Last Sunday I watched the first episode of Satyamave Jayate, Amir Khan’s new TV show that takes up one social issue every week. He shows case studies and examples along with statics about that particular issue. Last week’s issue discussed on female feticide, and how that is one of the major problems India is facing today. The episode was very moving and touched the right note among a lot of people. It was the talk of the town. People actually participated in the vote that he had at the end of the show. Generally I never participate by expressing my vote on a TV show, but last week I actually wanted to do that. This brings me to the question I have often pondered about, how do you change the behavior of a person or a community through design and visual communication?

Still from Satyamev Jayate

Changing a behavior takes a lot of time and patience. It’s not something designers are used too. Designers generally are instantly satisfied when something is created and produced. But changing behavior is a very crucial challenge and is truly the need of the day! Jon Kolko, the associate creative director at Frog Design, says “Good design is design that changes behavior for the better.”

Here I would like to clarify that by changing behavior I am assuming that it’s for the good and benefit of the society. Quite a few design studios like frog design, openIDEO, are working towards integrating “behavior design” as a part of their services. But, is it really changing the behavior or should we focus on “helping people learn new behaviors.” as R. Craig Lefebvre, PhD an architect and designer of public health and social change programs suggests. This is a very important question we need to ask ourselves as designers.

According to, Tim Brown the CEO of IDEO in an interview with Reena Jana said, “to change the behavior of a person you need to understand three points, first, create simple, new digital tools to provide feedback; second, invent for the future consumer, not the present customer; third, be patient with monitoring “success.

I believe that there also needs to be an element of fun involved when you want a person to change. For example, the fun theory that Volkswagen employs, where when you throw trash in the trashcan it makes as sound. There is an element of fun along with an incentive, the person cannot resist, and therefore throws the trash in the can. Perhaps this might not work for more serious issues like fighting poverty or tackling certain healthcare issues but I believe that making things a little light hearted often helps you get the message across.

I also believe that it is imperative to understand the psychology of human nature, while trying to work on behavior design. Design is no longer a focused discipline it needs to become holistic in many ways and include the study of other disciplines to truly be able to harvest its power to bring about positive change. Designers also need to collaborate with other designers, and experts from different disciplines to co-create and make a difference in the society.

Behavior design is definitely a fascinating field and I see great potential in its use for not only interactive design, but also social and community design.

Sources:

Frog Design Blog

Social Marketing Blogs

Blogs.hbr.org

The Fun Theory

With the ever enhancing technologies and systems, we are bombarded with data from every directions. On average most of us, throughout the day will read some sort of news, peruse some magazines [print or online], we will be looking at hundreds of ads [billboards, printed, on websites, on the television]. We will read through hundreds of status updates via various social media website, go through several of the links posted for yet some more articles. Then consider the blogs and websites that we visit either for leisure, inspiration or to brush up on our knowledge base. Considering the amount of information that is thrust upon us, we process and retain very little. With this kind of data overload, it has become a necessity for us to have tools that will help us process and understand all this data in an efficient manner.

This overload of data has given birth to the fields like data visualization and information design. Here the key objective is to take seemingly complex data and convert them into pieces of visuals that help the reader in understanding the data better. ‘Visualization’ is defined as to make something perceptible to the mind or imagination. So any data set can be restructured in such a way that its not just easier to understand but also pleasing to look at. Also with the increase in the amount of data generated, there has been an increase in the need and creation of better tools for visualization.

Visualizing.org is one such organization that is striving to create awareness about the need for such data visualization. Not only is it creating awareness but helping the community understand the data by encouraging individuals, organizations, students and professionals to contribute their data sets and visualizations. Visualizing.org was created by GE and Seed Media Group to help make data visualization more accessible to the general public; to promote information literacy through the creation, sharing, and discussion of data visualizations; and to provide a unique resource to help simplify complex issues through design.

