Let me show you the true artist in you!

No art is as inclusive as fine arts or call it whatever. 

It seems every single person is born with artistic talent specifically more pronounce and visible in the field of fine arts, abstract art or call it whatever, an artist even in you, whether you consider yourself an artist or not that is irrelevant,  proof is your childhood notebook filled with weird characters drawn by you and spoiled pages of your dad's diary and all the tattoo that you made on your hand, graffiti on your school desk and crayon spoiled walls of your house where you spent your childhood days and that creative surge when you were staring at the damp basement or loo walls trying to infer some meaning out of those grunge damp patterns, or even today if you occasionally tend to draw a smiley face on moist, dew clad surface and so on. Every adult was an artist in his or her childhood so they are today, so are you. 

Every child with his or her genuine creativity, making and living their own dreams in their sketchbook or on wall, vivid and real in their own imagination, a spell-bounding piece of rawness with bit of influence from surrounding, and we are not talking about all the art and craft assignments forced by educational curriculum and competition, those are plastic, manipulated, and imposed, threatening and robbing the very creative rawness of child. We are not talking about biased aesthetic judgement here. We are talking here for example the child's own interpretation of how round a sun should be or how round his dexterity allows him to draw it, not the Vinchi style geometric perfectness of circle which we tend to impose on them. Since art being essentially a true expression of self does not necessarily demands shape of circle to be a perfect circle so it really doesn't matter how well you used to draw a circle to qualify as an artist in your childhood, and since art is beyond the clutch of time so if you draw the similar weird circle today when you are grown up it is still an art and so you are an artist. Another reason is that if making a perfect circle is a qualification criteria for an artist than our computer or tab can do that job better than our master artist. 

So acknowledging the truth of your own childhood talent now you can appreciate the works of kids around better. Not judging them on their perfectness but admiring them for their innocence. You see these kids will grow up one day and change the very definition of understanding of what an art should be. After all its art if you can prove it. 

You might also like to read this post on "design diplomacy"

There used to be character and stories associated with every city street in good old time!

Contemporary Déjà vu streets - the price of mechanization, optimization and efficiency. 

Though green, well groomed, with cool informative signage and everything in place, contemporary city streets lack something, possibly lack of identity, lack of character may be! Every street looks the same more or less, you see from streets of your housing society to the neighborhood to city arteries, apart from little exceptions of some filth some beautification. What has gone wrong with the planners, landscape architects and urban designers today. You should first visualize the impactful streets of historic cities and meandering streets of untouched villages and then have a look at today's super functional streets, speed corridors rather, these are impressive indeed with all its robustness, but these are not impactful, at all, not something leaving lasting impression on our mind, not something to be remembered, not something to be praised by our future generations. Functional but industrial. Templates of supposedly best practices. But we forget that best practices lose their significance the moment we start, duplicating, imposing and transposing them. some of the mass public housing are the best example of how best practices can go wrong. 

Is it that there is no incentive left today at all to plan or design a street with character, is it that cities, public administrations and private clients lack fund (a myth) or we are robbed of imagination, is it that there are some big loopholes and ambiguity in the planning and design guidelines giving planners and designers an excuse not to be creative, is it that we have become so much efficiency oriented that we forgot we are not machines, is it that land is so scarce (a myth again) that we cant afford to have luxury of building streets with a memorable character, is it that after reading all those wonderful street characteristics in school we finally resort to the super efficient mechanized street templates, has it something to do with our optimized geometric city grid and complex infrastructure requirements, is it our drafting software to blame which has almost replaced our dear drawing boards, is it that scope of creativity is increasing being confined to the pedestrian and bicycle streets only, is it that urban designers role has been limited to the extent mentioned in their design guide book which either don't exist or is too vague for the cities of developing countries or too standardized for developed country? You see those bizarre public sculptures and momentous in the streets at places, those are nothing but helpless reactions of creative urban souls who are not being able to create a place called street in the way it should be, due to much propagated and regularized contemporary templates of streets. 

Can we dare to show some creativity amidst this long list of incentives and loopholes for "not to be creative". Can we as a planner, urban designers and landscape experts show them our humane side keeping cities monetary limitations (A myth) aside for a while. Can we design a street with an innate quality of "place" where you would often want to spend your time or something which you would like to appreciate while you driving back home?

Conserving inherited heritage - an urgent challenge!

Need of a micro conservation policy. 

We let our inherited ancestral heritage decay, gathering dust and slowly fading away in the oblivion, inheritance sometimes tangible like that beautiful gramophone, that antique classic chair, that vintage album of family photograph or that intricately carved wooden window of ancestral home somewhere in suburb, inheritance at times even intangible like values, culture, stories and learning, family heritage dilapidated usually due to ambiguous responsibility among siblings, lack of time, lack of alacrity and most importantly in absence of micro conservation mechanism, because we feel disoriented and helpless in absence of such mechanism, a guideline, a supportive hand saying "let me help you conserve your family heritage because we know how important it is for you, and equally important for our nation, because these little inherited objects, antiques, collectibles, vintage photographs, values, stories, prose, poetry, proverbs, lessons, and so on make the larger heritage pool of historical cultural and social importance. You can call it “crowd sourcing of heritage” which subsequently contributing to nation's image building, while maintaining a stock of inheritance. 

This micro conservation mechanism should be prepared by government because heritage even individually possessed is something of national value and something to be proud of and something which should be preserved and documented immediately for the future generation. These family heritage need not necessarily be kept in museum just because it’s of national significance, we can rather let them be with those families and individuals who inherited them, but we must make an effort to help them conserve it, governments role can be as a facilitator, trainer, protector, documenter, providing manpower and finance to restore protect and document every piece of family heritage without getting into affairs of taxation and legality, with sole focus of preservation and documentation of objects of historical importance whether for individuals or for nation, documenting design, motifs, techniques, skill set, learning, stories etc. which are going to corrode and disappear in thin air otherwise!

