A Himalayan Effort

Responding to his mentor’s challenge to decentralize design in India, product designer Sonam Gyaltsen Bhutia set up Echostream, a multidisciplinary design studio, in his hometown of Gangtok. Over the last 12 years, he and his colleagues have introduced a range of far-reaching initiatives in an effort to bring design into the development and planning process in Sikkim.

What did it take to establish your network of artisans?

SB: Building a network of artisans was not a difficult job for a small state like Sikkim but sustaining the interest and managing the network takes a lot of patience and understanding. We had to take a holistic approach to create this network – just empowering them was not sufficient. To make not only the individual artisan but the entire cluster financially independent and to bring them under the banking system (financial inclusion) was also important.

How were you drawn to design?

SB: I ended up with design accidentally. I had no desire to take up design as a career. In the year 2000, I joined the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad to study product design and that changed everything in my life! It trained me to value things at a microscopic level and to solve problems.

Give us a glimpse of your design process.

SB: Our approach to a new project depends on the involvement of the client in the desired outcomes of the project. We tailor the design process mostly by listening and being patient with the client as it takes quite an effort to come to a good design brief and build up a good project context. At Echostream we started a ‘form follows concern’ approach as most of the projects were developed around some concerns related to development in the mountains. But most importantly, it is all about how you develop a good working relationship with the client and the end target audience.

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