Mumbai-based architect, Rooshad Shroff’s work engages with multiple spatial domains, creating products of collaboration and iterations while maintaining a design approach rooted in the idea of making. This feature outlines his evolving work as an investigation into the multifaceted and nuanced meanings of ‘craft’.
A landscape characterised by a rich repository of skill was an opportunity for Rooshad to familiarise himself and probe a spectrum of crafts and cultural continuities. The prolonged interaction with craftspeople and artisans, and an engagement with their unique understanding of materials led him to understand the ways in which craft defines place. Design aesthetic is often subjective; but an aesthetic that is a direct derivative of a particular process is continually evolving – at the same time question the context in which it is spoken of. Craft is place-specific and rooted in history. Rooshad’s practice illustrates a process that is constructive, experimental, adaptive, and inventive for contemporary design.
Rooted in the ‘handmade’, the studio’s relationship with design is an investigation of possibilities while it continues to conceive a discourse around Indian craftmanship through a range of objects. It is a pursuit to define a contemporary Indian vocabulary for design. Rooshad has effectively established a symbiotic relationship with the craftspeople on one hand, disseminating centuries of inherited skill juxtaposed with modern, minimal, and quirky design sensibilities for a new, sophisticated aesthetic. This unique process has been one of the key determinants for shaping the practice along with his unremitting inclination to design objects that expand the boundaries of the potential of the material in question. Often bracketed as a traditional process, the studio’s interventions in crafting are focused on the essential qualities of the material.
The continuing fascination that Rooshad has maintained with process and material in the last decade of his evolving practice are a cross-referential investigation of spatial prototypes. Through manifestation of stories and interpretations that are narrated through the numerous objects; products of this unique and lengthy process, attempt to retain the authorship of the artisan all the while pushing known boundaries and possibilities for an expression of something new; something unique and something compelling. The objects have a fundamental grasp of the time-honoured techniques however, their new expressions through design make them relevant in today’s language and aesthetics: the aspirations of the contemporary. Over time, the practice has constructed an approach that enables one to appreciate the idea of the handmade as a focal point from which divergent perspectives emerge simultaneously – historic, aesthetic, cultural, utilitarian, and material. India is replete with accessible skill and is an ecosystem of artisans: carpenters, metal workers, weavers, smiths, and forgers. It is from this pool that the practice draws. However, the relationship is not predatory.
The ‘Heart Table’As Rooshad engages with the process, the augmentation of knowledge and skill benefit the practice as well as the artisans. The resultant object is an outcome of this visceral collaboration. Rooshad’s practice is also embedded in the joys of making and it resonates throughout his body of work. In the process, the essential idea takes precedence while the pragmatic application becomes secondary. The ‘Embroidery on Wood’ series represents this blurred boundary between making and design as the finest in woodwork is juxtaposed with the fluidity and layering of the idea of embroidery, thus integrating the upholstery within the design of the furniture piece. The eventual piece of furniture is both – a fine product and a thin slice of the process.
An intensive collaboration with the kaarigars from an embroidery workshop, the complete process of creation of this set engaged the studio in a deeper collaboration with the people on the ground – the artisans and the carpenters. An extensive range of objects evolved from this process represent a continuous exploration of the more ephemeral qualities of the two fundamental material techniques.
The practice itself has a strong focus on material research and experimentation. The objects that the office designs use culturally embedded knowledge as a point of departure. While tradition does perfect a method to work and understand a material, the craftspeople are seldom encouraged to push the known and comfortable boundaries. This extending of the horizon is often fraught with failure.
A collaborative approach forms the crux of the process and the assumption of risk is mutual. An incidental research & development laboratory interfaces with artisans from various backgrounds – weavers, carpenters, stone masons, metal fabricators, inlay artists and so on. The pools of resources are spread across India as the as the ability to work a particular material is often embedded in the immediate context. Rooshad appreciates this connection and the work resists the idea of dislocation of skill. On the flip side, the studio is involved with the production of each object thereby closely observing the process that is continuously refined.
Besides compelling the artisans and the studio to mutually push the boundaries, this process establishes an experimentation-and feedback loop creating design outcomes that are enriched by the co-authorship. By fairly compensating the workshops for the by-product of the trial-and-error process, the studio can encourage a certain risk-taking as over time, while engagement becomes intense, a work environment fertile with possibilities is generated. The process also encourages cross-pollination of ideas through multiple prototypes and experimental outcomes of the confluence. While the objects constitute one critical facet of the work, the studio continually engages with numerous established retail brands that renders an opportunity for Rooshad’s studio to extend the scope to the interior space. The translation of the process of making of a product into the design of a space engages the office with the language and philosophy of the brand. The attempt of Rooshad’s office is to capture the essential nature of the brand in the spatial experience.
For the many pieces of furniture under various stages of experimentation in the studio, Rooshad says
“Sometimes, furniture becomes the purest form of investigation. Because there is no real end user. I mean, if it is sold, it is sold. But the intention is not for it to become completely viable. I intend to and am interested in this purest form of investigation and then see if it goes or not.”
These objects take shape by themselves, step by step. No idea is discarded as a failed experiment in one iteration beings forth the direction and clarity for another.
The back-and-forth dialogue between the studio, the material becomes the basis of the emergence of ideas. Rooshad’s temperament to take risks trickles down to the entire team.
“This is when the sense of pride and ownership comes in. Even when I ask them to do something, they will push it a little more and experiment. Because they know that at this point, they are open to experimentation. I think this is an important shift when you are working with the artisans. They understand the material and the craft better than any of us would. It is about how we can take the basic skill set of carving and see how we can push it. It was to see how we can take something as monolithic as marble and make it so fragile, scoop it from the inside and have light pass through it”
Rooshad Shroff
The process is a dynamic loop of exchange between the many phases of the execution of an idea that carries a lot of charge. Making is never uniform or static. Rooshad’s practice has a strong sense of expression that manifests in the objects they make. Every object chronicles the process behind refining an idea, the constraints and known limits of the material, and an aspiration to push the boundaries of the possible. The objective is the joy of discovery as they tap into the innate opportunities our rich context has to offer⊗
ROOSHAD SHROFF founded Rooshad Shroff Architecture + Design in Mumbai, India, in 2011, after having studied at the Cornell University and Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Rooshad has worked with industry Zaha Hadid in London & OMA /REX in New York. Rooshad’s work celebrates the handmade in a wide spectrum of project – from objects and furniture, to interior design and architecture. Rooshad’s projects have been acclaimed in India and Internationally with his works being exhibited at Venice Architecture Biennial (2010), Shanghai Expo (2010), “Design – The India Story” at Prince of Wales Museum, Delhi ID fair, and India Art Fair.