Visualizing Marathons challenge university students to take on a complex real world issue and work toward solutions through the medium of data visualization. Visualizing.org started the ‘Visualization Marathon competition in 2010 for a 100 students in NY challenging participants to visualize humanity’s environmental footprint. In 2011 they expanded to five cities around the world: Sydney, São Paulo, New York, London, and Berlin. And this year, they brought the ‘Visualization Marathon’ to New Delhi. ‘India Design Forum’, the country’s first international design event proved to be the perfect time to launch this competition. Eighty students from various institutes like Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, Mumbai, Guwahati, National Institute of Design, School of Planning and Architecture [Delhi], National Institute of Fashion Technology [NIFT], Sushant School of Art and Architecture (SSAA) and Delhi University attended and took part. The Students were asked to visualize the impact of heart disease on India. They were provided with a data set with statistics from the World Health Organization and the Earth Institute at Columbia University that explore the prevalence and burden of heart conditions in the country from a variety of angles.  They were asked to use design, programming and visualization to show why India should care about this crisis in cardiovascular health and to surface new insights that could help drive new solutions. The students had two days to complete the challenge by manipulating the data using statistical analysis, figuring out which story or part of data to focus on and highlight. They also had to figure which was the best way to effectively present the information.

Also part of the event; Mike Knowles gave an inspiring presentation motivating students to “see” differently. Through it, he sought to disseminate that universal message: design can change lives and also the world. This sentiment echoes that of data visualization guru Hans Rosling, who says, “ Let the data set change your mindset”.

Rakesh Baidya, Subhomoy Halder, Vishwaraj Nikumbh, and Archana Singh made up the winning team for their visualization Young India Dies Young. This visualization combined an illustrated style with the contextualizing graphs to deliver a clear message with great impact. Each member of the winning team was awarded an iPad.

See rest of the entries here.

David McCandless, in his TED talk, clearly states that “data is just a lot of numbers and disconnected facts. But if you start working and playing with them in a certain way interesting things will appear and different patterns can be revealed. If you are navigating in a endless jungle of data, a beautiful visualization can provide relief like a clearing amidst the dark shadows.”

Anisha Shankar, is a Design Impact Fellow working on a nutrition and livelihoods programme at Deep Griha Society, a charitable organisation that serves people living in the slums of Pune, India, through programmes ranging from education, to health, to self-help projects. Their primary office is located at Tadiwala Road in Pune. Maitreyi had a chance to interview Anisha below are the excerpts from the interview…

Anisha Shankar by Nick Stewart

MD: What’s your background, where did you study?
AS: I am Indian, born and raised. I moved to the U.S. first for graduate work in Communication and Energy and Environmental Policy from the University of Delaware, and then returned there to join my husband. In the last six years I spent in the U.S., I was looking for ways to return to India to apply some of my skills to social and environmental issues here. So the Design Impact Fellowship was practically tailor-made for me! I am not a designer but I like problem solving.

How did you hear about the Design Impact Fellowship and when did you start your fellowship?
My sister found and forwarded the Fellowship posting on www.devnetjobs.org and I applied for it. Like I said, it was the perfect opportunity for me! The Fellowship began in December 2011.

MD: Tell us about your nutrition project?
AS: Deep Griha Society (DGS) works in three poor communities in Pune- Tadiwala Road, Bibvewadi, and Ramtekdi. Deep Griha provides a wide range of services – everything from women’s and family literacy and maternal healthcare, to the Deep Griha Integrated Services for HIV/AIDS (DISHA) programme and childcare services, and much in between.

DGS wants to expand its reach to the children in the community that it does not serve directly. The need of the hour is better nutrition for these children, who are often protein and iron deficient. The problem is not just poverty but also that parents often simply don’t know what to feed the children. Malnourished children fall sicker often, miss more school, and perform more poorly when there. Poor performance in school reduces their chances at a reasonable livelihood and the cycle of poverty continues.

