Saurabh Tewari

Today, I reflected on 'Critical Pedagogy in Design in India' in the Panel on Design Pedagogy at College Art Association and Get International Program organised at School of Art Institute of Chicago. Our panel included Pedith Chan (Hong Kong) as the Moderator and presentations by Dr Priya Maholay-Jaradi (Singapore) and Eiman Elgibraan (Saudi Arabia). Thanks to Ali Mahfouz and Pearlie Rose Baluyut for the images.

"At a one-day preconference colloquium, to be held this year at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the fifteen new participants will discuss key issues in the international study of art history together with five CAA-Getty alumni and several CAA members from the United States, who also will serve as hosts throughout the conference."

As a CAA-Getty International Program Fellow, I will be attending CAA Annual Conference and Fellowship Program in Chicago, February 2020. 

As part of the School of Planning and Architecture Bhopal's BReUCom (Building Resilience in Urban Communities) project team, we presented the updates on the following four case studies being carried out at the institution:

• Craft, Culture and Community - Learning Resilience from the Ziro Valley, Ziro Valley, Arunachal Pradesh
• Transformative Resilience: The case of Two Communities in Transition, Gazdhar Bandh and Kalbadevi Mumbai, Maharashtra
• Enhancing Institutional and Community Resilience to Climate Change Impacts in the Jodhpur City - Heat Stress, Jodhpur, Rajasthan
• Enhancing Institutional and Community Resilience to Climate Change Impacts in the Jodhpur City - Water Stress, Jodhpur, Rajasthan

Building Resilient Urban Communities (BReUCom) is a project funded under European Union Erasmus+ Program in the field of Capacity Building in Higher Education. SPA Bhopal has collaborated with Danube University Krems Austria, University of Twente, KRVIA Mumbai, SPA Vijayawada, NIT Hamirpur (HP) and the Indian NGOs SPARC and CURE to develop case studies, courses and professional development programmes in the emerging field of Urban Resilience.

Note: This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Presented two short papers during the Hyderabad Design Week at World Design Organisation @worlddesignorg ' s Research & Education Forum, Humanising Design, at Indian School of Business, Hyderabad on 10 October 2019.
My first paper, Towards an Ontological Expansion of Design: Thematic Threads to advance the next Design Education Paradigm, elaborates three thematic threads, which Design Education structures and networks can pursue to advance the next paradigm. Further, through researching these under-explored positions, and exploring their inherent components, it can work towards creating new forms of knowledge in design research.

As the Ahmedabad Declaration of 1979 remains a significant event in the discourse of design for development, my second paper,  Design for Development 2.0? Revisiting the Ahmedabad Declaration,  illustrated how the pedagogy, project and discourse of IDC and NID were conceptually aligned to the spirit of Ahmedabad Declaration of 1979.

Image Credits: WDO, Anmol and Harshali

Image Credits: EPCO
So, after the eight-month long exposure to Gandhian ideas it was the time to give back to the forum at EPCO. The programme, Gandhi Prasang (Gandhian Eco-philosophy Seminar), was organised at EPCO Bhopal to present our ideas to the jury and co-learners. I presented our ongoing work on the Ziro Valley through the Gandhian Lens. For a larger dissemination, I chose to present my work in Hindi as जीरो घाटी: गांधी के ‘सपनों के भारत’ की एक जीवंत कार्यशाला. 
The seminar was followed by the Award ceremony on 2nd October at the iconic Minto Hall in Bhopal. The Keynote was delivered by former Environment minister Shri Jayaram Ramesh, who also distributed the certificates to all the Gandhian Eco-philosophy Fellows. 

Visited HfG Ulm, the Gangotri of so many post-war design objects, pedagogical approaches, and service/system concepts. It's unfortunate that this iconic Design School closed in 1968. However, it's ideological variations are all over the world including NID and IDC IIT Bombay in India.

Ms Sushma, an educator at the Nai Taalim Centre, along with Mr Adwait, an educator from Bengaluru working in Sevagram, hosted us at the Nai Taalim School. The participants witnessed all the laboratories dealing with life skills including spinning, knitting, cleaning, farming, drawing, craft etc. and its integration with the mainstream academic structure for the students at the school. 

