Life improvement

The role of design is often assailed for being a privilege of the rich, for meaning too much to too few. But design is moving from being perceived solely as styling to being directly associated with innovation, and that's what a Danish-based, but globally networked, non-profit organisation wants to highlight.

Lise Klint, the programme director for INDEX, is in India, and she's wearing two hats. She's in Mumbai to participate at the Icograda design week, Icograda being a respected world body for professional graphic design. But she can't help spread the word about the INDEX design award, which after just two years in the existence has already prompted the label "The Nobel Prize for design".

That noble endorsement is because the world's richest design awards, totalling €500,000 across five categories, honours design not for aesthetics but for impact. "We ask ourselves, when does design stop being lipstick on a gorilla but actually play a role in addressing some modern day global challenges," says Klint. The 2005's (the award is bi-annual) winners included the portable water filtration system called Life Straw that destroys bacteria causing waterborne diseases, for users without access to safe drinking water for less than three dollars a year. Health and environmental sustainability are often general themes for nominations, but as Klint reiterates, "INDEX isn't designed to save the third world."

Klint cannot veil her excitement over an Indian design getting through to the top nominee list this year. Bangalore-based, NID industrial-design graduate Poonam Kasturi's home composting product Daily Dump addresses the problem of organic waste disposal.

In stark contrast to fancy composters available in the market, all it takes here is a few colourful terracotta pots and natural composting techniques drawn from indigenous grassroots knowledge, while actively engaging local potter communities.

The award is central to, but not all of, INDEX's activities. With no conventional organisational structure but with clarity of purpose, INDEX was designed to encourage and improve design dialogue. Seminal to this collection and dissemination of ideas is their network of designers, businesses, organisations and design institutions.

"At any given point we network directly with at least 1,000 design professionals," says Klint. Over summer, INDEX transforms Copenhagen into an arena for cutting edge contemporary design, hosting a design summit and a three-week summer camp. "The whole idea is to demonstrate the potential of great design to the larger community, to businesses and the public sector," adds Klint.

Nationalism is a small but not insignificant part of this.

The idea, suggests Klint, was to make Copenhagen a venue for large-scale and very serious design recognition. Danish design became world famous in the '40s and '50s and several Danish products, always known for their practical approach, have become archetypes or icons of 20th century design.

"We're also known as a country where social responsibility is high on the priority list so it seems natural to take this particular approach to design," says Klint.

However well meaning though, the entries have also to be inherently marketable. And as much as the prize money comes with no conditions, it is hoped that it will finance the commercialising of the innovation. Sometimes a product is already in the market.

One of last year's winners was the Apple design team for having created the revolutionary iTunes software. It's interesting however, that on average only a fourth of all nominations are products of professional design institutions. "Basically any person with access to the Web can point to a design that he thinks is improving lives," says Klint.

This year's 400 nominations are from all seven continents including an Antarctic research station.

There is a sterile disposable wash basin made of cardboard for the Medicins Sans Frontiers that is cheap to produce, a zero-water consuming urinal, a hand-cranked $100 laptop for the wo-rld's poorest children... Recognition is even given to intangible design, like an idea or a programme.

The Danish municipality of Aar-hus' programme to involve immigrants in their new integration policy process is a nominee, and so is the blueprint for a future city with minimum ecological impact.

"The best part about the award is that it is multi-disciplinary," says Klint with detectable pride. "It is design foremost, but in a context of meeting modern-day challenges," she adds.

Truly, design cannot get more utilitarian than the Daily Dump.