So DGS and Design Impact have developed an integrated nutrition and livelihoods programme. What if we can show higher weights, heights, and hemoglobin counts for the 280 or so children at Deep Griha’s day care centers through a special snack feeding program over a 6-month period? What if we then shared these results with and trained interested community-based women’s self-help groups to make and sell these as a healthy alternative to the packaged fried or sweet snacks that children are so fond of? Could we get healthier children, both inside and outside DGS, and better-off women through one programme? That’s what we’re working towards.

I’ve focused for now on two different aspects of this programme – the first, I’ve been developing two sweet and two savory snacks that can be incorporated on a rotation into the diet the children in the crèches get. These snacks have to be cheap, easy to make, and have to be finger foods that the children can handle and consume independently. The second is measuring heights, weights, and hemoglobin levels for all the crèche children. We’ll do another round of these measurements at the end of six months to record the impact, if any, of the snack program.

The project’s biggest selling point is that women are instantly interested in the snacks when they learn that they’re good for their children. Even when I’ve made some really awful foods, the value women perceive for their children makes them ask for the recipe! Besides, food is such a good connector and conversation starter.

I am in the very early stages of figuring out what we would need to do to support interested self-help groups in making and selling these snacks. At the very least, we’ll need some early funding, good logistical oversight, and savvy marketing.

Setting the scene by Anisha Shankar for Design Impact

MD: How according to you can design help with nutritional issues?

AS: Good design is about finding out, often iteratively, what the user wants and then designing the product or programme to meet their needs. By championing “embedded design”, Design Impact creates the opportunity for its Fellows to become part of the host organization and therefore, to learn over time what the organization’s and beneficiaries needs, constraints, and preferences are.

With this in mind, I was keen to engage DGS staff on testing the snacks. Food is a fun and easy thing for people to connect around and everyone feels qualified to have an opinion. So I laid out samples for staff to taste in all three DGS centers and asked them to tell me what they thought. My survey methodology was flawed because I was using a rating scale from very happy to very sad faces and without an explanation this did not resonate with any of the tasters. But, despite the error, it was clear that this sort of design engagement was working because staff were clearly pleased to be asked for their opinion.

Feedback and comments by Anisha Shankar for Design Impact

MD: What are the project’s challenges?

AS: The most challenging part of this work is knowing how far we have to go before our children are well nourished.

Funding is another challenge! We need funds to support the kickoff of any work the self-help groups take on. We’re also looking at ways in which we can raise funds to make the snack program at DGS permanent, so the children in our crèches walk home each day with a full belly.

But what’s exciting on the flip side, is knowing the difference it is possible to make through this programme. I am also motivated by some extremely committed DGS staff as well as people in the community.

MD: What’s next with your project?
AS: I must finalize the recipes for savory snacks that we’ll add to the crèche diets, have them laboratory tested for their nutritional content, and then spend a few hours teaching DGS staff how to make these snacks. I’m also completing the final round of height-weight measurements for the children. Much work remains!

Sad and happy selection process by Nick Stewart

Source:

Design Impact

Deep Griha Society

This blog post is reposted from Jyotika’s blog -Follow my recipe

I very rarely talk about work on my blog. Mostly because my blog is an escape from my work. But in true follow my recipe style I felt this project had a place on the blog for all its heart and warmth. The Germany India- Infinite Opportunities is a two year long cultural program held in all major cities in India. Performances, music, dance, theater, photography and many such collaborations and cultural exchanges. The Urban Mela is a traveling festival across 5 major cities around India- Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi and Pune. Its consists of these beautiful jewel like pavilions designed by German artist Markus Heinsdorff. Each pavilion is given to a German partner company to showcase the idea of sustainable cities.

