Ashoke Chatterjee

A Recorded Lecture from FRAME Conclave 2019: Modern Heritage

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In this lecture, Ashoke Chatterjee talks about the inception of the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, its formative years, the pedagogy provided to the students, the experiments with the curriculum, the challenges, successes, and failures it faced in becoming the ‘world-class’ institute it sought out to be today.

Edited Transcript

I am delighted to have this opportunity to be back in Goa after forty-one years. The last time I came here, it was to assist the Government of Goa with a study of its ‘carrying capacity’ for tourism: how would Goa manage the growth of tourism in coming years? This might mean tough decisions of planning and control. I need not tell you that my report was trashed long before the Hall of Nations. Goa is clearly still struggling with those issues, but it is good to be back. I am grateful to the organizers, to FRAME Conclave for inviting me.

Let me start by indicating that this talk will be a very personal view of one part of contemporary Indian design history. It will focus on the experience of one institution, the National Institute of Design, its educators, and those who studied there. It will cover some years of a larger institutional history as well as design in modern India. Yet NID has been a catalyst, so it is valid to draw on an experience which has been unique not only in India but in a global context.

Continue reading NID’s Early Years: An Indian Experiment of Global Relevance →