We had arrived at NID with no idea about the particular classes we would be attending, only that we needed to create some kind of timetable that would pass for our usual Studio, Technology and Studies courses back at RMIT. Industrial Design at NID is a school, much like Architecture and Design at RMIT, with different courses falling under the I.D umbrella. I am not particularly interested in traditional Product Design, so following the Product Design curriculum, which involved a lot of automotive design, did not sound very appealing.
“No problem” was Soumitri’s response, and instead we approached our poor coordinator Praveen, armed with the entire curriculum of the Institute. NID’s classes are structured so that you attend one particular class every day (including Saturdays) until the conclusion of the course. This made it particularly easy for us to fill up our timetable as each class was in a block of 1-2 weeks or longer.
The Institute runs public workshops taught by experts in the field of different crafts and a week long traditional braiding workshop was coinciding with our first week, so we put our hand up to attend it. Then followed 2 weeks of colour and form studies with the textile students, 3 weeks of film, a few different theory courses and to conclude, a 6 week ceramic course with a post grad class.
I was so excited and eager to experience a new form of learning – Indian style!
