Take a moment and think about your favourite restaurant or café. What’s the one element that has stayed with you? For a lot of us, it’s either our favourite seat, our favourite staircase, how the place looks down at a flowery boulevard, or how its yellow lights give us a summer-like feeling as we sip our favourite drink. Truly, spaces inhabited by people are also co-habited by elements and the so-called ‘things’ that make them special and unique. If you go back to it, you will realise that each restaurant was initially established with a certain kind of inspiration. Whether it’s a cat cafe that came from a love and compassion for the furries or your favourite Chinese place with its ornate interiors, each of these places carry certain elements of psychology and philosophy behind their being.
In order to understand this better, we have Shweta Kaushik, Founder and Creative Head, Shweta Kaushik Interior Design (SKID) today on HG Academy as one of our mentors to teach us more about the psychology of restaurant design.
For those of you who have recently tuned into Homegrown, welcome! I hope you’re enjoying what we put out there for you, and here’s a little something about #HGAcademy.
At a time when our physical spaces are confined and movement is stifled, the only constant in our lives is our own creativity. For a while, we, at Homegrown have been toying with the idea of evolving our platform into a space that inspires generations to believe that their career paths are not limited to those shaped by our society and that there is a world out there that where creative industries are thriving. Our sole the motivation behind this attempt is to shift the needle in the Indian creative industries. This is where the idea of HG Academy comes to fruition.
The sessions at HG Academy see digital festivals, skill-building sessions, new personal & professional strategies and similar efforts towards connecting you to the world of creators to learn and be inspired. The aim is to deep-dive into the creative process, new ways of learning, re-imagination of old ways and experience and learn more. As we spend our days inside our homes and within ourselves, HG Academy with its commune of creative thought leaders and pioneers teach you the basics that you might not get access to elsewhere. We hope for it to evolve into a culture of creation, collaboration, discovery through an exchange of thoughts & ideas.
Whether you’re a businessperson looking to make a foray into the restaurant business world or are an enthusiast looking to learn more about spaces, this is the perfect place for you to expand your skills. Designer Shweta Kaushik who established SKID in 2010, takes pride in her ability to create alluring spaces with a fresh perspective and a strong narrative. Her dreamscapes (as she likes to call them) uniquely reflect her clients’ personalities and desires. She graduated from Domus Academy in Milan with a Masters in Design and founded SKID (Shweta Kaushik Interior Design)–an interior design consultancy in Mumbai. Over the course of six years, she has designed 30 restaurants across India and Dubai. According to her official website, Shweta’s work has been featured in prestigious periodicals. She has been felicitated as one of the iGen Top 50 young innovative designers by Architect and Interiors India and recipient of Best Hospitality Design at the Aces of Spaces Awards 2012. She has also been featured in Yahoo! Lifestyle’s Fab & Fearless women in India.
Read on to know what she recommends if you are interested in learning about the psychology of design.
Podcast
Design Matters by Debbie Millman
Books
The Art of Looking Sideways (2001), Alan Fletcher
Design of Everyday Things (2018), Donald A.Norman, Neil Hellegers
Design as Art (2008), Bruno Munari
Films/Documentaries
Eames: The Architect & The Painter (2011)
Abstract: The Art of Design (2019)
Rams (2015)
Workshops/Talks/Seminars
People/Accounts to follow
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