context and all that

Michael Bierut, over at his blog:

All of this is compounded by the fact that designers themselves have very little faith in context. We too want the quick hit, the clever idea that will sell itself in the meeting and, even better, jump off the table in design competitions. More than anything, we want to proffer the promise of control: the control of communication, the control of meaning. To admit the truth — that so much is out of our hands — marginalizes our power to the point where it seems positively self-destructive.

This was in respect to graphic and logo design, but is true EVERYWHERE. Whenever we do a new architectural design studio project of a sufficiently large scale, I'm always wondering - will our well meaning intentions ever become reality (assuming we're designing in a hypothetically real situation and all that)? When we did inclusive housing last semester the open-endedness of this question was a GREAT frustration. Nothing exists in isolation, and we can't always predict how people will react, respond and adapt- even the greatest social scientists aren't always right. All the reading I've been doing for our seminar on complex adaptive social systems has merely reinforced this belief.

God, designers have to think through so many possibilities- and industrial designers and architects probably have it worst, considering the shear scale of their products their decisions affect a ginormous number of people. Shit.

you get the point, don't you?

Poor tota

Injured parrot Prashant rescued from our office lawn. And no sooner had we secured it in the box, the local mongoose -who's always running around- came out of his hiding place and started sniffing around and even climbing into the box! Nature's cruel :(

Then we had to put the box higher up, out of reach.

Update!

10 minutes after I took these photos, Mansi came back from Green Park and decided to meet the tota. She opened the box, and the parrot just flew out! Yay. I'm trying not to think about it falling somewhere else and actually being eaten up.

please type chandigarh

on the door of the Gandhi Bhavan auditorium, Punjab University campus.

I visited Chandigarh this past weekend. We stayed at the JW Marriot, which (however luxurious from the inside) was absolutely ugly from the outside and didn't respond to it's context at all. However, there was one redeeming feature:

all the signage was on metal panels with the Golden Ratio spirals!

also, for some reason, all the full stops were dropped/hanging. anyone know the logic (if any) behind this? 

You can see my other photographs here.

at work

Near the site for our new office, in SDA. 

I'm sure that these bugs got there because of the woodwork / carpentry at the site. The reason I'm sure is because, a week ago, I discovered one of these in my HAIR while on the way back to our current office. While in the car with my boss. As you can imagine, I screamed bloody murder.

Yuck.

(I tried to identify the species on the net, but I'm just way too disgusted by the few images I saw to continue.)

Extension Khirkhee

At Khirkhee village, as part of a street art festival:

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DL 2686

For some reason I find this very cool: jugaadu reuse of the back of a truck.

What does this say about the residents of Shahpur Jat?

Also, what are the ladders doing there? I'm sure no one would waste away such good ladders...

Roadside

जल मत किश्तों में आई हूँ
!!!!!

at Kotla Mubarakpur

This last week there was a huge drum abandoned in the parking lot near the office. So weird; whose is it? Where did it come from? Where will it go? Why wouldn't the owner give it to the kabaadiwala and get some cash for it????????

You can't see it in these pictures, but the skin stretched across it still has a very hairy texture.