Porous Frontiers: Design for Development in the Transnational Studio Setting

The proposed project, the Deer Park Project, emerged as a unique case study in a “design for development project” undertaken in a transnational studio setting. Seen this way the brief pushed the goal of the exploration away from the kinds of projects that have been historically imagined in this space in India. Typical projects in India have included the Smokeless Stove, the Solar Light, the Toilet, the Water Carrier, and Water Purification. Students in Australia were asked to imagine what the Australian response to design for the ‘remote’ would have been. Thus the context of the project was to be India, but the solutions would have to have an Australian flavor.