de earth

Life has taken a “U-Turn”. The only question, is whether it’s for a long term or a short term. How long will we have to embrace a “new normal”. I would always differ on the word social distancing. Ideally it’s social togetherness & physical distancing. These are times, we all need to stand together and be for each other. But this, with a safe distance, respecting the guidelines, maintaining the descipline and norms. The “new normal”, irrespective of being short term or long term will have its influences in design. We have already seen exciting responses in the field of product design, in making new masks, handles for sanitizers, multiple use key chains, virtual lift buttons & so on. It’s a fact that we have all got used to digital platforms a lot more, and I won’t be surprised if digistisation get extended to each component of a built environment. Virtual offices have suddenly become more comfortable for both employers & employees, and it questions the very need to lar...

It’s after 10 years we decided to retrospect on our philosophy, more on its statement, rather changing the essence of the content. As for many, the lockdown provided us quality time to pause, slowdown and to reflect upon our work & life. Work & life, being so closely knit together for us, couldn’t be separated even by the lockdown. All of us 20, meet regularly, discuss, debate, share & work with very specific deadlines, for last 41 days, sundays and holidays being the only exception. We are also getting used to the technology, but rearing to get back to the office, where we can meet, fight & celebrate our work too. During the course, we took one week off from the regular work, just to share & communicate to each other, what everybody feel about themselves, their colleagues, our office, the way we work, the results we achieve and the overall content of the processes. The quality of discourse was way beyond a normal discussion, thanks to the pause & t...

Philosophy of our practice has evolved over time. Each project, each client, each context is a new learning. As your journey progress, you will find cliffs, valleys, sharp turns, junctions and sometimes even roadblocks. But more you travel, more you learn to negotiate these, appreciating your little experiences, continuing your journey in the right path. Your philosophy get nurtured along. When we realised the potential of having a philosophical body in practice, we renamed our firm, to “de earth”, with a tagline, “nurture, create, belong”. This was around 10 years before. It helped us to conceive projects not just as professional assignment, but as an extension of our life. When we agree to take up an assignment, we were just not signing an agreement, but then sharing dreams, ideas, concerns, habits, potentials and limitations of our client. We nurtured these as if it’s ours. Being sensible to the actual need of the client, was one of our most important baseline. The idea o...