that experiences polarization and ghettoization on the basis of religion, caste and class when it interfaces with a community that is not a culmination of the prior divisive attributes, but one that seeks to question assumptions and deep-rooted beliefs in order to ‘create’? What happens to a city that sees large pockets of gender divide when it brushes against a community where women are not always compelled to conform to strictly demarcated gender roles? What happens when a city has to have conversations about sexuality because there is a community within which people can express themselves with at least a modicum of what we call freedom? Surely, these stir societal constructs, even if at a microscopic level.

Speaking of community, one must address the fact that the design community in Ahmedabad is special, mostly because there are quiet giants that walk among us, akin to the Redwood trees. These beings, like the trees, have weathered storms and been privy to evolution itself… the evolution of design. Beacons in their own right, we perhaps see or experience their work routinely unbeknownst to us. The legendary Swiss typeface designer Adrian Frutiger once said, ‘The whole point with type is for you not to be aware it is there. If you remember the shape of a spoon with which you just ate some soup, then the spoon had a poor shape.’ The same can be said of good design and its makers. So unassuming have they been that we have scarcely noticed their presence as they wove themselves into the fabric of the city and on a larger level, the country itself.

 

Under the shade of the larger-than-life Redwood trees are smaller trees taking root, weathering their own storms; another generation of designers finding their feet to forge their own relationship with the city. Amidst the plethora of meaningful work that precedes them, they cannot help but strive towards careful, considered, maybe even heartfelt design that will one day weave itself into the city as well.

As for Ahmedabad, whether as a site of transition or permanence, for its designers, whether ‘by design or by default’, it is the keeper of a legacy of design birthed in India.

 

References:

Bob Gill, Graphic Design as a Second Language. Images Publishing, Victoria, 2004.

50 Years of the National Institute of Design 1961-2011. NID Press, Ahmedabad, 2013.

Charles and Ray Eames, The India Report. NID, Ahmedabad, 1958.

M.P. Ranjan, Design for India. Evolution of Design (presentation). NID, Ahmedabad, 2009.