Prof. MP Ranjan
• MPR: The Design Thinker, The Practitioner and The Evangelist
Prof. M. P. Ranjan was a born thinker of, by and through Design. From the lens of Systems Thinking and Sustainability in Designs, he consciously approached his design language developments from a grand scheme perspective; that was distinct and quite unique to set him apart from other design thinkers. His foremost ground of investigation, questioning and discoveries resided in the evolutions and the historical narratives of Design. At the same time, he never lost sight of the futures that designers as thinkers and makers must work towards for a better and brighter future of design in India.
MP Ranjan’s favourite abodes: his office at NID Ahmedabad and his thinking spot at the Chaigate, NID Ahmedabad entrance |
Image Credits: Blogposts by his students as a tribute for Remembering M.P Ranjan during his demise in 2015: courtesy of milindo-taid.net, photo by: Sumit Kathuriaa
“Design is a very old human capability that has been forgotten by the mainstream educational systems and the traditionalists alike. Both these streams need to re-establish contact with the discipline if we are to face the vagaries of change that is upon us from all directions.” —M.P. Ranjan (2003) [18]
As a student, he entered the design education arena at the NID; backed by his acquired skills and knowledge pre-training in the making and creating new shapes for toys and furniture in his father’s workshop to become an “experienced cabinet maker” in his own words. This helped him nurture the aquired affinity of working with materials and testing ideas of his designs as a life-long devotional practice – a compulsive habit that he ingrained in his students later in the role of being industrail design faculty member at NID Ahmedabad.
MP Ranjan in studio with models and prototypes (left), geometry class in session – MPR with students of foundtation; all during his first year of PG Furniture Design, NID Ahmedabad (1969). Image Courtesy: Learning Ground M.P. Ranjan in Dekho by Co.design [19] and In Conversation India’s Design Guru: M.P. Ranjan by Derek Lomas [18]
In his student days at Furniture Design, he worked on three live exhibition design projects. Among them, he got an opportunity to work with Padamsree Dashrath Patel during Our India Pavilion at the Asia ’72 Expo, New Delhi and also on Nehru Exhibition with Vikas Satwalekar. Those decades of the 1960s and 70s were the true cornerstone of NID’s work ethic and team processes under time and quality benchmarks pressures [19].
Left Image: MP Ranjan clicked by a Graphic Design student Anjila Puri as part of their photography assignment Image Courtesy of Aditi Ranjan | Sourced from Derek Lomas paper [18]
Center Image: MP Ranjan with a torch enacting for a light play by Late developed by Prof. Suranjana Satwalekar at NID Prof. Vikas Satwalekar as part of an experimental exercise in photography studio in 1970s at NID Ahmedabad Source: Dekho mag [19]
Right Image: MP Ranjan with his Katlamara Chair design | Image Courtesy of Aditi Ranjan | Sourced from Derek Lomas paper [18]
He infused the same enthusiastic streak of working in his students with the approach of considering Prototyping as essential and equally important as sketching. He inspired his students to test every radical idea based on a real world analogy/ framework. Accoroding to him, if a design could be tested, then only it could be improved – or reformed to create a better model, until a working, thriving system could be generated.
The trick was to ask the right and challenging the status quo kind of questions, backed by courage and self-reflection from students’ learning perspective. Are the questions / design problems better than my previous semesters? Will they solve problems of people/spaces/environments in a better way or not?
Prof. MP Ranjan with his faculty colleagues, Prof. Balaram and Prof. Ashok Chatterjee in disussions with Charles Eames during his last visit to NID in 1978 (left) | Image Credit and Courtesy: Learning Ground M.P. Ranjan in Dekho by Co.design [19]
Prof. MP Ranjan and Prof. S Balaram selfie | Private archives of M.P. Ranjan
“Design, in my view, is a set of related abilities and attitudes that need to be developed. For instance, one attitude is when scientists ask for rigor. On the other hand, when you want to explore, you want to play. That is also an attitude. At an early stage, when you don’t know where to go, I think play is very good. Now, play seems like a very frivolous way of addressing a very serious problem; but from my experience, many serious problems need playful ways of finding answers.”
