Slides and Swings

Recent introspection have made me look at my journey as a designer in a more objective fashion. I interned exactly 10 years ago at a small furniture design firm in Bangalore, worked as an exhibition designer at NID and and an interactive exhibition firm in Delhi thereafter. Did my masters at a trans-disciplinary, artist meets scientist school in New York. Worked at a 500 people architecture firm, followed by a 35 people graphic design firm followed by a 4 people Industrial design firm. What does that say about me as a person and a designer ? Probably that, I could be anything but bored. As if, having covered almost all design disciplines offered at any decent design school were not enough, I recently got a reassuringly positive call from a design strategy firm.

My mom, referring to me recently, said - a rolling stone gathers no moss. I always thought that this was a positive reference since moss is not a nice thing to have on oneself anyways. She doesn’t agree with my interpretation of the saying. Since calling myself a jack of all design trades was becoming cumbersome, I decided to name myself after one of my favorite shows -The Mentalist’. I am calling myself -  The Generalist.

I had started to feel a bit of despair recently regarding my situation as a generalist since it just didnt seem to be doing me any good. Its difficult to be good at photoshop, solidworks, flash, autocad, xhtml, etc all the time. The jobs that involve annoying meetings and ditsy project managers are even worse. Overall, I am dispensable everywhere I work because there is always a specialist who can do my job better, clean up the pixels, get the right curve, come up with better functionality or sometimes just show up on time to a meeting. The anxiety had been slowly increasing leading to sleepless nights dispelled by shots of vodka (no kidding).

This morning Simrit Brar, who I interviewed for my design blog - designwala, recently sent me a link on an article about Parsons School of Design opening the first transdisciplinary design program in the US. The ridiculous sounding program actually lifted my spirits. Here is a reputed design school starting this program because it believes that people can be more than just mere web designers, or architects or some other form of idiotic designer. They can be (drumroll), you guessed it - Generalists. I am yet to do a project that explores all facets of being a kind of designer who has a foot into everything but I am curious to see what could come out of it. Designwala is a step closer to understanding what that could be. For now the dispair has ebbed and has been replaced by a small glimmer of hope. Hope of being able to atleast think about making a dent through design, in what seems like a hopeless infrastructure and workings of an old clunky machine called India. Still in the phase of thinking of what these next steps could be. More on this soon.

The AFHny Studio team won the NYCDOT competition we applied for. It is a cash price of $5000 that goes into building our installation. The whole submission application can be seen here.  I have never really won a competition so the next steps will surely be interesting to watch. Other than that Designwala, my blog on design thinking in India will sport a three to five part series on designers as changemakers. Hopefully the blog will pick up as the viewers see where it is headed and what it communicates.

The past month has seen me struggle in order to to find my next creative home. The days are packed with interviews, sometimes two in a day. Talking with Rick today made me realise, how I have always gone after what I wanted with very few exceptions, coming to NYC, working at places I have worked at, everything came about because I wanted to be a part of it. Now I struggle with the next steps. I thought it was going to be communications for non profits. Now I am not so sure. Going to all the offices, I have started to distinguish spaces, I like design shops that look like they are in the process of creation, lots of drawings, models, tools everywhere seems to inspire confidence in me. Overly designed clean spaces, quiet offices make me wary.

Ultimately it comes down to the creative process. If I can travel, brainstorm, create spaces, design interfaces, edit video, take pictures, sketch a lot, drink a bunch of coffee, sit in sunny cafes and have a team of people who challenge me without pissing me off, I would be happy. I like work in process. Thats also the title of Ricks latest film. I want to steal it for my company name.

Interviewing Shweta for Designwala made me realize where I stood. She talked about how architects (in India) are not into socially responsible projects but would rather be involved in art and fashion. I beleive it is not because they are selfish, its because an artist or designer will do anything that gives him/her enough freedom to play around with and the government controlled bureaucratic urban development schemes are as mundane and slow as lazy siesta afternoons in a the heat of India. That is making me reassess my priorities and what I want to do with my life.

Other than the lessons in patience and resilience I have learnt from the process of job hunting, I hope that thanksgiving time brings with it some good news - a creative place to be for the next year. Till then - Maula yeh bata, yeh zindagi hai kya.

Today I was thinking of an article a friend of mine sent me a while back. It was called the quarter life crisis, so yes it was sent to me 5 years back and it seems like it was only yesterday. However I am pretty much experiencing things which I should have felt at 25 at the age of 30. I am having a quarter life crisis when I am closing in on my 30th birthday. So what does this entail? This entails understanding myself better as a person, why I hate and love certain things, what drives me, what makes me mad and what inspires me. I have noticed that two of my biggest weaknesses are my temper and my impatience. Both of those work for and against me. The challenge is to use it to my benefit, how? that still needs to be figured out. But the fact that I have started acknowledging my weaknesses is a step closer to resolving the crisis.

