Rebecca Reubens: Bamboo – Sustainability – Design

Rebecca Reubens: Bamboo – Sustainability – Design

The book “Bamboo: From Green Design to Sustainable Design” by Rebecca Reubens is now on the market and available on Amazon, Flipkart and at stores in India and overseas. Today I got my hands on my own copy inscribed by Rebecca and it is a good feeling to see the seeds sown so many years ago blossom and grow into such a fine offering. Some time ago she asked me to write an Introduction for her book and my note is now part of that product offering as the "Preamble" which I have quoted below.

Amazon site link

Flipkart site link

Preamble

Rebecca Reubens has asked me to write an Introduction for her new book that attempts to bridge three fields that I am deeply interested in and in which I too have been working for a very long time now. The three fields are Design, Bamboo and Sustainability, all of which are extremely complex in their own right and there is little real understanding of the issues and approaches within each of them in the modern world due to a paucity of published research here. Modern design has been around for some time having evolved from its roots in the industrial revolution but it has unfortunately become a form of consumerist expression by industry and the profession and the real human development angle is all but forgotten and we need to rediscover this aspect as a fresh approach. Bamboo is still quite unknown tomodern  industry and the design profession although it is a grand old material of traditional societies across Asia and Latin America. Finally, Sustainability has arrived with a bang at the policy level since we are faced with the excesses of industry and governence that has caused both global warming and climate change as well as social unrest which is a product of our selfish ways, all needing a serious rethink and I am happy to see these three issues being addressed here in this book.

In the world of traditional societies in Asia, Africa and Latin America there exists a demonstrated deep understanding of all three subjects since these have been used in an evolutionary manner by local communities for many centuries. These continue to exist as a living culture in their rural communities and lifestyles even today but I must say that modern communication and changing aspirations is affecting these towards rapid extinction. Just as our plant and animal species are being depleted by massive modern exploitation of resources these pearls of traditional wisdom are being lost just as rapidly by human neglect. Here I must draw particular attention to the Apa Tani tribes of Arunachal Pradesh who have over many centuries of development in their niche valley in the Eastern Himalayas demonstrated a sustainable lifestyle that is based on the careful cultivation and utilisation of bamboo, timber and an integrated water management system for agriculture that is as yet an unknown value in modern life around the world.

Design, on the other hand, is a natural human activity that evolved with man over the ages but it has now has been relegated to the precincts of a professional marketing priesthood that manages the activity in the marketplace of our global economy. Design as it was deeply understood by traditional societies as a broad based human imaginative activity has been relegated to the back burner since we have chosen to follow the specialized path of science and the trained manager since they provide rational answers for everything and modern man and their society can only decide based on explicit knowledge while design in most cases is felt or tacit knowledge and is based on instincts that are better judged by sensitive interpretation rather than by the application of cold logic. This is why I felt compelled to set up my blog titled “Design for India” where I could debate the other dmensions of design that are much needed in India today.

Bamboo, has been nurtured by traditional societies across Asia and Latin America and its varied species provide a natural material that had wide spread use in thousands of traditional applications in many parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America where it was abundantly grown but with the arrival of industrial revolution and the spread of Western know-how the dominant materials of our economies started depending on minerals like stone, limestone and cement, metals like steel and copper, synthetics such as plastics and petrochemicals and some economic agricultural commodities such as cotton and jute. Bamboo was therefore neglected by the colonial leaders as the spread of technology and formalized knowledge also meant the reduction of local knowledge in materials that were already in wide and sophisticated use in Asia and Latin America, particularly bamboo which was considered the ‘poor mans timber’ while the emphasis and official attention of the Government in India shifted to timber and wood during the heydays of the British Raj.

Sustainability is the hallmark of most settled societies that evolved slowly over thousands of years and gradually built up their lessons of stable and predictable agriculture and lifestyles that were quite in sync with the beat of natures’ processes. However with the arrival of power assisted technologies and communication man could do a lot more and much faster and the race for the dominance of nature commenced in real earnest and each nation tried to outdo the other in their race for global dominance in economy, power and social well being, all measured by growth and growth alone. However, the destruction of pristine rain forests in search for minerals and material wealth and the release of toxic gasses into the atmosphere has had its natural consequences and we are on the threshold of rediscovering the concept of sustainability in the face of the threat of human extinction, a threat that is imminent, if corrective strategies are not adopted by the worlds citizens and their political leaders on a most urgent basis. Sustainability is then a call for a return to a steady-state economy that echoes nature in all its involved and intertwined processes.