I designed the Deutsche Bank Pavilion along with my team at Ogilvy Action. The few of us involved in the project ideated, curated, wrote, designed and provided technical specifications for the exhibition for the Deutsche Bank Pavilion.  The idea was to curate a set of projects created by various innovators who are designing objects, systems, ideas that would make better living in the our crowded urban scenario. Windowfarms, Green Karbon- On urban biodiversity, $300 House contest winner, Solar Lantern, Solar Plane, Dream In, A sanitation project,  The waterfront reclamation project. The pavilion becomes a place to exchange ideas and thoughts on how to make better cities. Many projects are brought alive through interesting interactive ways. Such as the Green Karbon project culminates in a photo contest challenging people to capture biodiversity in their cities. The window farms is currently growing eggplant and chilies and a dream tree that invites people to tie their dreams on a tag. Many projects were Deutsche Bank supported and some were just people that we believed in. Shagun Singh of Designwala helped us curate and reach out to the various innovators so that we could showcase their work.

In the process of design, I went through several layouts trying to create the best narrative possible. What works with what. Working with German organizers for the festival was also interesting as they had several processes in place such as understanding our electrical requirements etc. All in all it was a great learning experience.

On the opening day, when I walked into the Pavilion it was a moment of pride. People were walking through, looking, reading, understanding. Our super college kid promoters did an excellent job thoroughly explaining each project to the visitors. People looked engaged. I was amazed with the windowfarms. It was brilliant – it worked. There was also a baby eggplant growing. The dream in tree was filled with dreams. Though only 50 sq m this Pavilion was a labour of love. It had heart.

The Urban Mela is up till Sunday April 22nd at Cross Maidan at Churchgate. Do go see it. Its stunning- in the evening all the various pavilions light up. Some of the others were also interesting. There is a beer garden  serving Erdingers and bratwursts.

The painstaking process of construction of the pavilions and some initial design drawings. I was not involved in the final installation of the pavilion.

Do participate in the photography contest for Green Karbon.

Some acknowledgements are in order. My Ogilvy Action team – Nyka, Aarti, Khushboo, Shripad, Shrikant, Vipul and Rahul. Our various support people the photographers, website designers, AV makers. The organizers of the Urban Mela. Though there are many here to thank I especially want to thank Jenny and Henning. And of course our client at Deutsche Bank to give us this opportunity- Linus, Reshma, Ajay, Madhav and Mike.
Thank you for this opportunity.

You don’t have to be tech-geek to know about Pinterest. This is the latest social media website to gain popularity at such an alarming rate. Pinterest is nothing but a virtual pin-board that allows its users to collect, categorize, organize and ‘pin’ their pictures onto various boards. These boards are visible to other user and can be shared. This has proven to be a really effective tool when it comes to sharing images online.

Radhika's Pinterest Page

This website has become quite popular mostly with women, ranging from stay-at-home mothers, D-I-Y-ers, brides-to-be. Here they find their inspirations for anything and everything, from recipes to ideas for the dresses of the bridesmaids. One can also find tips for home decors and crafts of all kinds. All one has to do is search the term ‘bookshelf’ and find yourself inundated with all different kinds of bookshelves.

The high appeal of this website is mainly because of its simple yet extremely engaging design. It went through several iterations as every other social media website. Also, people maybe reluctant to write and express themselves but viewing images and sharing them seems to appeal to everyone. And here they can leisurely browse to hundreds of pictures that other users have collected. This becomes so much simpler than book-marking images and storing them on your machines. There have been other sites before Pinterest that attempted to do similar things but failed. Pinterest has succeeded only because of the ease that it offers it users. Though by invitation only, one can login using their Facebook or Twitter accounts. They can also share their pins via the same. Primarily starting off only for pinning images, Pinterest changed the game when it started allowing users to pin videos. Using Pinterest to look for inspiration images, mood-boards is simpler than using other search engines as it will almost always give you the specific results you are looking for [provided someone has already pinned those for you].

