Raw Foundry Is Helping Emerging Indian Designers Reimagine Our Regenerative Future

How do we design for a hostile planet?

During a LinkedIn Live conversation about the next step in sustainability in 2023, Sean Quinn, the director of Regenerative Design at HOK — a global design, architecture, engineering, and planning firm — said that "with a challenge as big as climate change, we cannot retreat to our silos and hope to solve the problem. We need to share our insights across disciplines and teams so everyone can weigh in and communicate. It's in the interchange that we find the best possible solutions".

In other words: the future of design is iterative and collaborative.

In recent years, "iteration" and "collaboration" have emerged as the core tenets in the realm of regenerative design — an approach to design in which human and natural systems are designed to co-exist and co-evolve over time. The value of a regenerative design approach is in its potential to renew planetary health and deliver positive outcomes for both people and the planet.

Raw Foundry, a regenerative design incubator programme, is the result of a synergistic partnership between Orange Tree, a Jodhpur-based sustainable furniture studio, and Raw Collaborative, one of India's most distinguished design symposium. When my predecessor Vaaswat Sarkar attended the 'Regenerative Design Thinking' event by Raw Foundry in Jodhpur earlier this year, he wrote that "the most appealing feature of Raw Foundry is how the initiative recognises that the younger generation will be the custodians of Planet Earth and ultimately shape its future".

A launchpad for homegrown visions of our regenerative future, the Raw Foundry programme has, for the last six months, fostered an approach to product design that prioritises regeneration with insightful mentoring and inspiring conversations about sustainability and the beauty and potential of organic materials such as wood, bamboo, cane, repurposed plywood, brass, rattan, and clay complemented with unconventional materials like coffee composite, kombucha leather, and bacterial cellulose sheets.

The result is a ten-person exhibition that highlights the works of emerging Indian designers like Brishti Biswas, whose brass and solid wood table is a tribute to the craftsmanship and artistry of Punjab's 'thathera' and Bengal's 'Dhokra' craftforms. At the other end of this spectrum, Muskan Sojatia's ceiling-suspended light sculpture titled 'Look Up to the Nature' utilises bacterial cellulose sheets and centres on the exploration of nature's beauty and fragility. These emerging designers and their works produced during the incubator programme will be showcased at Raw Collaborative 2024.

Raw Collaborative 2024 takes place at the Mahatma Mandir Convention & Exhibition Centre in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, from December 5 to December 8, 2024. Book your passes here.

Follow Raw Collaborative here and Orange Tree here.

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