This impending crisis places this particular manuscript at the centre of the debate where all three subjects can play a meaningful role and in trying to address and bridge these three difficult but critical fields that promise to bring long term benefits that can counter the problems of our uncontrolled developments of the past few hundred years. Design strategies will need to be explored and design itself will need to be understood and applied by political leadership across the world along with the subjects of science, technology and management and design at a deep level will play a huge role in the reversal of global warming and the move towards sustainability in the days ahead. Bamboo is the fastest growing plant material known to man and we will need to learn to use it in new and improved ways to supplement our vast needs for materials across many areas of application and much research would be needed to fill the gaps in our knowledge along with an urgent attempt to codify and garner the traditional wisdom that still exists across the bamboo culture zones of the world, particularly in Asia and Latin America. Sustainability too is a subject of current scientific and political interest and there is much that we need to understand about the symbiotic processes that live and work in nature and then be able to use this understanding back into our own ways of living and doing things in the future.

This manuscript, “Bamboo: From Green Design to Sustainable Design” by Rebecca Reubens stands as a brave attempt to bridge the huge gap and I am sure it will encourage others to follow in the much needed integrative research and design actions that is needed in the days ahead. Rebecca studied design at National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) and then joined National Institute of Design (NID) in the Furniture Design discipline where I used to trach teach till I retired in 2010. She started her own journey into bamboo when she took on the subject as her Diploma Project as a student of Furniture Design at NID. We had a challenging project handy as part of the Bamboo & Cane Development Institute (BCDI)project that I was heading in 2001 and she has stayed with the subject and journeyed far as a member of the International Network of Bamboo & Rattan (INBAR) field team and now she has taken it on as her subject for her PhD Thesis at TU Delft in Design and Sustainability through the medium of Bamboo. She also went on to set up her own enterprise to work with local communities in Gujarat and from this to learn the significance of human effort at the grassroots using Design, Bamboo and Sustainability as her driving principles and to learn from this experience that which is not yet stated in any book so far, lessons from real life experiences from the field. All three much needed today and I wish her success.

Prof. M P Ranjan

Design Thinker and

Author of blog – www.DesignForIndia.com

12 March 2012

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Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics in Design

Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics in Design : Keynote address at the 4th National Design Convention at Istanbul on 8th October 2009.

Prof M P Ranjan

Prof M P Ranjan has been invited to deliver the keynote lecture at the 4th National Design Convention at Istanbul that is being organized by the Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey. This gives us an opportunity to look at the forces that are influencing design today and those that have helped shaped it over the past five to eight decades since the Bauhaus and the Hfg Ulm schools in Germany. My lecture looks at the ethical dimensions in design and I am quoting the abstract of my paper below along with a couple of models that I shall be using to explore these dimensions in my lecture. It is supported by case studies that we had researched for the sustainability posters that we had designed for the World Economic Forum in January this year as well as some of our own work at NID that could illustrate these ethical dimensions as we go forward from here. The various ethical dimensions have been grouped into the three orders of design that had been written about in a previous post on this blog and the list of books from my design bookshelf is also quoted below for immediate reference.

Image01: Title page of the visual presentation titled “Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics in Design”

Abstract:

Keynote lecturer at the 4th National Design Conference between 8th and 9th October 2009 at ITU in Istanbul, Turkey at the invitation of the Department of Industrial Product Design at Istanbul Technical University (ITU) and the conference co-sponsors, Koleksion A.S., Profilo and the ITU.

Our understanding of design has been evolving steadily over the past 100 years and in recent years there has been a rush of new research into a variety of dimensions and Ethics is one the many dimensions that have received research attention. In this paper we look at the various dimensions of design and at current and past definitions to see the contemporary understanding of the subject as we see it today with the aid of models that the author has evolved over several years of reflection and research. We then trace the evolution of design as a natural human activity and restate this history in terms of the major stages of evolution from its origins in the use of fire and tools through the development of mobility, agriculture, symbolic expression, crafts production and on to industrial production and beyond to the information and knowledge products of the day. This sets the stage to ponder about the future of the activity and of the discipline as we see it today.