Interdisciplinary Exploration & Randomness - key to the next big wave of knowledge

It's this notion of specialized segmented knowledge which is hindering the next big phenomenon of world knowledge!

You often see people walking with an air of expertise in certain field of knowledge, they are experts of course no doubt, but the moment you talk about some fairly distant subject, they will say oh that's wonderful but you know that’s not my area of expertise or interest. That’s how we are, stubborn, rigid, and insensitive toward new knowledge, that’s how we have been taught, trained to become a doctor or an engineer or scientist or another specialist soul. A much propagated outcome of intellectual segmentation through insensitive education, teaching designed to produce another of many cogs in the wheel i.e. teaching only to the extent which will suffice a day job requirement and a reasonable income. Though they have various subjects incorporated in the curriculum they are still missing a vital point which we are going to see.

They say Look Mr. "A" you are a doctor, you are not supposed to get into social science, Listen Mr. “B” you are an engineer, you are not supposed to trespass into the field of philosophy, Hey Mr. “C” you are not a physicist so mind your own business of architecture and You Ms. “D for dancer” microbiology is not going to fetch you bread and butter so you better concentrate on different dance forms which we have already listed in Wikipedia. That the languages we understand and appreciate today, this vary language which is hindering the next wave of knowledge! A next wave of knowledge is long due for mankind which is something beyond currently much popular data-mining, analytics and big-data.

Let’s see a glimpse of what this next mutation of knowledge might look like, Mr. Doctor “A” getting into social science finding out that size of family has something to do with survival rate of patient. Mr. Engineer “B” has this sudden realization while trespassing into the area of philosophy that people need products which touches their soul and fulfill their spiritual needs not something which just touches heart and fulfills their materialistic hunger, the Architect Mr. “C” delving into physics and mathematics realizes that his flowery concepts of design aesthetics can have more scientific and lucid explanation and meaning through quantum physics and topology.  Ms. Dancer is enlightened to see the colorful oscillating Nano world through the eyes of microscope and now trying to mimic the oscillating dynamism and moves of cells and microbes and so on!

Contemporary education system is missing out this very basic purpose of learning, their focus is to let the kids memorize the books so that they have a basic knowledge of different field, so that he or she can choose one of his or her subject of interest later on and succeed in their life in the chosen direction. But learning process has to be driven by Curiosity and Absorption rather than Memorizing facts.

Teaching everything or not at early stage of life is irrelevant, what is important here is to plant this seed of curiosity in each child so that they keep exploring and dare to go beyond their chosen comfort subject exploring vast possibilities in later part of life when their education is over, learning when they are grown up in the most productive and receptive period of life, when they are capable to explore, absorb and learn at an unprecedented speed. 

Next wave of knowledge is not about eminent scholars, literary figures or authoritative wisdom, new wave is soon to be triggered by the random individuals scattered across the globe, through a random fusion of currently highly segmented streams of knowledge, knowledge which would be driven by those individuals who will dare to explore the knowledge streams beyond their scope of specialization, streams alienated from their own domain of functioning, no matter what. Go seek anything you never cared for, explore anything you never paid attention to, go seek if you will, if your educational background permits you to do that, if you feel it’s important, if you dare to do that!  ROR of "Randomness" with calculated risk is much higher than the "Calculated surety", every daring business knows that, every successful person adores that, same logic applies to the field of knowledge. If you try to connect the dots of your own learning process, it’s not an accident that you somehow catch hold of best of the websites and online resources truly randomly, on a random time of a random day, it’s not a coincidence it’s a "inevitable reward" of "random exploration" - imagine if you are able to control and master this accidental learning process. This is what coming “Next” in knowledge!    

Some kids don't play Soccer and possibly will never play Golf, why so?

Sometimes one feels that sports is more about opportunities and affordability! 

Usually Kids from humble socioeconomic background seems to be happy and content with their primitive sports, which does not need any sports gear or tool or gadget or training or coach and so on. 
   
 Has it anything to do with the limited opportunities they get and their    sparse economic condition?

If "Law of Physics" is working in your piece of Art or Architecture...

..then you know you are going in the right direction!

From Wonderful Classical Art to Good Design to Amazing Architecture, one thing is common that is "Law of Physics" which is and should be ever-present there to make it a success. If Gravity is acting on you, it can and should act on your Piece of Art or Architecture as well. Though Gravity is just a simple example here to explain the impact of Physics on Art or Architecture.

A page from the old Notebook

Art without true reflection of natural physical laws is like making a portrait of someone sitting in front of you and assuming that there is no force of gravity acting on your subject of art or may be your subject is floating in the air or something. Remember the good old classical art works from master artists, with beautiful bulky art subjects of individual or group portraits?

There is another way to look at it as well, that is; you can also make a successful art or architecture by beating the gravity or natural laws itself, like an architectural work having an appearance of floating in the air. No matter what, a good design revolves around the law of physics whether going with it or challenging the Natural Laws, Laws of Physics!

Do you consider marketability of your design based on color demand?

Something they didn't tell you in Design school!

Something like this.....

• If they are looking for "Red" Give them "Red"! Even if you personally like purple or yellow.  
• Red color product will have way higher mass demand than Purple one, no matter what the product is or how well the product has been designed. 
• The only place were you can sell purple color product is in the niche market, while red and blue captures both niche and mass market.
• The only way you can make profit selling purple color product is by targeting high end segment with higher margin. 
• Its okay to be emotional about your product and defensive about your design, but you need to listen to market aspirations first and modify your  design as per demand, even if that requires keeping your ego aside. 
• If you haven't shipped it, it really doesn't matter how cool your design values are.