Soumitri Varadarajan

To make the world a better place by designing new services and products. To imagine scenarios of the ways the world could be and then to go on to realise the ideas. To act independently of clients and experts. To act on behalf of prople to make their lives better – in small ways. To be a voice of conscience, to be ethical in saying no to the wrong and outright commercial. To actively counteract the exploitative power of producers and special interests. In effect use design as the vehicle to come alive and engage with key issues confronting the world!

I wrote this bio just for my students!

Soumitri starts life in India in the same year as Barack Obama, George Clooney and Eddie Murphy who dont start life in India. Also unlike them he was a good Indian so he went to Engineering School. He emerges five years later, after ten semesters of maths and mechanical engineering, clear that he wants to be something else. Some years later he is an Industrial Designer. He wants to teach and write too so for the next five years he runs a design consultancy (with Whirlpool, Hero and Intron as some of his clients), a metal furniture making company, teaches students and writes for magazines in India and abroad. He then goes off to Japan and works at Hitachi for a bit – nihon was subarashi desu ne! Which cures him of the desire to make more consumer products for moneyed people, he is again clear he wants to do something else. Back in India he quits his firm, does freelance work and teaches. Sometime later he runs a recycling project and changes 2 tonnes of waste a day into money, which gets him this award and a voice at UNEP. Along the way he does a PhD, which argues that design has lost its mind, and soon after moves to Australia. These days he runs a blog and tells his students to be idealistic, take risks and do something for the forgotten – in a faint voice.