With the use of a model the expanding vortex of design value and action is discussed with reference to the role of ethics and value orientation at each of the unfolding stages through which we have come to understand and use design over the years. Beginning with the material values of quality and appropriateness we explore the unfolding dimensions of craftsmanship, function, technique, science, economy and aesthetics that has held the attention of design philosophers and artists over the post renaissance period. In the last fifty years our attention has shifted through the work of several design thought leaders to aspects of impact of design on society, communication and semiotics, environment and even on politics and culture with some discussion on each of the major contributors in this ongoing discourse. The further developments that lead to systems thinking and on to the spiritual levels are introduced to place the ethical debate at the centre of the design discourse at each of these levels of engagement.

Some critical case examples are introduced to exemplify the arguments that have been made to establish the various levels of ethical actions that design has discovered and with these the author will argue that design is evolving to a more complex form that will require new kind of integrated design education that is already being experimented with across the world in the face of a series of crisis that we have been facing in industrial, economical, social, and most visibly at the political and ecological levels. These ethical lessons are still diffuse and disconnected in the fabric of design action across the world and we will need to find ways of bringing these to the hand, head and heart of design education if we are to find a new value for design that will help us address the deep crisis that we are facing today.

The full paper addresses the following six questions by expanding on each as we go forward with the discussions that each question entails.
1. What is Design today?
2. How did Design evolve from being a core human activity to become a modern discipline with a significant future?
3. What are the unfolding dimensions and orders of Design that we can call the “Ethical Vortex of Design”?
4. Who are the thought leaders who have anticipated these expanding dimensions of Design particularly from an ethical perspective?
5. Are there some critical cases in this broader filed of Design that could provide clues for our journey forward at each of these ethical nodes towards an “Integrated Design of the Future”?
6. How do we move towards a new Design education that can “Create the Unknowable – the future for all of us”, in an ethical manner and still be in tune with the needs of our times?
~

Image02: Three Orders of Design: Model showing the expanding dimensions of the vortex of design thought and action.

Thought Leaders in Design: List of books that shaped design thinking in India.

Image03: The Ethical Vortex of Design with the Three Orders overlapped showing the placement of design thought leaders from my personal view and reading.

Design Theory related books which I call the “Design Bookshelf”.

1. Bruce Archer, Design Awareness and Planned Creativity in Industry, Office of Design, Trade and Commerce, Ottawa and the Design Council, London, 1974

2. John Chris Jones, Design Methods: Seeds of Human Futures, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, London, 1970

3. John Chris Jones, Designing Designing, Architecture Design and Technology Press, London, 1991

4. Johannes Itten, Design and Form: The Basic Course at the Bauhaus, Thames & Hudson, London, 1963, 1975

5. Josef Albers, Interaction of Color: Revised Edition, Yale University Press, 1971

6. Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook, Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1953, 1962

7. Paul Klee, Paul Klee Notebooks Volume 1 The Thinking Eye, Lund Humphries, London, 1969

8. Paul Klee, Paul Klee Notebooks: The Nature of Nature Volume 2, Lund Humphries Pub Ltd, 1992

9. Lazlo Moholy Nagy, The New Vision: Fundamentals of Bauhaus Design. Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Daphne M. Hoffmann, Dover Publications, New York, 2005

10. Nigel Whiteley, Design for Society, Reaktion Books Ltd, London, 1993

11. M K Gandhi, Gandhi: 'Hind Swaraj' and Other Writings, in Anthony J. Parel (Ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997

12. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, Harper and Row, New York, 1965

13. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man, HarperCollins, New York, 1969

14. Robert Prisig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, Bantam, New York, 1984

15. R Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path, St. Martin's Griffin; 2nd edition, New York, 1982

16. Otl Aicher, World as Design, Wiley-VCH, Berlin, 1994

17. Thomas Maldonado, Gui Bonsiepe, Renate Kietzmann et al., eds, “Ulm (1 to 21): Journal of the Hoschule fur Gestaltung”, Hoschule fur Gestaltung, Ulm, 1958 to 1968

