Interactive Urban Elements Workshop

Interaction design is a phenomenon that is raging over the world because of its multi disciplinary approach towards design. Interaction design essentially involves, not just art and design strategies but also technology and strong user centric solutions with a feedback loop from the design to the user. with more response oriented designs emerging in our surroundings, be it informative billboards that sense users and react to it , or responsive facade which react to environmental conditions or responsive parametric clothing which morph to different utility criterion, we see interaction design being used in various fields. This workshop was set out to tap one of those pathways of interaction design. A lot of critique comes your way when you talk about technology in the developing nations. And maybe rightly so, if technology becomes an added responsibility to cater to as opposed to designing effective solutions to ease out transactions using technology as a tool. Through this workshop, The dichotomy of a context retaining its traditional roots of architecture and design and the agenda of the workshop to support this context with technological tools and fabrication was coming together in an arrangement for study and urban design inserts. The chosen site and context was Ranwar. An area set in the heart of the Bandra suburb in Mumbai, It is a treat to walk around in the streets of Ranwar. A peaceful place of its own kind, tucked inside the hustle and bustle of the fast paced city of Mumbai. I want to take you over the course of the 4 weekend workshop and hopefully give you a visual description with a narrative describing the joy and satisfaction we felt going about each week towards reaching the agenda of the workshop one step at a time and in this case, one week at a time.

Week One : We gathered on the first weekend with the enthusiasm to discover our journey of interaction design along the coming weekends. The first day , we had Architect Ayaz Basrai from The Busride Design Studio giving us a guest lecture on their Bandra project initiative and therefore, helpful pointers for us to look at when we start designing urban inserts in Ranwar. He spoke about identifying the stake holders, designing for resident pride, looking at Ranwar in terms of its culture of food, music, lifestyle etc. And most importantly , how as designers, we need to exit the loop after execution of our design in projects like these. After the lecture, we headed to the site and tried to see Ranwar for what it was as opposed to solving problems or think of design solutions. The task was to learn to look at the context without the pre text of putting on the designer's thinking cap. The next day we sat together and analysed the site in terms of everything that we saw, the way it existed. We tried to see Ranwar for what it was with its elements of the window jaalis , old houses which retained the spirit of design , we saw that there were certain visual land marks that stood out, like the Jude Bakery, oratory or the Ranwar plaza. we also observed how the roads formed their networks and pathways. From our analysis, we arrived at a few pointers to kick start our design process next week .

Week 2: Week 2 started with understanding spatial expression of ideas. In order to develop the concepts we arrived at from our analysis from week one, we needed to bridge the gap between ideation and creation. We started exploring the idea of how a space is perceived. we experimented the possibilities of how different elements could come together to make a space. One of the experiments was by having nails in a pattern to see how a space can be formed with vertical elements and therefore the play of light and shadow that comes along with it. Another exploration was foldable structure which we perceived as non intrusive spaces as that can be folded when not in use and opened up to its full utility when the need arises. And by evening, we had a skype lecture by Carmen Aguilar Y Wedge. An international Interaction Designer who took us through her projects and articulately explained about how she goes about her journey of designing her interaction design projects. She also explained how technology should follow the needs of a user centric design and the approach for design should not ideally be centered around the fascination with technology. By the second day of the week , we also came with solutions of how we could tackle the problems of reducing electricity bills of community spaces by powering lights more effectively and also the commotion created by people who come to view Ranwar for its beauty and well preserved architectural character. We thought of possibilities to make the walk for people who come to view Ranwar more efficient by organizing it with design and technology such that it would be feasible for people to walk around Ranwar without forming groups and standing in front of houses to talk about its history and take photos which in turn was taking away the privacy of the people living in the neighbor hood.

Week 3 : This week was exciting as all the participants were lead by Anool Mahidharia and introduced to arduino and it's possibilities. Each participant was given an arduino kit after a lot of thought was put into deciding the right components which needs to go into the kit. Anool lead the participants with a detailed introduction to arduino and it's components. After the introduction , the participants were learning how to run basic sketches on arduino. This day was to give a glimpse into the world of open source coding and technology and the various possibilities and effects it had in making projects more efficient. It also happened to be arduino day on this day being celebrated at the maker's asylum as is done all over the world. so we had a wider exposure into the world of arduino through a documentary on arduino and projects made using arduino. As we set out on the second day, we tried to formulate the walk in Ranwar by maximizing the technological tools. After discussions with Anool, we arrived at a conclusion that using QR codes would be more efficient as it does not draw electricity from the community and would still give us a base to interact and draw information for our heritage walk around Ranwar . And our foldable structure idea started taking shape with the addition of technology to use a natural resource like wind to generate electricity to light up the Oratory at Ranwar.

Week 4 : Jaynat Khanuja flew down from Ahmedabad to give us a guest lecture on interaction design and Fabrication on day one of the 4th weekend. He took us through his projects and showed us how he went about fabricating parametric pavilions with paper tubes, and his installation of virtual line which spoke about symbolically communicating the effects of data that is being posted on the web on the people receiving that data at a different location. He helped push our design ideas to the fabrication mode by giving us inputs on using the right softwares to solidify our design ideas to start prototyping and making them. We started detailing the heritage walk around Ranwar by detailing the walk with 12 spots in Ranwar to stop by for the experiences designed as a part of the walk. We froze on using QR codes in these spots which can be accesed by the phones . These QR codes takes the user to the website page which contains the information about the chosen experience for the heritage walk. The interactive heritage walk comes with a few experiences to choose from , like, the oral narrative or the comparative visual history , or sounds of Ranwar etc. to start off with. we planned to have many more such experiences to chose from after having a pilot project at hand. The second idea was for the people of Ranwar as compared to the first idea which was catering to the people coming to Ranwar as visitors. This idea was to have an installation with origami inklings. A structure which could be folded when not in use but spread out to for a seating space for impromptu activities with an overhead canopy. This structure also houses a vertical wind turbine to generate some electricity from a natural resource such as the wind to light a few LEDS at the oratory , which is a celebrated area of the locals in Ranwar. week 5 - The Saturday had us presenting our work from the workshop to the people. We had architects from Ahemdabad, International students researching on chawls in Mumbai, Architects and fabrication researchers from Mumbai at the presentation apart from our supportive Maker's Asylum community members. we are thrilled with the feed back and can't wait to see the next level to which this project could be taken!