Exhibition · Asia Art Archive · Other
Delhi by DESIGN is a three-part exhibition series that restages conversations on and around the city of Delhi from Design magazine (1957–88), and locates them in our contemporary contexts and conditions. At AAA in India, we are interested in the adage “modernism began in the magazines” and believe it to be especially apt for Asian contexts where print media has been instrumental in staging debates, generating discourse, and carrying images of art, architecture, and design to wide audiences, constituting reading and viewing publics. At the height of the Indian post-independence nation building project in the 1950s and 1960s, one magazine persistently and critically examined, questioned, and debated the emerging cultural ecology and infrastructural projects in India, with an emphasis on Delhi. This was Design, an English-language monthly magazine from India that was published from 1957 to 1988. It featured writing and commentary on architecture, visual art, industrial and graphic design, and urban planning. Design’s foremost contribution was its unflinching critical commentary on the state of India’s cultural production, public infrastructure projects, and government institutions. This critical voice, which became archetypal to the magazine, was led by its editor Patwant Singh (1925–2009). Singh was a polymath who worked in the construction industry. He was a publisher, writer, political commentator, conservationist, Sikh scholar, and philanthropist. In the 1950s, Singh edited and published three magazines in quick succession: Indian Builder, The Pharmaceutist, and Design. With a print run of over three hundred issues spanning over thirty years, Design was masterfully editorialised to offer its readers clear stakes in public culture and the built environment. The magazine’s mandate was clear: to champion projects that were informed by historical consciousness but imbued with a clarity of function, form, and purpose that was decidedly contemporary. Simultaneously,…