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Design across continents

During the London Design Festival, Studio Egret West has been invaded by contemporary Indian design, with an installation inspired by the chaos and beauty of Indian street life.

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  • 28 September 2015
  • London

The exhibition staged at Studio Egret West during the London Design Festival brought together six of India’s best contemporary design studios with five leading architectural practices from London to examine “influence” and why Indian culture plays an important role in the making of the modern world.

The Indian design studios are Bombay Atelier, Ira Studio, Injiri, Sangaru Studio, Ranjan Bordoloi and Varnam selected by the London based company Create Culture and its founder Arpna Gupta.

INfluence 2015, view of the exhibition at Studio Egret West, London

Together they represent the next generation of Indian designers that continue to work with local craftsmen, in order to preserve centuries old traditions and skills. The architects exhibiting are ACME, Studio [D] Tale, Project Orange, Haptic and Studio Egret West.

Inspired by the chaos and beauty of Indian street life, the five installations take their cue from the five senses– touch, smell, sound, taste and sight- and have been formed by the creative reuse of the mundane and everyday. “For the first edition of Indian Design Platform, we presented the objects in a context inspired from the world in which they were created. We’re delighted by the architects’ imaginative response to Indian materials and techniques.” explained Arpna Gupta.

INfluence 2015, view of the exhibition at Studio Egret West, London. Every day 9.5 tonnes of the Metro newspaper is discarded on the London Underground. Inspired by Indian traditions of extreme recycling where reusing and repurposing is a fundamental part of the culture, Haptic's installation aims to visualise the sheer mass of waste that is produced through discarded free papers. 100 newspapers are shredded, sorted for colour and suspended from a bamboo frame, creating an undulating, stringy, multi-coloured ceiling
INfluence 2015, view of the exhibition at Studio Egret West, London. Acme chose brick because it is a ubiquitous material in western India that allows them to create something, much like the objects themselves, that is somewhere between the primitive and the highly sophisticated and generating a sense of repetition with variety, instability and weightiness. The 7220 bricks demarcate the exhibition area and create semi-informal piles to support the objects
INfluence 2015, view of the exhibition at Studio Egret West, London. Indian stainless teel dinnerware and the famous tiffin box represent India at its most resourceful. Robust, light, and easy to clean, these plates, goblets and containers have nevertheless an aesthetic of refinement. Undecorated, focused on stackability and hygiene, their reflectivity allows them to almost disappear while magnifying the food and colourful auces they contain. Studio Egret West's “wall” of two hundred pieces of dinnerware creates a screen of mirrors that moves like a giant mobile and also reflects the rest of the exhibition. It induces a visual chaos akin to the street scenes of India. When parts touch visitors hear the sound of Indian kitchens
INfluence 2015, view of the exhibition at Studio Egret West, London
INfluence 2015, view of the exhibition at Studio Egret West, London
INfluence 2015, view of the exhibition at Studio Egret West, London
INfluence 2015, view of the exhibition at Studio Egret West, London
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