mumbai never before has mumbai devoted so much thought to design as it has in the recent past all those coffeetable conversations were working up to the big confab that was the india design forum the event got off the ground on friday at ncpas jamshed bhabha theatre which rolled out the red for those keen on good form one of those was thomas heatherwickfeted british designer tasked with redesigning londons doubledecker buseswho lead the way with his thoughts on ideation ideas werent chance occurrences that took place randomly they were born out of a process a manner of thinking said heatherwick this thought segued into the subsequent session called design thinking for india where the chairman of punj lloyd group atul punj pointed out that the quality of design thinking in india was poor and cited as an example the lack of pavements in most indian cities but what design thinking essentially is is the development of a mindset that works towards effecting positive change in society explained dinesh sonak of thnk the amsterdam school of creative leadership this he continued is characterized by a collaborative approach that places human beings at the center of creative problemsolving no doubt there were lessons for india in the panel titled italian design models of success where armando branchini executive director of fondazione altagamma a trade body of 74 italian luxury brands and roberto gavazzi ceo of the interior design brand boffi offered insights into why their country scored in matters of design it has an entrepreneurial approach to innovation it produces limited edition products in a variety of models and it rides on its legacy of material culture visual arts town planning and so on listed bhanchini as some of the bricks that have built italys design value he also pointed out that last year italian goods accounted for 60 of the 23 billion handdesigned luxury market renny ramakers cofounder of the dutch design collective droog took the audience through a personal tour of her philosophy which believes that design is a product of context situation relevance and respect for the existing she also stands for design that connects seriousness with playfulness as evidenced among other things by droogs upcycling of old tea trays into briefcases an indian who upcycles differently is sabyasachi mukherjee the fashion designer who had lately forayed into interdesign put forth his reading of the luxury market saying in the past prestige was due to quantified distance between classes of people but today luxury is going through a communist phase where affluent masses are no longer at a financial distance from luxury he continued but prestige and exclusivity have to be driven by distance this distance cannot be quantified financially any longer it is a distance that has become cultural and intellectual