Made in the memory of Shri Maganlal Gandhi, one of the nephews of Bapu, Magan Sangrahalay (museum) houses the artefacts related to Mahatma Gandhi. We interacted with Ms Vibha Gupta, the chairperson of the trust looking after the museum, about various issues of development and sustainability in relation with the philosophy of Bapu. Then a volnteer took all the participants around the live craft section of the complex, Magan Khadi. Participants witnessed not just the traditional methods of spinning and dyeing but also the innovative products like knitted T-shirt, real-leaf block prints etc.

Mahatma Gandhi has been an iconic and omnipresent figure in India. Like, many of my co-citizens, I know a bit about his role in independence, his philosophy and writings. However, personally, there was no enquiry into the spaces he lived in. Thanks to EPCO Fellowship, I was able to visit the historical sites associated with Gandhi in Sevagram and Wardha. I further realised that I have seen his other residences, in Phoenix, and at Sabarmati. In this series, I will present snippets from Sevagram and Wardha. Again, the idea is to understand the Gandhian philosophy through spaces, objects and practices.

Sevagram Gandhi Ashram
The Sevagram complex is made up of four significant buildings, including the Aadi Kutir, Bapu Kutir, Baa Kutir and Jamnalal Bajaj residence. Aadi Kutir was the first building to be made where Mahatma Gandhi stayed first along with his peers on the invitation of Jamnalal Bajaj of Wardha in 1936. Interestingly, Bapu limited the budget of the building to Rs 1, so it had to be made using the local material procured from the site. It is a minimal assemble of habitat spaces with ascetic materials like local timber and mud. The low ceiling height with the harmonic pillars around keep the experience serene and humble. This place witnessed historical meetings with many luminaries from India's freedom struggle. Later, with the larger influx of visitors in the setup the other huts were made. Its story reminded me of great suggestion to the architect Laurie Baker about using the building material from close vicinity. Perhaps, the Aadi Kutir was the reference.

The whole complex conveys a spiritual emotion through its grounded planes and landscape. Every other second, I felt Gandhi was present around. The gravel on the ground and walking barefoot around was a tactical experience of the space. The objects kept in the residences manifests the simplicity of Gandhi's everyday life.

PS: The early morning prayer at 4:45 a.m. was heavenly. I strongly reccommend attending it, if you plan to visit Sevagram.​

It’s my pleasure to report our Study Trip to Arunachal Pradesh and Asom, undertaken with 17 students of Master of Design students (Feb 17 to Mar 1, 2019). The tour focussed on the Apa Tani Cultural Landscape of Ziro Valley in Arunachal Pradesh which features itself in the Tentative list of World Heritage Site, bolstering the claims of the richness of indigenous knowledge systems at various scales. The continuum of its everyday life and belief systems including its agriculture, land use practices, natural resources management and conservation, festivals, material culture, objects and crafts, has been exemplarily sustainable and can be interpreted in the modern education and policy frameworks.

The studio was undertaken under the MDES203 Design Studies, with ‘Design Anthropology’ (Salvador et al., 1999; Gunn et al., 2013; Murphy, 2016) as the theoretical framework operating at four levels as:

1. Product Practices: The relevance of designed products in everyday life and traditions of the Apa Tani people including the furniture, craft, textile, jewellery etc.
2. Spatial Practices: The making of everyday space along with its cultural logics, meanings and technology
3. Communication Practices: The unique communication practices from the region as symbols, types, communicative artefacts etc. and its socio-cultural relevance along with the contemporary media like radio, newspapers and magazines
4. System and Services: How everything in part contributes to the broader cultural system which makes it socially and ecologically resilient, e.g., agriculture, healthcare, education, public mobility etc.

The seven days of field work involved enquiries at above levels with ethnography, visits to various institutions within, detailed interviews and a formal community interaction hosted at our stay. The students are expected to come up with a small exhibition on the documentation and reflection from the tour within the semester. They can also further derive ‘Design Projects’ to pursue their interests.

