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LIVING:
INTERIORS
But
That's one Half of the Story
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| Funky,
Fun, Cheap: Neon coloured plastic glasses |
But
that is just one half of the story. Part of the design explosion is also
caused by the need for cheaper alternatives: wrought iron instead of wood,
for instance. Passing muster for years only as tacky mirror frames and
shelves, wrought iron has recently morphed into an elegant material for
everything from furniture to candle stands. "Wrought iron is trendy,
cool and certainly cheaper than anything else," says Sunisha Singh,
a Delhi schoolteacher who recently did up her flat almost entirely in
wrought iron.
Industry,
too, seems to be taking a new look at design. Titan, for instance, has
a range of watches called the Raga collection. Its Kaal range of clocks
is inspired by the vegetable lacquer technique used for wooden toys in
Etikoppaka, near Visakhapatnam, while its bidri work clocks are inspired
by Indian craft. "We're trying to find an Indian look," says
Abhijit Bansod, product designer.
"The
market is hot," says designer Pradeep Chowdhary of GE Plastics, raw
material supplier to manufacturers of consumer electronics and appliances.
GE works on 70 to 100 projects every year, many of them prompted by changes
in demand: mobile phones that weigh less, for instance.
Designers
now want to look again at older materials that have been around for aeons.
At Nitco Tiles, for example, Director Pawan Talwar decided to look at
a square from a new angle. "For years we've done floors in 3 ft by
3 ft white cement squares with marble chips thrown in. No one knows why,
but that's the way it's been done for years," he says. So Talwar
decided to do some r&d. The result? A fantastic collection of cement
floors in such surprising colours as deep blue and sunny yellow. While
Nitco also does more traditional floors-Italian marble, sandstone and
granite-it is also trying to revive cement terrazzo floors in funky, contemporary
colours. Clients so far include a bowling alley in Bangalore and designer
J.J. Vallaya. "Cement floors were popular because they were cheap,
now we want them to be used because they look good," says Talwar.
Despite
the Indian consumer's tendency to stick to the tried and the tired, Ansal
is clear about what she wants to offer. "As a designer you're not
there to just sell but to project a design sensibility in order to educate
and set a trend," she says. Rohini Khosla, prime mover and shaker
behind India Style, a three-year-old store that houses an eclectic mix
of fashion accessories and kitsch art, agrees: "It's not about giving
people what they want but about creating a scenario for what they may
want."
For now,
Indian consumers seem quite sure about what they do want. And as homes
in metros throughout the country begin to sport a new look, you know that
the design boom is here to stay.
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