This project evolved without a project report – I see this project also as a culmination of the conversations I have had with many of my students and peers over the years and the varied ideas that have informed and excited me as a person. Ideas from systems theory, sustainable development, design methods, sacred geometries, craft development, Indira Darshinis (standup Indian fast food places), the open source movement, micro-enterprise, facilitative processes and design - have all influenced the project.

Also perhaps I believe in the following:

“The distinguished systems theorist Russ Ackoff describes a common trap that guides all the work our globalised world tends to do as "doing the wrong thing righter."

 "The righter we do the wrong thing," he explains, "the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right. This way we learn and actually get righter. Most of our current problems are, he says, the result of policymakers and managers (and designers) busting a gut to do the wrong thing right.”

http://www.hindu.com/2006/10/06/stories/2006100601871300.htm

Like I wrote to a set of students trying to explain the rationale behind my process and strategy:

"Why did I choose to design this product in this manner - without the obvious motors, filters, electronic circuitry..."

Its not that I do not know enough of motors and that I am not comfortable with putting a light that comes on when "compost is done". And such a product does exist in America - its two years old and is called NatureMill (www.naturemill.com/.)

It’s that if we are people - a living species - who have been endowed with discernment - then it behoves us to understand technology, science, sociology, politics, economics, etc and also understand the limits of each of these in different situations.

So I chose to design this project in the manner I did because

1. We are living in an “Also and Also” world (Richard Saul Wurman)- Technology has its place. But composting is a natural process – it’s been perfected by the universe and natural systems in a profoundly evolutionary way. I asked what do I need to do to it, to make it part of everyone's behaviour? (in India, in Bangalore to start with- not the world) If I can achieve this without adding lights - then what should the design be - of the product and the system? And if I added a light what must I also do …… (that is my next project!)

2. Also terracotta after my initial tests with materials - was the best material to support the decomposition process. Plastic failed miserably. That plastic fails miserably for storing and cooling water still does not prevent us from using plastic for storing water in our urban environments. Here I had to design around our "convenience" hang-up - with design through visualization and tapping into cultural icons - of rituals and emotional empathy with the garden, outdoors, clay, etc.

3. We can all personally own and enjoy a window into this natural process - we can dig our hands into the pile and feel the heat and generate our own understanding of ourselves, the earth - why should a designer stifle this window and dress it with something else? The design question was - how can a designer enlarge it?

4. We can delve into another tacit knowledge system that has stood the test of time because of reasons that cannot all be articulated - the technology of small production - with terracotta. If I really wanted to enable this existing network and system, I had to design a production and distribution system that I would not eventually control - hence the decision to create an open-source method for knowledge dissemination - of drawings, communication material and business information.

5. It was more fun this way - when I visited the Media lab in MIT some years ago - I was amazed at the money and the technology that they had - and the work they were doing to make "intelligence" sit within and without products and materials. So I asked myself what I could "do" with the "intelligence" that sits within my bio-pscho- system that seems to be the result of an evolutionary system!!!

Also and Also.

Also people – lots of them have shaped it in many ways – so this project does not belong to me alone – it belongs to the many that will shape it as time moves on. This project therefore is dedicated to everyone who wishes to do something with it – and all the material is available on this site under a creative commons license.