Though the trend hasn’t caught on yet, many brands are now using Pinterest as marketing tool. With such a strong number of globally spread members, and booming e-commerce, Pinterest provides an extremely rewarding platform to promote your wares. But recently there was quite a hue and cry over its ‘Terms and Conditions’. There were quite a few concerns raised about the copyright violations the use of Pinterest could create. This post by Kirsten Kowalski went viral late last month, when Kirsten, a professional photographer and corporate lawyer realized that pinning images from websites could lead her into a great deal of trouble. As Kowalski explains that “Pin Etiquette,” explicitly discourages users from self-promoting by “pinning” photos they have taken themselves. But at the same time, Pinterest’s Terms of Use actually forbids users from pinning any photo that does not belong to him or her, and states that users are subject to any legal action that is taken from the copyright or trademark holder. Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann has acknowledged these problems and the terms and conditions have been recently updated. They have now streamlined tools for reporting copyright infringement amongst other tweaks.

I think this a smart move by the company considering that its next logical step would be to develop its plan for revenue generation. We often believe that every start up suffers through such problems almost as if it’s a hazing ritual that comes with the transformation of being a real, actual company from a start up to. And the extent of this simply an indication of how wildly successful and popular Pinetrest actually is.

While most of the Indian educational system churns out engineers and doctors, why are so few designers graduating from Indian schools? Designers like engineers and doctors are also problem solvers right? Designers perhaps think out of the box and have radical solutions to certain problems but do you think that our government is scared of managing such radical thinkers, that they have in evidently put a curb to design education? I truly believe that is part of problem because of the British legacy that was left behind and partly that our government has been busy dealing with other issues such as poverty, education etc. that design education has taken a backseat.

Image courtesy Gujarat Tourism Website

Aniket Bhagwat in his speech in CEPT last year spoke about the India Design Report written in 1958, which put forth a few important points “The decisions that are made in a tradition-oriented society are apt to be unconscious decisions — in that each situation or action automatically calls for a specified reaction. Behaviour patterns are pre-programmed, pre-set. It is in this climate that handicrafts flourish — changes take place by degrees — there are moments of violence but the security is in the status quo.” Further more he explained, India stands to face the change with three great advantages: First: She has a tradition and a philosophy familiar with the meaning of creative destruction. Second: She need not make all the mistakes others have made in the transition. Third: Her immediate problems are well defined: Food, Shelter, Distribution and Population. This last stated advantage is a great one. Such ever-present statements of need should block or counteract any self-conscious urge to be original. They should put consciousness of quality — selection of first things first — (investigation into what are the first things) on the basis of survival not caprice.”

Innovation and design are buried deep within India’s history and we can see small-scale innovations mushrooming in different parts of the country, but most of them are not heard off. India has set up National Innovation Foundation, which acknowledges and awards innovation in the grassroots. Most of these innovators are not trained designers so where is the gap between design education and innovation? Neither are they famous. They are everyday common people who have had the guts to stand up and make a difference. But we never speak about their work in design circles?

The recent A Liter of Light designed by  MIT students for the slums in Philippines has been the talk of the town on many design forums and blogs. But why are we not proud of out own innovators who have not had an MIT education but have created something for their community?

Isn’t innovation essential for a country’s development? And do you really need to be a designer to innovate? I don’t think you necessarily need formally design education to innovate. Understanding design does help in an innovation, but I don’t think its essential. What is essential is creative thinking and creative problem solving that is the core to innovation. Most of our schools and colleges do not teach us this very essential quality. Having studied abroad I have seen the difference between two different educational systems, creative thinking is never frowned upon, asking questions is essential in the learning process. In India we seem to do just the opposite. So how do we nurture innovators and creative thinkers?

I read a very interesting book Five minds for the Future, written by Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he outlines the specific cognitive abilities
that will be sought and cultivated by leaders in the years ahead. One of them is “The Creating Mind” where he elaborates the mind’s capacity to uncover and clarify new problems, questions and phenomena.

So finally to sum up I think creative thinking and creative problem solving needs to be weaved into our current educational system right from kindergarten in order to facilitate and thrive innovation in India.