18. Tomas Maldonado, Design, Nature, and Revolution: Toward a Critical Ecology, Harper & Row, New York, 1972

19. Gui Bonsiepe, Interface - An Approach to Design, Jan Van Eyck Akademie,Netherlands, 1999

20. Christopher Alexander, Nature of Order, Book 1 – Phenomenon of Life, Book 2 – A Vision of Living World, Book 3 – The Process of Creating Life and Book 4 – The Luminous Ground, The Centre for Environmental Structure Publishing, Berkeley, 2001 to 2004

21. David Pye, The Nature of Design, Studio-Vista, London, 1964

22. David Pye, Nature and Art of Workmanship, Cambium Press; Revised edition, London, 1995

23. Norman Potter, What is a Designer: things, places, messages, Hyphen Press, London, 2002

24. John. Heskett, Industrial Design, Thames & Hudson, London, 1985

25. John. Heskett, Toothpicks and Logos: Design in Everyday Life, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002

26. Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change, Pantheon Books, New York, 1971

27. Victor Papanek, The Green Imperative: Natural Design for the Real World, Thames & Hudson, 1995

28. Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, Volume 2, University Of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1983

29. Stafford Beer, Platform for Change: A Message from Stafford Beer, John Wiley & Sons Inc, London, 1975

30. Charles & Ray Eames, Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, in John Neuhart, Marylin Neuhart and Ray Eames (authors), Abrams, New York, 1994

31. Jiddu Krishnamurthy, Freedom from the Known, HarperOne, New York, 1975

32. Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin, Discovering Design: Explorations in Design Studies, University Of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995)

33. Victor Margolin, Politics of the Artificial: Essays in Design and Design Studies, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002

34. Victor Margolin and Richard Buchanan, Idea of Design: A Design Issues Reader, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1996

35. Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things, Basic Books, New York, 2002

36. Donald A. Schon, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, Basic Books, New York, 1983

37. Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., USA, 1987.

38. Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature: How to Bring Sciences into Democracy, (tr. by Catherine Porter), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., USA, 2004.

39. Hazel Henderson, Beyond Globalization. Kumarian Press, 1999

40. Hazel Henderson, Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2006

41. Bryan Czeck, Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train: Errant Economists, Shameful Spenders, and a Plan to Stop them All, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000

42. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity : Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Harper Perennial, New York , 1996

43. Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and William Damon, Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet, Basic Books, New York, 2002

44. Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and William Damon, Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning. Basic Books, New York, 2002

45. Klaus Krippendorff, The Semantic Turn: A New Foundation for Design, Taylor & Francis CRC, New York, 2006

46. Wolfgang Jonas and Jan Meyer-Veden, “Mind the gap! on knowing and not-knowing in design”, H.M Hauschild GmbH, Bremen, 2004

47. John Thackara, In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World, MIT Press, 2005

48. Harold G. Nelson & Erik Stolterman, The Design Way: Foundations and Fundamentals of Design Competence, Educational Technology Publications, New Jersey, 2003

49. Bryan Lawson, How Designers Think, Architectural Press, New York, 1997)

50. Bryan Lawson and Kees Dorst, Design Expertise, Architectural Press, New York, 2009

51. Kees Dorst, Understanding Design: 175 Reflections On Being A Designer, Gingko Press, Berkeley, 2004 & 2006

52. Peter G. Rowe, Design Thinking, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1991

53. Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1972

54. Frei Otto, IL20 TASKS, Institute for Lightweight Structures, Stutgart, 1975
~

Download full paper titled "Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics in Design" here -PDF file 360kb Full Text
Download visual presentationas a pdf file here - PDF file 4.8 mb visual presentation screen resolution

Download visual presentation at print resolution as pdf file here - PDF file print resolution 14.8 mb

Prof M P Ranjan

Reports on the lecture at Istanbul; have started coming in and these will be pointed from the links here below:

Designophy link: 8th October post on Designophy about the keynote lecture with images

Beyond Grassroots: CD ROM on Institution Building at BCDI

Bamboo & Cane Development Institute, Agartala (BCDI): CD ROM as a live documentation of intentions and actions of the design team from NID, Ahmedabad in partnership with the team from BCDI, Agartala. – “Beyond Grassroots: Bamboo as Seedlings of Wealth”.

