We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.——-Marshall McLuhan

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A Grand Idea | Inhabit – winners announced

The Mobile Activation Station by Holobiont

The Mobile Activation Station designed by Holobiont (Haruka Horiuchi & Frank Hebbert) has been selected as the winner by our three esteemed judges – Raul Smith Correa of ‘Faiscas‘, Soo-in Yang of ‘The Living’ and Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai. They win a grand or $1000 [...]


The Technologists : Anab Jain

Anab Jain is a designer and a TED Fellow, interested in creating stories that lead us towards new, alternate futures. Educated in India, Vienna and London, she is the Founder of Superflux, a design practice working at the intersection of people and technology.
She created ‘The Power of 8’ a collaborative project [...]


The Indovators – Part 3 | Dr Simone Ahuja

Dr Simone Ahuja is the founder and principal of Blood Orange Media, a multimedia production and design company that creates content in emerging markets, focusing specifically on examples of innovation with global relevance. Most recently she developed, produced and directed the Best Buy Corp supported television series, Indique – Big Ideas from Emerging India, for [...]


“A Grand Idea – Inhabit” Competition Brief

What is this competition about?
This competition is focused on design solutions that can change our immediate urban environment into places that we can truly inhabit. The first series of ‘The Grand Idea Initiative’ is called ‘INHABIT‘. The ultimate challenge of which is to create solutions that introduce fun, sustainable, and innovative ways people use public [...]


The Indovators – Part 2 | Jinal Shah

Jinal Shah is a digital strategist and works for Electric Artists in NYC. She describes herself as a thinker, writer and storyteller and jots down her thoughts in her blog – Constant Beta. She also started a blog called Dsplaced that aggregates stories from people and talks about their sense of displacement from home and [...]


Jay Thakkar : Bringing vernacular architecture to a wider audience

Jay Thakkar’s first book, Naqsh, is reaching out to individuals from varied backgrounds and his second, Matra, was just named ‘Best written work on Architecture 2009’ by India’s ‘Foundation for Architectural and Environmental Awareness’. Jay Thakkar, author, designer and faculty member of the School of Interior Design at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, talks to Designwala [...]


The Indovators – Part 1 | Lina Srivastava

Lina Srivastava is the Principal of Lina Srivastava Consulting, LLC, which focuses on employing strategy, innovation, engagement and the use of cultural assets to create and demonstrate social change. For our new feature ‘The Indovators’, Lina talks about opportunities for indian designers in the fields of service design, information design, systems design, climate change and [...]


Designers as ChangeMakers – Part 4 | Ritwik Dey

Ritwik Dey is an Interaction Designer. For “Designers as ChangeMakers”, he talks about the sad state of the Indian education system and his struggle with it. He comes from an engineering background and talks about his growth as a designer and his love for information design and data visualization. Amongst other things he talks about [...]


Coming Soon – The INDOvators – Lina Srivastava

Lina Srivastava is the Principal of Lina Srivastava Consulting, LLC, which focuses on employing strategy, innovation, engagement and the use of cultural assets to create and demonstrate social change. She spoke with Designwala about the role of strategic thinking and design in India for the upcoming feature series ‘ The INDOvators’. Keep a look out [...]


Coming Soon – Designers as Change Makers – Part 4 | Ritwik Dey

Ritwik Dey is a computer engineer turned designer. He works as the Senior Interaction Designer for R/GA, a digital advertising agency in New York City. For the ‘Designers as Change Makers’ feature, Ritwik, amongst other things talks about the ineffective education system of India. He emphasizes on the fact, that the system needs to change [...]


Designers as Change Makers – Part 3 | Simrit Brar

Simrit Brar is a Graphic Designer who lived and worked in NYC for 6.5 years before moving to LA to work on the publicity for Meryl Streep’s latest film. She was also a part of the team that created the graphic ‘NYC taxi’ logo. She is the creator of some of the most popular posters [...]


Designers as Change Makers – Part 2

Shweta Mudgal is an architect previously working with L&T in Mumbai and SOM in New York City on the Mumbai International Airport. Shweta acquired her BArch in Mumbai and her MArch from Southern California University of Architecture (SciArc).
For the second part of the Designwala feature – ‘Designers as Changemakers‘, Shweta talks about architecture as a [...]


Designers as Change Makers – Part 1

Janani Kannan is an interior designer working in NYC  and an old friend from CEPT (Center for Environmental Planning and Technology), Ahmedabad, India. She is also the subject for the first Designwala feature on ” Designers as Change Makers“. She elaborates on practices that would help different sectors in India grow because of design thinking. [...]


Coming Soon: Designers as Change Makers – Part 2 | Shweta Mudgal

Shweta Mudgal is an architect and she has been spending her time between Mumbai and New York for the past year while designing the Mumbai Airport. Keep an eye out for her insight on Designers as Change Makers as she talks about the growth of architecture in the city of Mumbai and helps us understand [...]