MASTER STROKE: Design makes binaries disappear, creates new conversations: top architect
At the 39th convocation of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, renowned architect Rahul Mehrotra alerted the convocating students and said "Inequity is the biggest challenge for designers apart from climate change and environment. The society will look at your generation to tell them how they can use design effectively to solve that."
Mehrotra was the chief guest of the convocation where 371 students received their degrees. This was the year when the highest number of students were convocated.
Addressing the students about changing trends, he said, "Design is making the binaries disappear which creates new conversations, new context and new narratives. As designers, you can begin to engage by transforming and on the journey, you will find a big overlap between your spheres of concerns and your spheres of influence. Frustrations come from this aspect. While we are concerned with poverty and economy but we wake up and realize that our sphere of influence is limited. So it all depends on how you make your concerns intersect in the sphere of influence."
Urging the students to take note of the damage that social media is causing, Mehrotra said, "Another big challenge is social media. We do celebrate the ability of technology to shrink the globe but what it has done is, without even us realizing about it is that it has expanded the locality in a much more nuanced way and has made our influence less on our locality. We know politically what is happening around the world but are unaware of our own neighbourhood. As designers, you need to look at how to strike a balance between the locality of your operation and global thinking."
Institute staffer among those recommended for director’s post, says chairman
On the sidelines, Chairman of the Governing Council Naushad Forbes confirmed that the recommendations sent to the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet include a director from the institute as well. However, he refused to divulge any further details on the same.
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