Arbiter of aesthetics

Sunil Sethi's twin-volume Taschen tomes launching next month will create ripples

For a television show anchor, Sunil Sethi is inappropriately restless, pacing the room, opening the balcony door every time he smokes, then closing it again "" more distracting than distracted since he, at least, never seems to lose focus.

Limelight on NDTV is Sethi's take on the arts, but with the launch, over the next two months through 10-odd Asian capitals, of a twin volume set of staggeringly heavy tomes on design, Sethi may find the spotlight turning on him instead.

Inside Asia, already launched in Paris and London, is a voluminous body of work. To be sure, the greater slog has been the photographer's. Reto Guntli survived a terrible accident on the Delhi-Agra highway and took literally hundreds of thousands of photographs throughout cities and countries in Asia; Sethi provided the text.

But he also travelled to many of the countries to explore first hand the architecture and design that creates each region's particular, even modern, identity.

He was enthused about Indonesia, the Philippines, and Japan "" the last because the Japanese are an extremely private people who will go to great lengths to keep you away from their homes.

Sethi was able to penetrate that barrier, and now talks of award-winning architects, or anonymous trillionaires whose homes he visited in the Far East, as "my friends".

He also makes a case for Japanese design being the original, and still the best example, of the minimalism that continues to rule the most inspiring architecture and interiors.

Striding around his New Delhi home in a crowded street where every kind of nightmarish urban architecture is cheek by jowl, Sethi is Asia's new arbiter of taste. And from that pivotal perch, he doesn't like what's happening in India.

"Everyone goes on about Indian architecture, Indian design," he says, "but what's new? We haven't moved beyond Rajasthan. Where is the design happening?" he asks, jabbing at pages of the advance volumes of the books that lie self-consciously in his living room.

He's dismissive of the farmhouses and the new resort architecture that's springing up all around the country, pointing to pictures in the books to illustrate the strides that have been made in Thailand and China, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.

The hardcover volumes, almost 5 kg each, are eye candy for the sophisticated coffee table, but they do throw up some brilliant examples of the work that's being done in some countries in Asia "" West Asia is totally omitted.

"A lot of the houses" "" 99 in all have been featured "" "are being shown for the first time," says Sethi.

Angelika Taschen, the editor, has grasped at elements that bind the effort together: there is the theme of Buddhism, for example, that runs through each of the 16 countries that find themselves within the 880 pages of the books.

Another, says Sethi, could be Mao, in the manner of pop art, though this is hardly a constant strand. But what might grab the reader is the environment that is such an important facet of the aesthetics.

Homes are often set in large, and not always formal, gardens. Natural elements predominate, the wood is well-weathered, there is little that is flashy or nouveau, the settings are idyllic, the design non-intrusive.

But just when you tire of the sameness, there's a break "" a house of glass and steel, another totally of plastic; highrise or concrete make way for a courtyard atrium planted with bamboo, a pebble garden or a reflecting pool.

"Asian architects," Sethi rails, "are doing brilliant work, they're world names; they're working in neighbouring countries, bringing down barriers. Where," he asks sadly, "are the Indian architects?"

It's a harsh indictment, but at Rs 6,500 for the set, you can find out what their Asian counterparts have been up to during India's long drought of aesthetics.