Engaging the World of Digital Design

The author highlights methods of harnessing India’s strengths in the production of digital design.

Author: Dr. Ganapathy Mahalingam

The world of digital design technology has grown tremendously in the last four decades. An unprecedented range of tools and techniques are now available to the professional designer in fields ranging from urban design to the design of jewellery. These tools and techniques have been transforming the economies of the developed world to an increasing extent. What do these tools and techniques offer as opportunities for developing economies such as India’s? In a five-part essay I will try and answer this question and propose an agenda for how India, as a developing economy, could engage the world of digital design.

BEYOND THE SEDUCTION OF FORMS

The world of digital design today, conjures up visions of exotic forms hitherto unseen. The initial tendency is to be seduced by these forms and pursue them for ‘form’s sake.’ However, underlying these seductive forms is an economic substrate that enables their creation. This more important aspect of digital design is the world of digital fabrication and manufacturing. Digital fabrication offers new means of production and enables the creation of new products using emerging concepts such as ‘mass-customisation.’ Mass-customisation allows the production of uniquely designed products for customers, while maintaining the economies of scale that were offered by the earlier concept of ‘mass-production,’ where all the products were the same. In the world of goods and services, being able to deliver mass-customisation will become critical if India is to play a strong role in the emerging global economy. Digital design tools and techniques, by their very nature, make this possible. It, therefore becomes imperative for design professionals in India to master these digital design tools, and be able to fabricate their designs using digital fabrication and manufacturing systems.

The biggest opportunity for a developing economy such as India’s is in preparation for digital fabrication and manufacturing. Rather than pursue seductive architectural forms in isolated projects, architects and other design professionals should concentrate on developing the infrastructure needed to enable the creation of these architectural forms. Government corporations such as Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) should invest in the creation of machine tools for digital fabrication and manufacturing that are cost-effective and perform well in Indian conditions. This will create a manufacturing base in the country that will be driven by digital design technologies. Numerically controlled milling, routing, lathing, forming and cutting machines, driven by digital design tools, will enable India to become a major force in the world of manufacturing. Researchers at MIT in the United States have proposed the concept of ‘personal fabrication,’ where each household has a digital fabrication system that could manufacture small products that are needed in and around the house and the work environment. The proponents of these personal fabricators envision them to be available in the near future at the price of an expensive computer printer today. Think of what 250 million households in India could do with digital design tools and personal fabricators made by HMT!

DIGIAL SAMSKARA

The Hindu concept of samskara, the set of impressions on the mind that influence subsequent thought and action, has a strong bearing on evolving philosophy in digital design. In current research by the author, the mapping of the architectural genome has been proposed; where the genome is akin to a digital samskara that evolves from the very basic logic gates of computation and pervades large-scale ‘digital’ designs for architectural projects. Borrowing this concept, the systematic mapping and representation of all the architectural creations of India will reveal the wealth of architectural thought in India, the samskara that is shaping its current evolution. Such a systematic study of the architecture of India has not been done yet. The perspective of the author’s research offers a solution to map this samskara. Whether the mapping of this digital samskara enables us or frees us is an issue that design professionals in India, or expatriate design professionals from India, must take up and resolve. In the least it will make us study the architecture of India very carefully.

PRESERVING CULTURAL HERITAGE

India has been cognisant that it has a vast and unrivalled cultural heritage. Masterpieces of architecture that dot the landscape of the country are in dire need of preservation. While the preservation of the physical structures present unique challenges that have to be met, the problem of the preservation of cultural heritage opens new doors for designers using digital media. There is a vast industry to be developed in the digital recreation of architectural masterpieces, creation of virtual tours of archaeological sites, laser scanning of cultural artifacts such as sculpture, jewellry and utensils, digital archiving of cultural artifacts in a national ‘digital’ museum, creation of multimedia educational materials on media such as CD-ROMs and DVDs and the creation of rich multimedia web sites for cultural education. This enterprise should cover the cultural heritage that spans thousands of years, while at the same time not neglecting the contemporary cultural heritage that has been created since independence. The body of work by the upper echelon of architects in post-independence India such as Charles Correa, Balakrishna Doshi, Achyut Kanvinde, Laurie Baker, and Geoffrey Bawa in neighbouring Sri Lanka, has important cultural lessons embodied in them for future generations of architects. While it may seem presumptuous to call for preserving their work, it is never too early to work on preserving cultural heritage. Digital design media allow designers to do just that from the very inception of a design project. India should start preserving its contemporary cultural heritage as it is in the process of creating it by using digital design media.