This CD ROM was produced in 2003 - 2004 using reports, movies and pictures that were part of the very detailed visual documentation that was maintained by the NID and BCDI teams using digital tools that were constantly available as a project policy. The intention was to build an Institute that could address the very complex needs of the “Grassroots sector” in rural India through the creation of human resources, knowledge resources as well as market linkages with the use of a potential local material such as bamboo which could be used to support a whole spectrum of development activities that could lead to positive change in the lives of the people. This CD ROM is available for download from this link here as a 560 mb zip file that unpacks into hyper linked folders and files all connected through a series of navigation screens shown below. We believe that India needs many institutes like this one if we are to transform our rural economy with the use of local resources in a sustainable manner and in a politically stable eco-system that can survive well into the future with the use of design, decentralized local governance and local entrepreneurship.
Prof M P Ranjan

Image 00: Feasibility Report for the setting up of the Bamboo & Cane Development Institute on the left and the two stages of BCDI Curriculum Development are on the right.

This institute was proposed in 2001 and experimentally managed by the NID team till mid June 2004 during which the curriculum development and many product design projects were carried out at Agartala. The Development Commissioner of Handicrafts commissioned this project as part of the UNDP funded National Bamboo Mission project and the project was handled by a team from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad as well as a team of faculty and staff at the BCDI, Agartala. These three reports show the articulated intentions and the process of curriculum development and these three reports can be downloaded as pdf files from these links below:
1. BCDI Feasibility Report: December 2001 – pdf file 366 kb size
2. BCDI Curriculum Structure – pdf file 4.7 mb size
3. BCDI Curriculum Review – pdf file 3 mb size
4. Achievements of BCDI: Summary - 2001 to 2004 – pdf file 789 kb size
5. Complete interactive CD ROM: “Beyond Grassroots!: Bamboo as Seedlings of Wealth – zip file 560 MB size

Image 01: This CD ROM opens with an introduction, which provides an overview of the resources as well as the intentions of the design team at NID.

The reader is guided to an index page shown besides the CD face image above which directs the reader to seven sub-indexes that go to access the full content of the CD ROM, mostly pdf files and reports, movies in QuickTime and brochures and publications prepared by the BCDI project between 2000 to 2003. The Seedlings of Wealth model was first articulated in 1995 as part of a paper by the author for the World Bamboo Congress at Bali, Indonesia that called for concerted action to study the fast depleting resource of traditional wisdom in the bamboo culture of the Asian region. This living resource is rooted in the local culture of the populations of Asia, Latin America and Africa and it is a major asset that can be used by development initiatives as a resource for sustainable development. Previous work done at NID on bamboo is introduced here through pointers to the book on the Bamboo & Cane Crafts of Northeast India (which can now be downloaded from here as a 36 mb pdf file) and the Bamboo Boards & Beyond CD ROM (which can be downloaded from here as a 550 mb zip file)

Image 02: The Introduction screen, the Main Index screen, and two of the seven sub-index screens are shown here.

The seven sub-index sections lead to a variety of resources that were either created as part of this project or were used as background resources to inform the thoughts and actions on this very interesting design initiative in institution building for the growth of the bamboo sector with the specific objective of addressing poverty and development needs of the rural sector with the use of design and local crafts skills. The Development Commissioner of Handicrafts Government of India supported this project through the funds available from UNDP as part of the National Bamboo Mission initiatives at the turn of the century. The support for the project continued till mid 2004 and the work done during the project phase is documented in the CD ROM mentioned above.

Image 03: Four sub-index screens dealing with Craft and Product development reports, Design and Bamboo shows, Systems Thinking project reports and the index for movies that documented 12 days at BCDI in May 2002.

