BENGALURU: Your humble banana fibre as a piece of luxury clothing, or areca fibre fashioned as footwear? Or how about kalamkari designs perking up your pet dog’s mat? These are some takeaways from the Srishti design expo, where design is manifest as aesthetics, utility, a Wonkalian idea, where nature happily merges with technology.
Celebrating 20 years of Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, its students have not only showcased cutting-edge products but also reflected their connect with Bengaluru — its lakes, its perennial garbage crisis, its neighbourhood parks, its transport. They have also partnered in rural initiatives.
Bengaluru’s dying lakes find resonance in many of the projects. For instance, Jeswin George’s pedal boat-waste collector helps you enjoy, exercise and extract waste from the lake while boating. Paromita Bhatia envisions a health doctor for lakes where wastewater digital monitors linked to sewage pipelines will beep when water quality dips and ensure water bodies breathe easy.
Then there’s Shivani Barde’s telling video narrative of a benevolent lake deity who, exploited by man, transforms into Kopa Kere, or a fearsome, unapproachable goddess.
Elaborating on why lakes are important, Jacob Mathew, a project mentor at Srishti, says the dependence on Cauvery water is very high. Bringing this to Bengaluru’s high altitudes is an energy-intensive exercise, he explains.
“What we get is water at a highly subsidised cost, which may not be viable in the long run,” he adds.
About 750 Srishti students worked on 18 days on the Kere projects, meeting several stakeholders. The voluminous material in hand will now be turned into open source Wikipedic form so that everyone has access to it, says Jacob.
Bengaluru’s neighbourhood parks find greater role in Pooja Bulbule’s project. They go beyond the picnic-yoga class routine.
“We can draw more of the community by having newspaper stands, storytelling sessions, music potlucks. Why not use your neighbourhood park, why go only to Cubbon Park?” she asks.
The unsung, invisible migrant community finds voice in Hrudaya Veena’s work. She has designed a calendar that synchronises with the seasonal migration of these workers.
Namma Metro’s underground section too has lent itself to artistic interventions, mainly at the Cubbon Park station. Taarini Jouhari’s three dimensional installation tries to bring the unseen Bengaluru sky and its shifting moods to underground commuters.
While Metro’s overground displacement may be more known and visible, Abhishek Daniel’s Art in Transit project focuses on displacement of the littlest inhabitants of the underground — the ants and critters — giving them larger-than-life recognition in his installation.