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Design and the Institution
How is an Institution Designed and How Do They Shape Knowledge
Speakers
How is an institution designed and how does an institution design knowledge? A recurring theme throughout this year-long Design History Now series at BIC has been the role of institutions and institutional knowledge. This panel discussion will critically explore design history within the context of institutions and institutions as the subject of design history.
Focussing primarily on design institutions within India and the UK, the panel will consider a historical context for today’s design education, alongside the lived experience of moving through and working within such spaces. We’ll consider challenges that shape design institutions and alternative ways of thinking about the role of (design) history within and of design institutions. Finally, we’ll ask who such alternatives might serve, now and in the future.
This talk is a part of Design History Now, a series exploring design histories that connect to our contemporary moment. The series brings together a selection of speakers who engage with design as a social, political and ecological agent, and consider how design is in turn shaped by these forces. The intention is to offer a vision of design history that is deeply critical in its approach, and in tune with its contemporary relevance and purpose.
In collaboration with:
Speakers
Bao
Saurabh Tewari
Saurabh Tewari is a Design Educator and Researcher, currently working as an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He previously taught at SPA Bhopal (where he co-founded the MDes program) and at NID Ahmedabad (as a Visiting Faculty). He holds a background in Architecture (B. Arch, 2003-08, SSAA Gurgaon) and Communication Design (M. Des, 2008-10, Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay). He successfully defended his doctoral thesis, titled “Design Paradigms: A Post-colonial Design History of India,” at the Department of Design, IIT Kanpur (2015-21). His research and pedagogical interests revolve around Culture-oriented Design, Design History, and Studies.
@thinksaurabh
www.stewari.in
Tanveer Ahmed
Tanveer Ahmed (she/her) is a practice-led fashion design researcher and anti-racist educator. Her work explores ways to expose and rethink how dominant Eurocentric racial hierarchies are used as part of the fashion design process. She is a Senior Lecturer in Fashion and Race at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design of the University of the Arts London in the U.K. She works across the fashion programme to support decolonial fashion perspectives.
Her research emerges from experiences of teaching fashion design over the last 20 years, and recognising the urgent need to explore alternative non-extractive, anti-racist, and social justice-oriented forms of fashion design pedagogies. This approach emphasises a more situated, relational and contextualised fashion design praxis by centering plural, non-heteropatriarchal, non-capitalist forms of fashion inspired by pre-colonial concepts of fashion that respect our planet and multi species.
@TanvSyeda
https://researchers.arts.ac.uk/2036-tanveer-ahmed
Nia Thandapani
Nia Thandapani’s work focuses on colonial and post-independence design in the Indian subcontinent and the United Kingdom and engages with imperialism’s presence within museum and heritage spaces, and its impact on design practice and its outcomes. She is a co-founder of Chandigarh Chairs, a long-term project that works towards a critical re-evaluation of the history of Chandigarh’s modernist furniture. As part of the collaborative duo Studio Carrom, Nia was a 2019 artist in residence at the William Morris Gallery in London and co-created the exhibition Distant Fellowship which explored and problematised Morris’s connections with South Asia. Nia’s creative work includes artist books, alternative museum guides, exhibitions and installations and experimental zines.