The Craft and Product development reports were created as part of the ongoing product design explorations in bamboo and craftsmanship that involved NID faculty, students as well as BCDI faculty, students and craftsmen. Each project had individual goals and focused on one type of product be it furniture or domestic and office accessories that could be crafted in bamboo. Besides these reports we have also included Systems Thinking course outcomes for the NID Furniture Design programme where several batches of students were assigned individual projects in the area of bamboo and rural development initiatives with the use of this local resource. These explorations and the prototypes created are discussed in these reports included in this section. All these visits to BCDI were extensively documented using digital images. On one such visit to the BCDI the author made 12 mini movies using these digital still pictures and these movies are included in this section of the CD ROM.

Image 04: View of the Bamboo Boards & Beyond exhibit on the UNDP lawn in 2001 and a note about the CD ROM about that project shown alongside the crafts and bamboo shows available in the Beyond Grassroots CD ROM.

The Bamboo Boards and Beyond was a major project that preceded the BCDI initiative and has been discussed on this blog earlier. This image of the final exhibit at the UNDP lawns in New Delhi was not included in the previous CD ROM but it is included in this offering as shown above. This project helped open minds in Delhi and several National initiatives sprang from this particular event, which makes it significant for design for India.

Image 05: CD ROM face graphics and view of CD Jacket for the Beyond Grassroots, a joint CD publication from NID and BCDI.

While the CD ROM is available from the links on this page the CD Jacket can be downloaded as an A4 size printable artwork from this link here as a pdf file of 1 mb size. The BCDI Feasibility report was redesigned for print in a compact A5 format and the artwork can be downloaded from this link as a pdf file 368 kb size.

Prof M P Ranjan

Sustainability & Design at Davos 2009: Posters in PDF

Sustainability & Design at Davos 2009: Five Posters in A3 size in printable PDF format

Prof M P Ranjan

Image01: Views of Sustainability Design Charette at New Delhi on 15 November 2008 as part of the India Economic Summit which was organised by the World Economic Forum.

The “Sustainability for Tomorrow's Consumers: India Innovation Charette” was organised on the 15th November 2008 at New Delhi as part of the India Economic Summit 2009 under the auspices of the World Economic Forum. The Charette consisted of mixed groups of business executives, sustainability experts, social entrepreneurs, designers and design students, all working together to build on the three pillars which define the initiative were proposed by the World Economic Forum team headed by Marcello Mastioni:

A. Business Case for Sustainability,
B. Innovation for Tomorrow’s Business, and
C. Building the Framework Conditions.

The day long discussions and workshop sessions at the Design Charette at New Delhi saw six key themes emerge:
1.ENGAGE CONSUMERS: co-create and close the loop
2.Move from stuff to VALUE BUSINESS MODELS: consume right, not less
3.Embrace OPEN SOURCED innovation: leverage copy left
4.INTEGRATE to deliver innovation: collaborate along the value chain
5.REDEFINE THE CORE: meta-morph and reinvent
6.Leverage EMERGING TECHNOLOGY: put science at work

Image02: Views from the two day Visualising Sustainability Workshop conducted at NID on 26 and 27 December 2008 for a hands on session for visualising approaches to sustainability along six selected themes.

The push for the follow up meet at NID would now be to understand the ideas that will leverage these broad frameworks into the future. The aspects that currently maintain the status quo must be examined, and concepts that will bring about transformation will have to be envisioned and articulated. The broad themes have to therefore be detailed, visualised and made tangible.

In order to take these themes forward, the National Institute of Design (NID) proposed a two day workshop, ‘Visualising Sustainability for Davos 2009’ and the same was organised on the 26th and 27th of December 2008, where six multidisciplinary teams of design students, faculty, and invited experts explored these six themes, in order to create detailed concepts within each of these broad frameworks.

Image03: Selection of thumbnail sketches that could capture various themes and issues associated with sustainability visualisation as a preparation for the poster making that would follow.

The outcomes of this workshop was further developed by a core team of three faculty and five students at NID so that these could be presented at the “Sustainability for Tomorrow's Consumers” Governors Meeting Session, on the 29 January 2009. What emerged was a set of five posters that drew on the six key themes that were proposed earlier in consultation with the World Economic Forum organisers through online and telephonic discussions while the core team developed the concepts and visualised the specific themes at the NID, Ahmedabad.

Image04: Posters on five themes that were sent to Davos for the closed door meeting of CEO's that discussed various approaches and strategies for sustainability in the business world in the days ahead.Let us look forward to their proposals for all of us.