Other than the personal growth aspect of the quarterlife crisis, I have also been thinking about role as a designer in the present day and age. The past few days has been spent reading dystopic novels like ‘A brave new world’, 1984 and now Fountainhead. As a result of that, these days have also been spent thinking about the construct of our societies. Does Capitalism really lead an individualistic society, is socialism really all about collective strength. I have also been thinking about the present day and age with its social networking tools. A big mass of people expressing what they think. Leveraging the strength of collective consiousness to get a message across.

I have been trying to figure out the niche I fall into. Am I an individualist? Working as a coordinator for Architecture for Humanity or trying to come up with a design initiative that addresses the design issues in India is hardly a sign of a inidividualistic behavior. But I do these things because I can. because I enjoy it more than creating an art object where I cant talk to people, understand their behavior. Maybe I am more of a voyuer than an activist or a social designer. I like to think of maximum exposure of a designed object but I like to design it privately. Co-working and collaboration do come easily to me but I enjoy creating the main concept, main driving idea, the main design idealogy. Those are sure signs of an individualist I guess. Though Ayn Rand made Fountainhead unbearable after a while to read, I do agree that more individualist the designer, the more passionate he or she is about his or her cause. A good example is Usman Haque who I saw speaking yesterday at Studio X. He and I have the same interests -Architecture, Interactions and Systems but I would never approach it the way he does, but I felt his passion for the work he does and the things that drive him. It was inspiring and helped me analyse my own situation and where I wanted to go from where I am.

My 30th birthday nears and I look back and reflect on my 20’s. it was a decade of figuring out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life and the next decade would be the time when I actually do those things which is Design, Design and Design some more. Cheers to that. Where is the booze?

For the past few months I have been mining the internet for inspiration. Insipiration to design, to exercise, to make more money and even to live. The internet has been disappointing so I turned to movies. I watched Objectified, a movie by Gary Huswitt which was inspiring to quite an extent. It made me tear up a bit. Was it because I had already consumed 4 glasses of beers beforehand or was I really shaken up by revisiting the reasons I took to designing as a career. It clarified a few misunderstandings too, I didnt see Dunne and Raby as total losers who can’t get their designs produced but as design communicators. That inspired me to start a blog on Design knowledge, practice and methodology in India called Designwala. For now, it is just a pretty theme and an interesting name (anything with a suffix ‘wala’ in hindi means a vendor, like subjiwala is a vegetable vendor and doodhwala is a milk vendor so designwala obviously was someone who is as common place as a subjiwala and doodhwala but sells design ideas).

The visit to India for my brothers wedding also got me thinking about Delhi as a potential market for design services. I also ran into a bunch of architect friends at the after party for an architecture event focussing on India and the feeling of moving back home and starting anew seemed to be pretty up there. Rick and I are also trying to push to get the Seva NY website up and going. Will post it as soon as it sees the light of the day. Have also been busy facebooking and twittering, installed these application on my Iphone and cant get enough of the social networking. My time in the elevators and coffee shops is well spent with my Iphone. Sometimes I feel the urge to tweet each and every thought I have. I wonder if that is a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe a little bit of both.

The past few months saw me sweating it out to finish the IA for make mine a million dollar website, which is now up and running with a few bugs to be still sorted out. Other than that I breezed through the ‘A better world by Design Conference‘ at RISD and ran into Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity and Emily Pilloton from Project H. The conference was an interesting mix of people including talks by Paul Polak, Ken Banks and Niti Bhan. Contact me if anyone of you are interested in the notes from this event.

I also managed to go to an awesome trip to Falling waters and Kentuck Knob with close close friends. It was cold and it rained but we stayed at the Balter house built by an FLW deciple and managed to live out in the woods. I couldnt sleep without the hustle bustle of the city and had a tough time taking it easy but that happens when you are used to doing a hundred things a day.

The Le Espenranza project under the umbrella of AFHny is seeing some progress. These are some of the prelimnary ideas I had proposed. I also managed to go to a Project H meeting today to pitch a homeless shelter project which might or might not see the light of the day. Other than that the cold winters are taking its toll. A couple of competitions and grants in the pipeline but I am not in my prime optimistic mode with the economy looking like shit and Rick out of work. The inauguration of the new president brings some hope so does the new government website how so ever it looks.

I also keep dreaming up blog aggregators because I am working on one of sorts at work. Also reading up on Happiness for a new project which includes reading Dan Gilberts ‘ Stumbling upon Happiness’. Done reading Malcolm Gladwells ‘Outliers‘ and Junot Diaz’s ‘A brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao’. Half read are Amartya Sens ‘The argumentative Indian’ and something else my brain escapes.

What differentiates a designer from an artist? A designer designs for others and works under constraints and an artist designs for himself and works free of constraints. I am the former and have come to love working under constraints. This evening while walking back on grand street in SOHO to the canal street station, I felt a moment of contentment. Working on a project which empowers women entrepeneurs (count me in) and doing some work with architecture for humanity makes me feel useful and gives me the power to make a change. The day I stop feeling like that, my reason to exist as a human being and a person might just cease to exist. The event which was sponsored by Count Me In was also interesting. It brought into focus all the women who work through family issues and financial constraints to create businesses they are proud of. The project also emphasizes the ever growing hungry community of women business owners. Somehow there was a feeling of guilt, that I wasnt feminist enough to be there and understand and appreciate what was going on. But thinking back makes me feel that everyone was there with their own ghosts and demons and mine wasnt the worst. As a saying goes ‘ sometimes its not what you fear is the biggest impediment but the fear itself”. Designing for a reason or designing as if I give a damn (as Cameron Sinclair puts it) has become an important part of my work and I would certainly like to see it continued.

