Paper Planes – Celebrating Thoughtful Design

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Editor's Picks

I Brought Home a New Plant: Taarini, Chandigarh

A fateful journey for a beautiful, healthy rubber plant

Lockdowns and Long Drives

Finding a moment or two of relief on the road

What Promenades Mean for a City with Limited Space

With Worli Sea Face demolished to pave the way for the Coastal Road in Mumbai, a look at why empathy ought to be at the crux of development

INTERVIEWS

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Prasenjeet Yadav

The Larger Picture

ESSAYS

The Art of Losing

Words by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

Books and Reading

Poetry Books To Pull Out For a Pick-Me-Up

Six writers recommend poetry collections that uplift and lend cheer

EVENTS

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Oddly Enough N°5: Where Will Our Food Come From?

Presenting — the fifth edition of Oddly Enough, a series by Paper Planes

DESIGN & LIVING

A Generation Graduates Online

No fanfare, no hugs goodbye — on the verge of her farewell amid the pandemic, a student describes what this moment feels like

VIDEOS

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A Generation Graduates Online 🎓 Graduation gown

A Generation Graduates Online 🎓 Graduation gowns, hats, sniffles, and the warmest of hugs with the tightest of friends — it’s a familiar rite of passage that sets you off into the big world. But for those graduating during this pandemic, there’s been the same old trepidation of not knowing what lies ahead but none of the fanfare to truly commemorate how far they’ve come.
For our comics series ‘Thinking Aloud’, Ekisha Poddar (@teto.doi), who’s just about to graduate, draws out what this moment feels like for her. Swipe through.Thinking Aloud is a space for visual artists and storytellers to reflect on our everyday lives through comics and graphic narratives. You can find more from the series on our website.

Delia Contractor, fondly referred to as ‘Didi’

Delia Contractor, fondly referred to as ‘Didi’, passed away on July 5th, 2021 at the age of 91. Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota to a German-American couple, Didi studied art history in New York, where she met her husband, the late Narayan Contractor, and by 1951, had moved to India. Despite no formal training, Didi’s contribution to Indian architecture is immense. She leaves behind a legacy of listening closely to nature and constructing mindful structures that use indigenous styles, blending into the built environment with effortless grace. Her buildings are a testament to nature’s ready abundance, relying on mud, slate, stone, bamboo, and the occasional dollop of wood. After having lived and worked in different cities in India including Mumbai, she moved to Kangra Valley in Himachal Pradesh, where many of her forays into vernacular architecture are now housed.During her time living in Mumbai, on a special request from her neighbor, actor Prithviraj Kapoor, she built a cottage and storage unit that we now know as Prithvi Theatre. She also helped decorate the interiors of Udaipur’s first Luxury Hotel, the Lake Palace. Her most telling work, however, resides in Himachal Pradesh - the Sambhaavnaa Institute of Public Policy in Kandbari, the Dharmalaya Institute for Compassionate Living in Bir, and her own home, nestled in Sidhbari.Didi Contractor: Marrying the Earth to the Building, a documentary on her work, released in 2017. You can watch the full documentary on Vimeo — link in bio.Trailer of the documentary via http://didi-contractor-documentary.com/

I Brought Home a New Plant • Photographer Menty

I Brought Home a New Plant • Photographer Menty Jamir (@menty___jamir) is not a new plant parent. As she finds a spot for her new caladium, she writes about the extraordinary loss and grief that’s settled around us over the last year, and how she’s found herself in her new home in Delhi with just essentials and about 50 plants for company. Read her story via the link in our bio.
‘I Brought Home a New Plant’ is a set of three stories, published by Paper Planes, where new plant parents show us into their homes and how they’ve found space for their new houseplant.
Photos by @menty___jamir.

Gira Sarabhai, at 98, passed away on Thursday. She

Gira Sarabhai, at 98, passed away on Thursday. She is best known for her crucial role in the establishment of the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad in 1961 and for founding the Calico Museum of Textiles in the city. In her early years, she trained with the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright in Arizona, the USA. Later, in Ahmedabad, she launched Shilpi, a graphic design agency that was the first Indian-based advertising agency. With her brother Gautam Sarabhai, she made significant contributions to modern architecture in the 1950s and 60s, and was instrumental in bringing in icons like Louis Kahn, Le Corbusier, and Ray and Charles Eames for consultations and commissions across the country.The Sarabhais — one of Ahmedabad’s most influential families, who also happened to be behind the Calico Mills, amongst the oldest mills in the city — played a key role in shaping the city’s design and culture landscape through the 20th century.Illustration by @namrata.kumar.art for Paper Planes’ ‘A–Z Guide to Ahmedabad’.

I Brought Home a New Plant • Kush Patel (@thebom

I Brought Home a New Plant • Kush Patel (@thebombaywalla) and Pratyush Parasuraman (@yush_azure) chose a bougainvillea for their sea-facing apartment in Bombay. Accompanied by Kush’s photos of blue skies, sparse rooms and an adorable dog, Pratyush shows us into their apartment and their days spent waiting for the bougainvillea to bloom. Link in bio!‘I Brought Home a New Plant’ is a set of three stories, published by Paper Planes, where new plant parents show us into their homes and how they’ve found space for their new houseplant.Photos by @thebombaywalla.

I Brought Home a New Plant • In Chandigarh, @tra

I Brought Home a New Plant • In Chandigarh, @travjit takes care of a rubber plant, christens it Ruby, and charts out a serendipitous journey with her potted companion. “In my grandmother’s home, I remembered my childhood summer holidays — climbing her mango tree and napping on the carpet in the living room, under the tall ceiling fans,” she writes. It’s a story flush with familial love and warmth, which leaks into the photos Taarini takes. Read her story and see all the photos via the link in our bio.
‘I Brought Home a New Plant’ is a set of three stories, published by Paper Planes, where new plant parents show us into their homes and how they’ve found space for their new houseplant.Photos by @travjit.

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