The five posters are offered here as printable A3 size PDF downloads for use in schools and business settings alike to stimulate the use of design thinking and sustainable practices in the creation and delivery of new and improved products, services and business strategies that are sustainable – both people as well as environment friendly – in both thought and action.

0. Poster introducing the set of five posters on sustaibnability and the process of making these for the World Economic Forum in Davos 2009.

1. Poster on the theme of Co-Creation for Sustaibnability: PDF file 2.9 MB

2. Poster on the theme of Dematerialisation for Sustaibnability: PDF file 2.2 MB

3. Poster on the theme of Essence Making for Sustaibnability: PDF file 3.1 MB

4. Poster on the theme of Innovating the Value Chain for Sustaibnability: PDF file 2.7 MB

5. Poster on the theme of using Emerging Technologies for Sustaibnability: PDF file 2.7 MB

6. Full set of six posters as a compact booklet in A3 size_4 MB pdf.

7. Full set of six posters as a printable booklet in A3 size_16 MB pdf.

Prof M P Ranjan

World Economic Forum – Sustainability & Design at Davos

World Economic Forum – Feedback from Davos.

Prof M P Ranjan

Image 01: CEO’s of major global corporations at the Sustainability session at Davos using the NID designed posters.

We got a brief message from Davos on 31 January 2009 from Marcello Mastioni of the World Economic Forum on the successful completion of a collaborative journey between NID and the WEF that started last year with the Sustainability Design Charette in New Delhi on the 15 November 2008 about which I reported earlier on this blog. The event on sustainability took place at Davos on the 29 January 2009 using the visual materials that were designed for the purpose by students and faculty teams at NID through a two day workshop on the 26 and 27 December 2008 which was followed by an intensive effort to capture all the insights into an expressive set of five posters shown below.

I Quote this below:
“Dear NID Team,

The Sustainability meetings have been successfully completed, but the Davos Meeting is not over yet, and we are still busy closing it. You will forgive us for now for not reaching out with as many details as it would be appropriate.

The sessions went very well, with extraordinary participation and with the definition of a clear mandate for action in 2009, which was our primary objective. The visuals contributed greatly to creating a conducing environment that would inspire the CEOs towards innovation and collaboration.

The pictures the official photographer took are not yet available to me, but I wanted to attach a few pictures to show you how close we put our leaders to the visuals, and the type of environment we created for the event.

Many thanks again for your extraordinary support.

We look forward to talking to you in one week or so for a more thorough debrief.

All best,

Marcello”
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Image 02: World business leaders meet world thinkers on sustainability at Davos 2009 and use the NID designed posters on Visualising Sustainability.

In an earlier message on 23January 2009 sent to us after we had submitted all the five posters Marcello informed us of the intentions of the WEF in using the posters at Davos this year.

I Quote from his mail below:
“Dear NID Team,

I wanted to take a moment to say a big thank you to all of you.

The posters are printed and on their way to Davos, where they will be featured in an event with 50 participants, including the CEOs of companies such as Nike Inc., The Coca-Cola Company, Unilever, Land O'Lakes Inc., Nestlé SA, Monsanto Company, Young & Rubicam Inc., METRO Group, Best Buy Co. Inc., Yara International ASA, IDEO Inc., The Olayan Group, nGenera, The Reitan Group, S. C. Johnson & Son Inc., Kraft Foods Inc., General Mills Inc. and Dow Jones & Company Inc., amongst others.

Everybody here expressed wonder and admiration on the work done. You have been very courageous to tackle such a complex systemic issue as Sustainability with an open universal approach, and then go through the immense task of distilling the discussions into meaningful conclusions and relevant visuals.

You had success at your mission, and you can proud of that. Please let us praise your achievement.

I won’t of course miss to keep you in the loop as things develop here.

All best,

Warmly,

Marcello

Marcello Mastioni
Associate Director, Head or Retail and Consumer Goods Industries
Global Leadership Fellow
World Economic Forum”

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I will make a detailed post about the process of exploration, cooperation and design that we used to make these posters and the various players involved in this process at NID and at Geneva office of the WEF. I include below images of the five posters for immediate reference and pdf files will be made available soon along with the posts that follow as the story unfolds.