Image courtesy Video Volunteers website

Video Volunteers is a NGO based in Goa, India that trains communities to be creative, produce content, think critically about situations and to take action. They combine video journalism and activism and enable marginalized communities to report untold stories from their lives and empower them to think about solutions and take action in the right direction.

According to the their website, “The profound lack of diversity in mainstream news media – both in terms of who is producing content and what is being produced – is one of our greatest concerns. We believe that who produces the news is as important as the news itself, and that all people have the right to speak, rather than be spoken for. Video Volunteers enables worldwide audiences to experience local issues of global importance through the eyes of those that live them, offering startling new perspectives from people with the local knowledge, expertise, and resources to effect positive social change.”

A few weeks ago, I managed to squeeze out a few minutes of conversation time with Stalin K., Managing Trustee, Video Volunteers India, who was at Jaaga for the screening of his film – India Untouched. Stalin’s own experience as a documentary filmmaker, media trainer and human rights activist from Gujarat, greatly influences and informs the work done by Video Volunteers.  During our tête-à-tête, Stalin emphasized the immense power of creating content and how the Internet has transformed the way in which we can share stories. What Video Volunteers facilitates is a form of hyper local dialect specific sharing of stories that can only happen when people are empowered with the skills of content creation. There are other issues of how to deal with problematic content, the importance of training people to think critically, of breaking past language barriers, but the vital idea here is to empower communities that have never been included and giving them a voice. In Stalin’s words, this is not an anthropological endeavor. This is an intervention. It is about changing and affecting the lives of people in a visible manner. It is also a matter of working across various paradigms and giving peoples wisdom its due place without being romantic.

A more recent endeavor by Video Volunteers, one that has me personally very excited – is their proposal for The Knight News Challenge to help poor people in India to use social media to make their voices heard. Using free platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and various blogs that provide the platform and conversations that they hope to engage with, Video Volunteers aspires to get the poor to participate in these conversations via their cell phones. By searching for content that is interesting to the rural network, the aim is to translate messages and re-post them into twitter so that the correspondents get them on their phones, and also propagate their responses via twitter back to the original forums.

You can read more about this proposed vision here

Urbanized Poster

A few weeks ago, Gary Hustwit kept his promise and sent me a DVD of his new movie Urbanized. No, I don’t know him personally but I backed his Kickstarter campaign and hence got the DVD. Having seen the movie now, I am glad I made that investment.

Urbanized completes Hustwit’s design-themed trilogy after Helvetica and Objectified. In Helvetica, he delved into the subject of typography and the shape of the written word, keeping in mind the Swiss typeface after which the film is named. In Objectified, Hustwit took up the topic of product design and industrial design. It made the viewer appreciate how everything we use has been designed [by someone] and how deeply design is integrated in our lives. Now, with Urbanized, he approaches the subject of urban design and how the design of our cities is shaping our lives and vice versa.

I was unaware of Helvetica till I traveled to NY for grad school. I watched it in the school library and was mesmerized. I followed the progress of the next film in the trilogy, Objectified, like a groupie. I even attended the premier and got a poster signed by the director. As an undergrad in an architecture college and now married into a family of architects, I was excited to watch the movie, and Urbanized didn’t let me down.

The film begins with grim statistics – 75 percent of the world’s population will be living in cities by 2050, up from the 50 in 2010; by 2050, Mumbai will have a population of 36 million, marginally beating Tokyo at 35 million. The film flits effortlessly from the slums of Mumbai, to the affordable housing in Santiago. The film covers the transportation problems faced by Brasilia, Bogota and suburban sprawls of Phoenix and how the bike-friendly Copenhagen dealt with something similar. We also see how citizens and authorities, both have to be extremely diligent when trying to change the defunct areas of the cities to create something beautiful like the High Line Park in New York and the community gardens in the decaying streets of Detroit.  Sometimes the solutions are as simple as creating good street lighting and public areas that can affect serious problems of violence and crime rates as demonstrated in the Khayelitsha Township [Cape Town, South Africa].