– M.P. Ranjan interview note from paper, ‘In Conversation India’s Design Guru: M.P. Ranjan’ by Derek Lomas, The Design Lab, University of California, San Diego, USA [18]
Ranjan’s experiences in developing sustainable design solutions for the crafts sector, particularly his dedicated works in bamboo, have become a milestone of his design evangelism for the real world. He had the uncanny ability to bring attention to the tiniest of the design details. According to his students, he would be able to tell you how a particular tumbling duck toy had been weighted to waddle just so, or delight in describing how a particular bamboo chair could be constructed without metal hardware of any kind [12].
Designs with Dendrocalamus strictus of Madhya Pradesh by Prof. MP Ranjan as part of the NID-BCDI Bamboo Initiatives | Image Courtesy: BAMBOO INITIATIVES – Design Strategies from NID-BCDI Catalogue, Edi. MP Ranjan and Mann Singh, 2004 at NID [12]
According to Ranjan in his article, ‘Nature of Design: The Need for Nurture in India Today’, in the event report of WDCD 2011 – What Design can do for Access, pp. 14, “Craft-based design….reached a very high degree of refinement and resolution in our villages and living spaces of our traditional societies in the pre-industrial age….an ingenuity of local craftsmen and local leadership created a vast body of traditional wisdom that is today still embedded in the rural and village life in places such as India. Craft-based design has been replaced by a form of professional activity that is seen dealing more with aesthetics rather than with the fundamental structure and meaning of production systems in our society. So while Technology tells us what is possible, we do need to look at design with its participative and integrative methods to find out what is desirable and valuable for a sustainable future” [1].
In the BCDI-NID initiative to conduct craft-based design workshops and train the craftsmen communities of the villages in Katlamara in the northeast India; a bilateral design strategy was applied in creation of bamboo furntiture into ‘School Furniture Systems’ made from locally available bamboo to address sustainable business needs of the rural as well as the urban markets [20].
School Furniture for rural markets gave the Katlamara craftsmen potential challenges to confront their local needs in a susatianable manner [20] | Image Credits: Katlamara Chalo: A Design for Development Strategy Book: Design as a Driver for the Indian Rural Economy © 2005 – 2007 CFBI [Centre for Bamboo Initiatives]-NID
Stackable systems of school furniture opened up opportunities for urban markets in cost effective and easy to transport offerings. Stackable school furniture in a range of sizes to suit primary, middle and secondary schools can maximize the multiple use of limited classroom space as well as support innovative uses of the room for a variety of school activities. Cost and durability are other considerations [20]
Stackable School Furniture for urban markets (left) gave the Katlamara craftsmen potential challenges to confront their local needs in a susatianable manner [20] |
Image Credits:Katlamara Chalo: A Design for Development Strategy Book: Design as a Driver for the Indian Rural Economy © 2005 – 2007 CFBI [Centre for Bamboo Initiatives]-NID
An entire business plan based on this bamboo furniture research case study was proposed and submitted to the local government their in a c compiled form, SUGGESTED BUSINESS PLAN FOR PRODUCTION OF BAMBOO POLE CHAIRS IN TRIPURA [21]. A society-benefiting design potential represented through the sustained research mission with the Katlamara Bamboo Design strategic development for Tripura’s rural economy as a headstart case study – made Ranjan add more research and present the findings to carry forward similar design strategic projects for rural economy upliftments. Therefore, a Seedlings of Wealth model that was proposed in 1995 at the Bali Conference and was implemented at Katlamara [22].
Seedlings of Wealth model that was proposed in 1995 at the Bali Conference was implemented at Katlamara [22] |
Images Courtesy: MP Ranajn blogpost of February, 2009
The system remained at the heart of Ranjan’s design philosophy. People, processes, relationships and the environment unified into an ecology within which every design solution had to exist in harmony; there could be no product without a paradigm, and no concept without a context [23]. He believed in the focal point of each drawing, sketch, form, creation or even a prototype as a frame of universal design embedding a deep and committed practice-based as well as led inquiries.
