Is An All Black Apartment the Answer?

I'm quite bored with the all-white-apartment-with-splashes-of-color look that has been omnipresent for the last two years or more. It has moved from being a design trend to a design staple, and it is now high time that it reached the 'Oh SO passé!' stage.

Here's a rather unusual and exotic answer- An all-black space owned by the TED speaker and international advertising consultant Cindy Gallop. I'm not quite sure if I like this as an alternative. What do you think? It used to be a Y, and her apartment was the swimming pool!

An interesting end note- Cindy Gallop also spearheaded a rather fascinating project, IfWeRanTheWorld. A real-world experiment in tapping good intentions and turning them into tangible, do-able microactions. As the site states- All of us can achieve more than one of us, and everything starts with a microaction. 

On that note of a belief in a greater good, I wish you all a wonderful weekend ahead!

Jugaad- Everyday Art

I came across this wonderful essay on Indian Artisanship, thanks to fellow blogger Anjali Ramachandran who runs a blog on 'media-related stuff'.

Jugaad is a term that is used to define- making do with what is at hand. This defines most of everyday Indian art from street signs, hand painted walls, sari designs to painted cooking utensils and painted huts.

Design is a part of everyday Indian life...

 Image credit: Ken Botnick

Personalized bicycle seat covers to make one's cycle identifiable in a sea of similar looking cycles- This reminds me of my grandfather, stenciling his initials on our ambassador to make it identifiable in a sea of green ambassadors that once roamed Indian streets.

 Fence made of old saris sewn together. And what a colourful fence it makes!

Image credit: Ken Botnick

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Painted stoves

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Painted Entrance ways

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And of course painted trucks!

Keep reading for posts on painted rickshaws (I covered trucks before, how could I forget the other ubiquitous mode of Indian transport!), painted mud huts, street art and more!