The problems that these cities face are as similar as they are different - affordable housing for all the people migrating to the city, along with sanitation, water supply, and transportation.  At the same time, the experts in the film discuss that cities need to take into consideration the climate crises and the individual problems like political scenarios and natural calamities.

An underlying theme of the film is that of participatory design. Involving the communities and residents often help in creating spaces that are better as they suit the needs of the people who use them. Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, discusses affordable housing developed by Elemental, where they built half the house and residents complete the rest themselves according to their need. The idea is that citizens, not god-like architects and planners, are the solution to the urban question.

The film also talks about the issues of transportation that developing cities are facing and what the authorities can do to help reduce it. Cities like Brasilia, Bogotá, and Phoenix are facing tremendous problems with transportation [not unlike Mumbai] because these cities were developed from a bird’s eye point of view.  There are six lane highways and sprawling suburbs that take the citizens further away from the city center. While the city centers are well connected via the roads, the residents of these communities are forced to drive for every little errand. This results in a high number of vehicles on the roads, traffic jams and eventually a large carbon footprint. The Mayor of Bogotá explains how he tackled this problem. His solution was a two fold approach: 1] create a network of cycle lanes that lead to the various neighborhoods thus encouraging people to bicycle more and 2] create a Rapid Bus Transit system with dedicated lanes on highways for these buses. “A bus with 100 passengers has the right to 100 times more road space than a car with one” says Enrique Peñalosa, Mayor of Bogotá. Copenhagen is a prime example of how successful a good network of bicycle lanes can be, 30% of its population now travels to work on bicycles.

While some cities like Mumbai see thousands of people migrating towards it, we are also seeing cities like Detroit decaying. With the population shrinking, and creating vacant, unoccupied neighborhoods, it creates a whole host of other problems like an increase in crime rates. The urban fabric of any city is comprised of people at every stage, from residents to politicians, from architects and urban planners, to private builders and industries. Each of these contributes to how the city should develop. As Edgar Pieterse, director of the African Centre for Cities in Cape Town, says in the film “What we know from history is that you really need is a small group of innovators, a small group of people that can demonstrate how to do things differently, and once that gets mainstreamed change happens really quickly”.

The film itself is quite beautifully done. At 90 minutes, the film might just scratch the surface of real issues, but with gorgeous cinematography, crisp editing and a complimentary music score, it is quite engaging. The narration emerges from the conversations with architects, planners and politicians. To say that the film will make an impact on how cities are shaped would be quite an exaggeration but the film has the potential to bring the key issue of urban design to the fore. It is thought provoking and the more the number of people who see it, the better. It will compel our politicians and planners to look beyond the quick-fix solutions and help realize the true potential of their cities.

House and flat hunting have become a nightmare these days for all of us. Imagine how challenging it must be for the low-income people. It is important to find smart and meaningful, solutions for one of the basic human necessities, “Housing”.

mHS_ Design Solution

I came across Micro Home Solutions (mHS), a social enterprise based in Delhi. mHS is co-founded by Rakhi Mehra and Marco Ferrariom. One of the many interesting projects they are working on I found the modular low income housing shelter for contractual labours in India a really neat idea. These shelters are created from everyday found objects such as bamboos, canvas, bricks etc. This is a temporary housing solution during extreme climate condition. Delhi experiences, heavy monsoons in July/August and almost freezing winters in December/January, this housing facility is meant for migrant labors, who work in the city and have a family in a remote part of an Indian village. These shelters are easy to build and take down and are claimed to be quite strong. A few of us think of what happens to the labours that construct our houses when they go home. Do they really have a place to live?

Another interesting project I came across was the sandbag project in Cape Town, South Africa. Corrugated and scrap metal were used to create low cost two storied homes built with timber frames and sandbag filling. This project has been initiated by Design Indaba, one of Africa’s renowned design-advocacy group. These houses are inspired by indigenous mud and wattle building methods and is a local and effective solution to low-income housing. Local community is involved in constructing their own houses, as skilled labour is not essential.

