India Design Talk @indiadesigntalk-blog - Tumblr Blog

To wrap up the blog, we would like to thank TDV and Julia Jacoby from HiOA for inviting us to India. After two weeks on Indian soil, which felt like at least four, we are many experiences richer. It has been a fantastic experience, and we're grateful for all the incredible people we've met and the conversations we’ve had; with the inspiring architects and designers at TDV and the diverse group of friendly locals.

The trip has been like a full on creative exercise, you know those where you try and do something new everyday. Well, that has been quite easy while travelling in a country so different from home.

We have new thoughts on how a school or office could be furnished, how mapping and visualizations can be done, what food is to people, how transport can work, and how many people fit into a rickshaw, how a recycling system could work in a city, along with how cultural and social rules, and governments rules, affects everything around us.

We’ve experienced and talked about rituals; religious, cultural and personal, along with rituals with food. Some of the rituals we got explained, some we did not get an explanation of, nor fully understand. But we know how they made us feel, and we got a notion of how important they where for the “owner”.

There are such a vast number of ways of doing things, which is very fascinating. So, maybe the most interesting thing while travelling or somehow else getting to know another culture, is learning how things are done.

Marte & Sandra

#reflections #design #travelling #culture #india #thedesignvillage #hioa #hioa produktdesign

Just put it up in the ceiling so we won’t loose it, will you?

Smart use of space or plain silly?

#TheDesignVillage #Office space #student life in india

I’ve definately sat on the floor more often than usual during our stay in India. This has made me ask some questions.

How should students workspace be? What does the workspace invite to? What does different workspaces result in? How should even presentations be held? ... And can we adopt bean bags to HiOA?

#the design village #office design #school design #reflections #workspace #design #collaborative space

The staircase at TDV

I loved the the ever changing, circular staircase at The Design Village. For one, it is an experience to run fast up and down; you never quite know how far it is to the bottom floor, where I was headed. It felt as if I was running in a fairytale.

If you listened closely, the sounds kept changing while walking, along with the materials of the floor and walls. Every floor is different and have different details and ornaments. It seems to be no rule on how anything should be. It made the nonvoluntary workout running up and down the eight stories (?) a couple times a day totally acceptable. Everything being so organicly designed, I never got accustomed to the space, it felt new and interesting, and kept surprising me. I think this is a good thing at a design or architect office.

Sandra Elvebakken Myrland

#reflections #office design #architecture #india #The design village

-Why do you serve it like that with the bowl in the middle? -That's just how you serve it!

Food rituals

There are many rituals, you might say rules, on how certain dishes are to be eaten. To a newcomer this might be all greek (read: a Norwegian saying that means it’s not understandable), and the person serving it might never have questioned it, and might even get offended if you want to do it differently.

This has made me think about my food rituals after coming home to Norway. I wonder what the indians would think of my food, my rituals, my traditions.

There’s usually reasons, some are historical, some based on hygiene, some practical and some are because of aesthetics and so on. And some reasons might be lost on the people performing it.

They certainly affects sitations, actions and our experiences, and thats why we can and should question them. Is this what we want, is this what we need.

Sandra Elvebakken Myrland

#Reflections #food culture #design #experience design

Thoughts from our excursion:

How is sharing of food fasilitated differently in different meals and cultures? And how does it affect us?

#food design #food culture #refletions

It's funny how much you learn about yourself, your way of working and what kind of cultural luggage you are carrying through getting to know new people, new rituals, new places

Sandra Elvebakken Myrland

#reflections #travel

The feeling of going outside in the evening only accompanied with a friend and no guard: I felt as if my arms could reach a hundred miles. A powerful feeling of freedom and possibility. Oh - how I've taken it for granted.

It is not always possible to walk around where you want to Delhi, especially not alone or only with another female friend.

Sandra Elvebakken Myrland

#student life in india #india #reflections

Reflections on private space

Living at The Design Village, sharing a room with four other (lovely!) girls, I realized how having a private space or not affects your actions and feelings. Depending on your mood and level of energy (or tiredness), having a private space is of different importance. This is again affected by your experiences and possibilities during the day.

When we were fixing a place to sleep at TDV, I was having a cold, experincing some jetlag and hadn’t talked much norwegian in a while. I was tired and just wanted to sleep. When you are tired or sick, living out of your stuffed backpack is no fun. Just having a dedicated place where I could organize my own things and where I could crawl into for a break, was the best thing. And having a mix-match of bedding it made me ridiculously happy to personalize my pillow by using my favourite sweater as a pillowcase.

I guess it is in situations like this you miss home; for the familiarity, because you can relax more easily in familiar environments.

Some days I was inclined to sit in the workspace in the evening rather than in my bed, because there where more space and less people there. Not because I didn’t want to be with the others, but because I needed a break to process all the new impressions.

Sandra Elvebakken Myrland

#student life in india #private space #reflections

No need for language to show friendliness and explain games to forreigners in the street

#india #language barrier

Talking with the staff in the kitchen has been challenging, and at some points comic, as they don’t speak or understand much english, and I don’t understand hindi. I try and explain with body language (which probably didn’t make much sense because of cultural differences) and they keep speaking hindi. Sometimes it seemed like they were pulling my leg; what about that time I got tea with milk, and asked if I could have a tea without milk, he said something that sounded like “you are picky?” along with some laughter, and I got another tea with milk.

At one point I picked up a piece of paper and tried to invite for a conversation throught it

I found it was easier to talk about food and get the names off things on the menu, than trying to play an old drawing game from primary school. Disregarded that he was embarrassed by having to draw in the beginning, we had a good time, and laughed a lot of my wrong pronounciations of food and numbers. And we were both vary happy when I could count to ten in hindi!

Sandra Elvebakken Myrland

#language barrier #reflections