I would like to thank Prof Sridharan who accompanied us in the first leg of the trip to Naharlagun, where our institution signed an MoU with the Rajiv Gandhi Central University and further travelled to the Ziro Valley to assess the future academic possibilities. I want to express my sincere thanks to Prof Sarit Chaudhuri (Director IGRMS and Professor of Anthropology, RGU) and our local guide Mr Chobin Punyo (Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at RGU). Their insights on Apa Tani cultural practices in Ziro enriched us with an efficient orientation.

We are also thankful to the people in Arunachal Pradesh who helped us during the unexpected political turmoil during the last few days of our stay.  I would also like to thank Prof Ravi Mokashi and Prof Udayakumar, Department of Design IIT Guwahati, who hosted us at IIT Guwahati along with presentations by Prof(s) Keyur Sorathia (HCI),  Pradeep Yammiyavar (Usability), Sougata Karmakar (Ergonomics). ​

Blown away by the wealth of textile craft of Kalamkari in Machilipatnam, a historic coastal town of Andhra Pradesh. Met Shri Pitchuka Srinivas who has curated the Kalamkari Museum at Pedana. He comes from the family of Pitchuka Veeru Subbaiah, the man who started kalamkari in Machilipatnam. The meticulous shirt designed by him in 1980s appears to be bold in fashion. Got to see the objects associated with the craft, including copper blocks, the dyeing process containers etc. in the privately curated museum. ​

Published: The Lancaster Care Charter, January 2019, Design Issues 35(1):73-77 Click here to read further

In September 2017, I got an opportunity to participate and present in  ' Does Design Care...?,' a workshop at the Imagination Lancaster (Design Department of the LancasterUniversity, UK). As a bunch of interdisciplinary and multi-focus designers, we deliberated on the idea of care through/in Design. We revisited iconic Munich Charter and came up with a vision document, Lancaster Care Charter, which is now published in the latest issue of Design Issues by MIT Press. I thought of sharing the same with you. 

Abstract
In the fall of 1991 the Munich Design Charter was published in Design Issues. This charter was written as a design-led "call to arms" on the future nations and boundaries of Europe. The signatories of the Munich Design Charter saw the problem of Europe, at that time, as fundamentally a problem of form that should draw on the creativity and expertise of design. Likewise, the Does Design Care…? workshop held at Imagination , Lancaster University in the autumn of 2017 brought together a multidisciplinary group of people from 16 nations across 5 continents, who, at a critical moment in design discourse saw a problem with the future of Care. The Lancaster Care Charter has been written in response to the vital question "Does Design Care…?" and via a series of conversations, stimulated by a range of presentations that explored a range of provocations , insights, and more questions, provides answers for the contemporary context of Care. With nation and boundary now erased by the flow of Capital the Charter aims to address the complex and urgent challenges for Care as both the future possible and the responsibility of design. The Lancaster Care Charter presents a collective vision and sets out new pragmatic encounters for the design of Care and the care of Design.

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I presented "Design in Visions" at 10+1 ICDHS Conference. I discussed a thread of the journey of Design in India through various institutional visions and how it interacted with various postcolonial politico-economic developments at the centre. The paper analysed and presented the visions as foundational, developmental, postmodern, neo-liberal and retrospective. Post presentation, the Q&A included a discussion on the other possible forms and threads of Design History in India and comparitive developments in other greographies.

Out of the four Keynotes, I personally liked the Alain Findelli's (University of Nimes) talk for its broader historiographical nature. He critically reflected the journey of design in the last hundred years across the world. At the same time, I feel that it was inevitably Eurocentric until he discussed contemporary cases of community resilience and co-design from North Africa.
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ICDHS is a platform which seeks to challenge the existing histories of design by presenting otherwise 'peripheral' versions. There was a significant participation from Latin America, Scandinavian nations,  Japan and Taiwan. My paper from India fitted well into the purpose of the conference. In the coming years, ICDHS seeks to decolonise the discourse of Design too. I hope the design, architecture and planning educators from India will contribute to the larger movement of decolonisation.