CONSERVING CRITICAL RESOURCES

The world of building information modeling (BIM) is taking a strong foothold in the architecture profession in the United States. The technology is maturing rapidly with robust software solutions for BIM that are now available, such as Autodesk’s Revit. A number of companies in India are starting to engage in the production of BIM components for U.S. architectural firms as part of outsourcing services. These components are, for the most part, tuned to the practices and technologies of the Western world, mainly the United States. The exposure to the creation of construction documents and BIM components for the U.S. building industry has provided a temptation for local architects to adopt these construction practices and components for architectural projects in India. Is this a good thing? Decades ago, long before sustainable and green design were fashionable, architects such as Laurie Baker, working in Kerala, were able to work out a ‘pattern language’ for a sustainable architecture in India that took into consideration the people, resources and climate of India. Could architects in India devote their resources to making BIM systems out of all these sustainable architectural components so gracefully implemented by architects such as Laurie Baker and the other less-renowned group of international architects working in Auroville? The creation of such BIM components for sustainable design should be the rallying cause of design professionals in India. The BIM components created for the building industry in India should reflect the technologies and practices in India and not blindly mimic what is done for a different economic environment.

However, the biggest challenge in India is to house its people. The population in India is more than a billion and growing. If the population, as a whole, is aspiring to an American standard of living, represented by a home that is about $ 150,000 in value, then, to give you a an idea of the scale of the economy involved, the housing sector in India could be a 30 trillion dollar industry. Converted to rupees that is a staggering sum of money. Executing an economic activity of this scale is an enormous responsibility. Herein is the promise of technologies such as BIM. If BIM is properly adopted and implemented in India, then there is a better chance of success in this extremely important endeavour. The biggest benefit that these BIM systems could provide is in their usefulness in conserving critical resources such as building materials, and in managing costs of architectural projects.

There is also another significant opportunity in the development of digital design tools for the design of townships and housing projects in India. India’s vast IT sector could be leveraged into developing these special-purpose tools for the design professions in India and abroad. The author has developed special-purpose software for the design of auditoriums. The underlying technology of the software system for the design of auditoriums could easily be adapted for the creation of software for the design of housing in India. All this calls for to succeed is for like minds across continents to link together. Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro should engage the world of software tools for design professionals and become proactive leaders in the development of such design tools for India and the rest of the world. The talent is there. Initiative and follow-through will make this a reality.

INTERANTIONAL COLLABORATIONS

Many educational institutions in the United States are actively considering the engagement of developing economies as part of what they are calling the ‘internationalisation’ of their curriculums. Architecture schools are starting to engage the architectural world of countries like India and China to see what role they can play in the development of the built environment in those countries. This is an opportune time for design professionals in India such as planners, architects, landscape architects, interior designers and product designers to seek collaboration with these educational institutions abroad. Faculty members and researchers at these educational institutions abroad have the necessary expertise is using advanced digital tools and techniques. What needs to be done is to couple this expertise with the wisdom and knowledge of design professionals in India who are well versed in the culture of India. In this process of collaboration, professionals of Indian origin, who now live and work abroad, would become critical mediators or ‘bridges’ between the two cultures. The challenge for design professionals in India will be in determining how the tools and techniques, developed for another culture and economic environment, can be carefully adopted for use in the cultural setting of India. The key thing to remember is that the price to pay for these tools and technologies should not be the giving up of national and cultural identity.