I started working with Method recently. The first project entails creating a social application to exchange lesson plans amongst teachers. The excitement to be working on a project aimed at helping a good part of a community which has the power to change the way the coming generation thinks is great. On the other hand, I am also looking forward to the upcoming Architecture for Humanity meeting for a new project I want to be involved in with them. Life is pretty much moving towards the direction I want it to be moving towards. Winning a grant for architectural research or to create some kind of social artwork would surely be the icing on the cake. Its quite amazing that this is a collective thought or resultant of the rantings in my previous post. The coming post would most probably deal with a submission for a digital art project and an architectural grant. Fingers crossed for both. Things do take longer than usual for some people but I have noticed that they eventually fall into place if you keep at it.

Urban Computing, Service Design, Ambient Informatics, Microfinance are the latest buzz words for me. These terms are related and unrelated. After my stint at SOM, I am wondering what the next steps could be. What could lead to design of services, infrastructure and systems which would being about some change and create a new way of looking at a certain activity. Developed countries like the US are full systemized. There are good systems like the subway transit, bad system like being able to get into debt super easily and puzzling systems like random luggage checks at the airport (if I am a terrorist, I will definitely not look like one, so stop bumming around with me if I have a beard or wear a turban). What has caught my eye recently is websites and applications like Kiva and the Open Architecture Network. They are collaborative engines to bring about a definite change in a definite time period. The online systems of loaning to the poor and creating a network of architects for a cause is interesting and I would certainly like to be part of such a venture. The lates focus has more been on online networking rather than physical installations. I feel like spreading the word, collecting and organizing a group through online activity to facilitate the solution to a world wide problem is fantastic. Not a big fan of advertising and branding. I prefer application and online content which are used as a medium to broadcast, change, recruit, loan, design and organize. I am also working on the situated technologies competition with proxy. Will publish the document as soon as it is sent day after tomorrow. In addition, I also have a new mac and an Iphone. Moving along I must say. I am not sure if I am ready to say goodbye to my love of creating experiences in physical spaces but all the same I am disappointed beyond anything at the shallowness of it all. Even if it is a medium for mass change or organization, the architects egos kills all the fun!

My first post in the New Year. A lot of excitement, new ideas, competitions, conferences, commissions and discussions. So Eric Fino, Aaron Campbell, Rick Lin and I applied for the InterArchtive commission which we didnt get. But the idea generation and flow was great and so was our project. I think the obsession of interactive architecture with moving walls and surfaces is so complete that they are unable to perceive anything beyond that. Our project PDF is here. I am working with these talented men on more architecture and technology and haven’t been disappointed. I would surely like to work with more women though. Other than that, there is the urbantine project and the CityRacks project which I am looking forward to working on. There are a few more ideas regarding networked household objects which I am obsessed with. A little bit work on that will ensue soon with the help of some friends on India and New York. Other than that I attented the Mind 08 conference, Rahul Mehrotras lecture in Columbia and a panel discussion on interactivity with Tom igoe on the panel. Will post the details on those once I lay my hands on the notes (they are somewhere). I think the first two events surely helped me look at my own work through a lens. I loved Rahul’s work, his honesty, irritation with the bureaucracy and love for the vibrant culture that is India. More to come on that. My new website/blog is up too. I have been concentrating on ‘my’ work. Notice the number of I’s and My’s in this post. it says it all.

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Recently I attended a lecture by Flavia Sparacino. The lecture was held at SOM where i work. She heads a place called Sensing Places in Colorado. Coming from MIT media lab, she works with interactive architecture. I think her lecture wasnt that inspiring, all the virtual reality work was a bit 1980’s and it didnt seem fun to see it in the age of Wii and the X box. As far as interactivity is concerned, I have been having an issue with that for sometime. I think the basic idea of interactive spaces can be very poetic but if it just comprises of more light fixtures in a day where light and noise pollution are hitting the ceiling, I am not sure if that is the best way to go.

The party was a birthday party for two friends. The friends are from ITP. The crowd consisted of a bunch of people from ITP and their spouses or girlfriends or boyfriends who have become a part of the whole group and its intense social dynamics. It was interesting, awkward, fun and scary all together. Its not some place where you lay back and chill out but some place where you put your guard up and try and make sense of what everyone is upto and not get shocked, confused or weirded out.

The four films I saw were a part of an AIDs awareness series by Indian film makers Mira Nair, Santosh Sivan, Farhan Akhtar and Vishal Bhardwaj. They were short films, well done, well executed. One could get a peek into the different styles of the film makers through these shorts. A few personal stories, well done and well told. MercyCorp New York was responsible for the presentation of these movies. I ran away before the panel discussion though. I wasnt in a mood for dissection of these movies instantly after I had seen them.