Gemini I- Newspaper Coffee Table

BEGINNING- Working with craftswomen in Auroville, volunteering, learning basketry, and seating experiments

The project began with volunteering with a newspaper handicraft-based social initiative called WELLPAPER in Auroville. This involved helping the four self-help groups with their everyday activities like paper cutting, basket painting, illustration etc. This helped me in getting accustomed to the new environment as well as them in getting comfortable working with me. I then moved on to learning the basket making technique during which I started conceptualizing a simple seating, a four-legged stool. A week of weaving, and guidance from the craftswomen (Akkas), the first woven stool prototype (E5) was ready. It had enough strength for an average adult to sit on.

Stools can be safely assumed to be the benchmark for testing out a new material. In the setting of home or office, seating is a furniture item that is subjected the most amount of abuse during the usage. It is sat upon, it is rocked while sitting, it is moved/dragged between places. If any new material can be successfully used to make a fully functional seating, then it can be used to make any other kind of furniture. Hence I decided to start exploring furniture out of newspaper with a seating.

FURNITURE CONCEPT- A coffee table made of newspaper, for newspaper publisher's office space

The ideation phase involved continued experimentation in order to achieve an easy-to-make-and-reproduce structure with adequate strength. In order to add another layer of story to the existing story of surprise, I decided though of a concept in which a piece of furniture, say a coffee table, will be made out of newspaper and will be placed in the lounge/meeting-room/reception area of the office of the same newspaper's publishing house. So, since all the newspaper we used in Auroville were donated by the Hindu, these concepts were illustrated to visualise the object in the context.

Project EXPAPERIMENTATION- Master's Thesis

Gemini I is a coffee table purely made out of newspaper. As a part of my design thesis, I volunteered with a craft-based women empowerment social initiative in the south of India where craftswomen weave beautiful baskets using tubes made out of newspaper. For this project, I was driven by an excitement to give a familiar object, the newspaper, an unfamiliar application (a furniture piece) where its physical properties will be challenged and the visibility of the material in the final furniture will evoke a surprise in any observer. Paper is rarely perceived as a material strong enough to make objects like furniture which are primarily defined by their strength (all the other attributes being secondary). This contradiction itself is responsible for creating the surprise and hence became the starting point for the project. Also, the surface aesthetics of the furniture evolved very organically and naturally as a result of the material used i.e. newspaper. I found it very fascinating that I was left with very less work to do in order to make it more aesthetically pleasing.

This experimental design project is driven less by a need to create a purposeful object for the user and more by the wish to explore, experiment and discover for me, a design process which satisfies my need for storytelling and self-expression through objects. I was honestly tired of the extremely analytical design process I was learning in my design school. For four semester, I focused solely on the needs of the user, market, environment, and various other stakeholders and completely neglected my own needs as a designer. With so many constraints that get collected during the user research, I repeatedly found it difficult to ideate creatively and incorporate my personal expressions, and inspirations and ended up creating a design which logically tried to meet most of those constraints, like a mathematical equation.

I wanted to practise the things I am good at in my design process for which I first needed to become aware about myself. I am a designer, who is also a maker who is good at thinking with hands and who gets inspired by the making of the objects, their structure, the type and transformation of material the objects are made of and the story behind the various object attributes (material, form, color, fabrication techniques). I am also an artist at heart who likes to express myself through various means possible (dance, singing, and illustration). I wanted to use these qualities of mine in my design process but somehow had no example around me to look up to. This project was particularly challenging for me as no one in my user-centric product-design academic career ever showed sensitivity and empathy towards the designer itself and talked about his/her needs/interests/inspirations/fantasies.

// This project was particularly challenging for me as no one in my user-centric product-design academic career ever showed sensitivity and empathy towards the designer itself and talked about his/her needs/interests/inspirations/fantasies //

For designers to be able to peacefully sustain the challengingly stressful design process and be motivated throughout, they need to have their heart and soul put into their work. How do I achieve that for myself? I divide my design process into two stages. Stage 1 is a designer-centric process which is about taking my personal inspiration/story and converting it into a tangible object/artefact. The process here is very explorative and experimental and is driven by intuition and curiosity. With my heart and soul materialized right in front of me, I now hand over the steering wheel to the brain for the next stage. Stage 2 hence is a user-centric process which is about translating this object/artefact into a product by smartly taking care of the functional, emotional, economic, social and environmental needs of all the stakeholders involved.

The Making of Gemini 1

Technique: Basket Weaving

Material Used: Newspaper, rice glue, and over-print varnish

MAYUR BHALAVI

DESIGNER | MAKER