Craftsmanship has always been central to our work, even when we were just starting out with small interiors and boutique retail projects. <rt-red>In our working methodology, and our design and material choices, we have always considered the impact on our collaborators, community, context and environmental footprint.<rt-red> Integrating crafts into our projects has been a natural outcome of that process—it has achieved uniqueness, generated employment, and revitalized endangered skills.
One of the great privileges of practicing in India is having access to remarkable craftspeople in all fields, enabling us to create truly bespoke work distinctive to the place, brand, client, and function. <rt-red>While we don’t impose craft on every project, we embrace opportunities where they align naturally.<rt-red>
We drew inspiration from the scissor—the most fundamental tool of a master tailor, as the fashion designer humbly liked to call himself. Working with 12,000 scissors, welders reconfigured them into a variety of patterns to create a simple lattice-like frame. It went on to become a defining element of his brand identity. The work of the welders—would that not be considered craftsmanship? We see everything done on-site by hand as an act of craftsmanship. <rt-red>For a carpenter building a door, that is his craft, his trade. Having that lens has always kept us aware and respectful of the value that everybody in the design process brings to the work. For us design practitioners, empathy and mutual respect for artisans are crucial in bridging gaps between our interdependent communities.<rt-red>
As early as 2008, while designing stone screens for the facade of RAAS Jodhpur, we realized on site, after putting in considerable work, that our intricate computer designs had to eventually be cut by hand by stonemasons and were totally unfit for execution within the given timeframe and budget. <rt-red>Reflecting on the numerous versions we had made, rather than asking whether those iterations were wasted, we understood them as valuable lessons instead in how not to work.<rt-red>
The recognition and the respect with which you approach the teams that are working at site becomes radically different once you understand the simple fact that you as the designer or the architect are never going to know paint as well as a painter, or carpentry as well as a carpenter.
<rt-red>You bring the idea of what you would like to build, but thereafter it becomes an exercise in collaboration—to enroll the craftsperson in your vision and allow room for it to evolve.<rt-red> This requires a conversation, a framework, some degree of patience and comfort with ambiguity, which can be only be acquired through practice. In essence, not entering the conversation with a singular picture and making room for the outcome to emerge from the process is, to me, one of the most important traits required to be a successful design practitioner.