It is also important to provide alternative means of earning a living or connecting the community with public transport so they can reach their work places incase a whole community is displaced to another space. One has to look at designing a whole system rather than just re-designing houses. There are many other issues that come along with resettling a community. Therefore it is a difficulty and challenging task to redevelop a specific community in the space they live in.

Lastly, UNICEF has estimated that by 2050 70% of the world population will be living in cities. Out of this almost 1 billion people will be living in India and China alone. But, will our cities be ready?

Sources:
Micro Housing Solutions
Design Indab
UNICEF

I miss going for a walk in the park! When I was small I used to go and play in the park near my home. Gardens and parks were a very important part of my life when I was growing up.

Having lived in different cities in the US and traveled extensively abroad I believe I have a right to compare Indian cities with other international cities with regards to public spaces. Public spaces are an important part of many cities like New York, Baltimore, San Francisco, Boston, Washington DC and many others. Public space, are social spaces such as parks, gardens, play grounds, pavements, town centers, public libraries, churches, temples and in some cities – museums are also considered as public space. A public space is where anyone can enter the space without paying an entree fee.

Public spaces in Indian cities are diminishing. Allocated public spaces are being encroached by slums and illegal construction. Very often public spaces are neglected and unkempt which dissuades people to use them.

The other day, my dad suggested we go for a walk in this new garden called “Veer Savarkar Udyan” that was developed near our house in Pimpri Chinchwad. I was amazed to see that a previously neglected part of land, which was filled with run off water from the waterworks plant near our house, was converted into a park. I personally really loved the way the garden was developed. The park is about 18.9 acres and has a small waterfall, a beautiful walking path, play area for kids, picnic spot, paved walkway for strollers, and senior citizens and a well lit walkway in the evening. What impressed me the most was the way it was designed, the architect and urban designer put a lot of thought while creating the park. They have made sure not to cut down trees, and preserve the small lake, which was part of the space before the garden was envisioned. They have made sure to create the path around the trees. Natural material like red mud has been used for the walkway. They have also plant a lot of rose and other flower bushes. It is calming and serene to walk along the rivulet that follows the walking path and hear the water in the background.

Veer Savarkar Udyan

Some other interesting examples of reinvention of public space include, First, The Ugly Indian an anonymous group of people, based in Bengaluru, India who, have created simple and smart solutions for littered pavements, Paan stained walls, open garbage dumps, public urination and other commonly abused public space issues. Most of the solutions are very simple and low-cost. These solutions can definitely be replicated all over the country.

Second project, “The Platform of Hope”, is based in a slum called Korail in Dhaka, Bangladesh. About 120,000 people stay in this slum. There is absolutely no public space available for the children to play in the neighborhood. Khondaker Hasibul Kabir, an architect, landscape architect, collaborated with the local Pervez family to initiate a new public space, that is – to design and build 5.5 x 11 meter (18 x 36 ft) bamboo platform extending over Gulshan Lake. Children use this place to play in the afternoons. This space also opens up into a garden and a small public library. Thus bring the community together.

Third interesting project is the creation of a “Vertical Gym” in the crime-ridden slums of Caracas, Venezuela. Local architects converted a run-down sports field into a four-storied recreational and cultural center. This new space has reduced the crime rate by 30% in that neighborhood.

It is imperative that we reinvent and recreate public spaces in India. Public spaces such a gardens and parks are very important for a community. I have observed a big difference between the utilization of public spaces abroad and in India. Local citizens play a huge role in developing the public spaces and help maintain them. A true sense of community involvement is experienced through such activities. For example, citizens of a community will take it upon themselves to raise funds to redevelop an allocated public space. It does not take the government alone to create clean and safe public spaces, but I think that citizens play a huge role in maintaining them.

Sources:

The Ugly Indian

Design for the other 90%