Left Image: Ranjan with students of NID Bangalore just back from a field visit to Chennapatna_NID_Ranjan preZ of NID Bangalore |
Image Credits: MP Ranjan’s blog post of October 2007 [23]
Right Image: Chennapatna Toy cluster (1999) for their craft documentation | Image Credits: MP Ranjan’s blog post of October 2007 [23]
Carrying forward a similar zeal and drive, Prof. Ranjan has documented a detailed on-field design and implementation based research-centric project, ‘Bamboo Boards and Beyond’. This happenned in the November 1998 through February 2001; when the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Asian and Pacific Centre for Transfer of Technology (APCTT), New Delhi, had supported field research on laminated bamboo, a concept development workshop on the creation of new applications with laminated bamboo boards through a research and development initiative by India’s premier design Institute, the National Institute of Design. This workshop aimed to position bamboo as a sustainable eco-friendly industrial material of the future [24].
He handled many design projects while he was at NID for industrial, government, and international agencies in areas of product design, interior design, exhibition design, craft design, and design policy. He headed the NID’s Publications and Resource Centre as well as the Information Technology initiatives as the Chairman Computer Centre and Head Apple Academy at NID. He completed many major projects for the UNDP and Government agencies to demonstrate the role of Bamboo as a sustainable craft and industrial material of the future. His many innovations contributed to the creation of many new strategies for the use of Bamboo in India.
Bamboo Boards [25] and Beyond (B3) was a multi-disciplinary international design event inviting students and professionals from all over to participate in a 10-day hands-on workshop at NID in 2000. These images show: M.P. Ranjan discussing product ideas with students in the Wood studio at NID; a product innovation using laminated bamboo board (China) and a board made of woven bamboo (splits) mats (India) in the Wood studio at NID; Furniture Design students holding up their light-weight bamboo space frame in the wood studio at NID; and exhibition of product ideas generated during B3 in the Design Gallery at NID.
Selected images from the workshop and from the background research that led up to the workshop at NID under Bamboo Boards and Beyond, NID (1998 – 2001) | Images: Courtesy of Aditi Ranjan
Image from the lecture: ‘Three Orders of Design: Lessons from Northeast India’ that includes illustrated examples from the boo, Bamboo and Canecraft of Northeast India, Copyright © 2009
Prof. M P Ranjan propagated and devotionally practiced the continued need of augmenting the skills of co-creation, capacities to determine and produce, collaborative working and team building in his own projects as well as projects of students under his supervisions. According to him, even if a very small group of designers and stakeholders augment these collective learning skills, a lot of good design for the benefit of the people of India could be implemented and sustained. This, in turn would add purpose to the value-based claim of design education in India. In this realm, Sustainability for Tomorrow's Consumers: India Innovation Charette was organized on the 15th November 2008 at New Delhi as part of the India Economic Summit 2009 under the auspices of the World Economic Forum [26], [27].
The daylong discussions and workshop sessions at the Design Charette at New Delhi saw six key themes emerge:
1. ENGAGE CONSUMERS: co-create and close the loop
2. Move from stuff to VALUE BUSINESS MODELS: consume right, not less
3. Embrace OPEN SOURCED innovation: leverage copy left
4. INTEGRATE to deliver innovation: collaborate along the value chain
5. REDEFINETHE CORE: meta-morph and reinvent
6. Leverage EMERGINGTECHNOLOGY: put science at work
Visualizing Sustainability for Davos 2009 under six themes |
Image Courtesy: MPR WEF 2009 Booklet
In order to take these themes forward, the National Institute of Design (NID) conducted a two day workshop, Visualizing Sustainability for Davos 2009 and the same was organized on the 26th and 27th of December 2008, where six multidisciplinary teams of design students, Ranjan and his faculty colleagues from NID, and invited experts explored these six themes, in order to create detailed concepts within each of these broad frameworks [27].
Visualizing Sustainability for Davos 2009 [26], [27] | Image Courtesy: MPR WEF 2009 Booklet