As a foreigner living in a, erm, foreign land, one of the holy grails of getting an intimate glimpse into local culture is receiving an invitation to someone’s home. Most cities feel impenetrable unless you know a local. Sometimes, they open their doors to you (The Italians offer their mothers, aunts and grandmothers and their regional Home Food to hungry visitors); sometimes they bring their domestic lives out onto the street to you (In Mumbai, the porch of a motor workshop doubles up as an airy platform for a toddler’s …

Hello good people of the Internet, sorry that Friday Stories is running a little late this week due to a birthday. Mine! So, to commemorate the once-a-year event, this week we ask what triggers your sense of your age. Does the smell of rain bring back memories of playing in the afternoon rain as a child? Or when the feeling that you could go on forever mid-marathon inject you with a sense of youthfulness? Or that the weight of familial responsibilities reminds you of your station in the life cycle? …

High school graduation. Entering the final year at college. Getting your first paycheck. Breaking up with your fifth girlfriend. For some events in life, we can anticipate that our lives are never going to be the same again. Some are social milestones; goal posts painted for us when we were mere children.
What about the other stuff that don’t follow a timeline? Perhaps a realization that a close friend wasn’t who you thought she was, or an epiphany about your own life.
How did you know that things were never going to …

The Stories

that the chinese are making a hell lot more money then i will ever get. But at least i shave my armpits.

Thank God I’m alive, with a healthy, happy family and friends I can count on.

I ask myself the same question everyday at the start of the day.
“What do i have to clear today?”

That I am so happy to be studying what I am studying.

Since I alternate between feeling highly suspicious of mantras and periods of excessive preoccupation with self-help books, I rarely have a mantra that I repeat …

As I’m finishing up Verganti’s Design-Driven Innovation, a door wins Architectural Review’s Emerging Architecture Award. I’m completely enamored with the idea and the aesthetics of this door: the meaning of a door as a static object that interrupts a space has been totally upended.
Could a focus group have given an architect enough insight to lead to such a door? If you’ve also been thinking about the issues of democratic design vs. monarchical design, I highly recommend Verganti’s book. His work is a result of soaking himself in the Italian design …