Everyday objects can be beautifully designed, yet tragically dysfunctional,” observes Ayush Kasliwal, one of the country’s leading design thinkers, on the sidelines of the Lexus Design Awards India (LDAI) 2020.
Even as headlines of the economic slowdown and Make in India initiative make for dispiriting reading, Kasliwal, also a prominent jury member of the LDAI 2020, believes that the mainstream fails to recognise the design capabilities and achievements of millennials.
Exploring a counterpoint, Lexus hosted the third edition of the LDAI in concurrence with the Pune Design Festival earlier this month, highlighting the year’s theme: Design for a Better Tomorrow. Adjudged on their ability to incorporate the fundamental Lexus principles, the finalist in the 12 categories – like product, furniture, lifestyle accessories design – were chosen from 850 entries.Some of ideas and designs that grabbed our attention.
Toy story
Bespoke design took on a new meaning with Malek Shipchandler’s Project Kinstrukto – a Lego-like brick watch that can be constructed almost from scratch by its wearer. Inspired by the Japanese Harajuku culture, a street style that celebrates non-conformity through its colour, theatricality and versatility, the former lawyer’s timepiece allows the user to build the watch piece-by-piece, including the bezel. The watches are powered by Japanese quartz machines of Seiko-Epson for the flagship krater aseries, while the arkitekt and zikkurat lines have the Miyota-Citizen.
It takes a village
Landscape architect turned hexagram artist, Ankon Mitra’s submission brought together two disparate craft forms – the Japanese technique of origami and the Telangana region’s shadow puppet theatre (Tholu Bommalata) – to create wall art that also provided a modular lighting solution. Borrowing from the idea of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh’s shadow puppetry tradition, the Tholu Bommalata Parchment Leather Lighting Collection makes use of traditional paper-thin leather parchment decorated with drawings and the backlighting as a starting point.
Seating plan
Surprisingly enough, the sustainability trend was limited to Shashank Gautam’s the butterfly chair and deer table – which offered a fresh perspective of the ‘poor man’s timber’. “We are attempting to shift this preconceived notion, and rebrand bamboo as the material of the future,” explains Shashank, founder of the furniture brand Mianzi. Preserving the raw appeal of bamboo, the designs played up the natural pliability of the material by creating seamless geometric shapes – triangles that resembled butterfly wings – without joints, that could be assembled to make up an elegant, minimalistic chair.
“We realised that in most furniture, the joints are fragile since it bears most of the pressure. By eliminating the joints,we not only used less material, but also combined the traditional ways of bending bamboo to create structurally sound furniture.”