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Day 3

23 March, 2009

The concluding day of 361°: The Design Conference was dedicated to Rebels - designers who had followed their heart and successfully done what they set out to do. The delegates turned out in large numbers to hear these designers speak and to get inspired by them.

Track 1: Icons

In keeping with the trend of the Conference, this concluding day started with an icon, Dr Joachim Krausse, from Germany, who has researched extensively on Buckminster Fuller. He made the delegates aware of the master through a presentation, which positioned Fuller's obsession with the dome against the Bauhaus understanding of form through Platonic and Cartesian forms. He led the audience through the conception and development of the Geodesic Dome. His experiments with the sphere and spherical geometry led to several other design ideas like the Dymaxion House and the Car, and later into the geometries of the tetra- and octahedron.

Track 4: Rebels - Foundations for Innovation

The moderator for the track, architect Prem Chandavarkar, introduced the session by saying that 'one of the central tenets of modernity was the need for avant garde to provide a new direction'.

The first speaker of the track was Linnaea Tillett, who is a lighting designer from New York. Tillett explained the social effects of lighting in an urban scheme through her projects in East New York area. The scheme was about lighting the underside of the subway but more specifically the community buildings. She went on to say that 'we are not concerned with what people see, but with what they feel emotionally'.

Till Nowak, a 3D visualiser and animator from frameboX studio in Germany, presented his work using 3D Studio, an unlikely presentation tool. He uses 'camera mapping' technique to animate 2D images including architectural images, which allow him to complete a digital project much faster than conventional techniques. Though the works were not architectural, the audience was able to draw parallels between the digital and the spatial realm. Till's work was received with great enthusiasm due to its sheer mode of presentation and the freshness of media used.

Chicago-based Paul Preissner's talk dealt with the exterior-interior relationship and its effect on space. His works demonstrated his interests in the aspects of architecture such as material, pattern and graphics. He claimed that his projects were of a 'projective and not formative' nature and reinforced the notion of 'architecture as a background wall'.

Alejandro Zaera-Polo from the Foreign Office Architects (FOA) in London presented a post rationalisation of his work emphasising that he believed in addressing 'the problem of limits rather than flows'. His talk revolved around the four types of architectural envelopes: the flat horizontal, the flat vertical, the spherical and the vertical. Showing examples of FOA's work, he went on to analyse the four typologies and the advantage each of them provides to a designer. He shared Paul Preissner's opinion that 'envelopes were the last domain where only the architect can still make the decisions'. The Foundations track of the day was in the form of a play titled ‘Butter and Mashed Bananas' performed by 'The Harami Theatre' group and produced by Atul Kumar's 'The Company Theatre'. The play which was a satire based on the theme of censorship, was extremely well received by the audience.

The concluding session had Hani Rashid from Asymptote Design, New York, defining a contemporary architect as a 'spatial specialist'. He went on to demonstrate this by presenting his works, wherein the common thread was the proactive use of latest digital tools and animation software for formulating design strategies. During the interactive session that followed, he readily acknowledged that his work was more about investigations into form rather than about other issues such as materiality and sustainability.

The 361°: The Design Conference came to an end with Sarita Vijayan, Editor and Brand Director IA&B, expressing gratitude to the speakers for giving an insight into the various fields of design. She also thanked the delegates for being a part of the conference and making it a success.