Image 03: Essence Making: Rethinking the Business Models.

Image 04: Innovating the Value Chain: Collaborate along the Value Chain.

Image 05: Co-Creation: Meaningfully Engage Consumers.

Image 06: Dematerialising the Economy: Innovate out of Stuff and into Value.

Image 07: Emergent Technology: Explore Emergent Technology.

Prof M P Ranjan

Sustainability Charette: World Economic Forum in New Delhi

India Economic Summit, New Delhi as a venue for the First Sustainability Charette of the World Economic Forum.
Prof. M P Ranjan

Image 01: NID designers Anand Saboo, Vishnu Priya, M P Ranjan, Praveen Nahar, Shreya Sarda and Mitushi Jain at the India Economic Summit’s Design Charette with world industry and expert participants across six groups that examined and developed innovative concepts and frameworks for sustainable futures leading to design opportunity offerings for many sectors of the consumer industry.

The World Economic Forum made a call earlier this year for collective action to manage Sustainability for Tomorrow’s Consumers Initiative. A series of steps were hence initiated to lead up to a CEO Report to be taken up at the Davos Governors Meeting on 29th January 2009. The first steps included the New York strategy meet, which kicked off the search for directions and solutions to the worlds pressing problem of bringing sustainability to its Consumer Initiatives. The WEF developed a three-stage framework to tackle the issues and these are listed below:
1. The Business Case for Sustainability.
2. Design Innovations for Sustainability
3. Shaping the Framework Conditions.
For the first time the WEF turned to designers in India and this brought them to NID, one of India’s leading design schools, to participate in the proposed Design Charette in New Delhi with students and faculty involvement along with a carefully selected group of lead industries and experts in sustainability to examine the issues and perspectives across several consumer industries in order to innovate and build prototypes and models for future sustainable practices and products and services.

Image 02: Participants at the hands on Design Charette set up by the World Economic Forum team with Deloitte consulting at Taj Palace Hotel in New Delhi on 15th November 2008.

The six groups looked at six broad product categories from the future sustainability angle to examine resource constraints, regulatory and policy implications as well as possible design opportunities that the situation offered to take stock of the current and future trends and make sensitive offerings at business process, product design and behavior change levels that may need to be addressed by businesses as well as governments of the world. The charette was a stimulating learning setting for all participants and it brought together designers from industry, social entrepreneurs, economists and experts all looking at the multi-dimensional problem of sustainability using systems thinking. I am pleased that we were involved in the first such event in New Delhi and we do hope that design will now be brought into the centre of our global search for solutions and through these we will build a sustainable future for all. The World Economic Forum’s initiatives are here at their website and I am sure more will follow as the work done in New Delhi grows to become a movement for the use of design across many geographies and sectors that are in search for sustainable models for the future.

Image 03: Three Social Entrepreneurs shortlisted for the final award of 2008 making a presentation of their innovation concept and action on the ground. Rajat Gupta delivered the keynote lecture at the event.

The evening event shifted to the Hotel Imperial on Janpath where the celebrations were on to felicitate the three finalists for the “Social Entrepreneur of the Year India 2008”. The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship was started by the founder of The World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab in 2000 and since then the process has identified and felicitated over 150 social entrepreneurs in 40 countries. A significant achievement by any standard.

I hope that they will some time discover designers who have been working in the grassroots sector in India and elsewhere in the years ahead. I remember the group of girls in my DCC class of 2001, who were telling us that they had discovered the way to eliminate poverty using start-up entrepreneurship and they called it the “Baadal” strategy, named after the Indian Monsoon, which picks up good practices from all over India and rains it back over the population just as the monsoon does. They have been working at it for a few years now, in refining their concept and in building their own individual capabilities across many attributes that are needed to deliver the action on the ground and I am sure that in a few more years they would deliver what they had held out as a concept to all of us at NID during their concept presentation to the public which we called the “Concept Mela”. We need more such concept melas and more designers joining the action on the ground in the days and years ahead. These Design Charettes do much the same thing with the participants, small attitude change which would lead to the big sustainable actions in areas where they work and live in the years ahead through design and leadership that they would provide to those around them.

Prof. M P Ranjan