JOURNEY

  • The Rhizome Approach

    Rebecca always believed that design was ideally positioned to be a powerful game-changer in the world’s sustainability story. To deepen her knowledge on the nuts and bolts of sustainable design, Rebecca decided to supplement her NID education in design with a PhD in sustainability from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. One of the outputs of her PhD was the Rhizome Approach—which is the holistic sustainability design framework we follow at the studio.

    We strive to imbibe the properties of a rhizome and collaboratively design products and systems that are socially, culturally, ecologically and economically interdependent and yet function independently.

  • How was Rhizome born?

    In 2009, Rebecca Reubens founded Rhizome, India’s first multidisciplinary sustainability design studio. Rebecca had just returned to Ahmedabad in India after working in the international development sector for 7 years. Her work across Asia, Africa and Europe had convinced her that the efforts to address the sustainability crises in the global north did not fit the ground realities of the global south. The global north focussed on ‘countable’ aspects of ecological sustainability, whereas the global south did not yet have the capacity to look at these aspects, since it was still struggling to provide basic human needs. Rebecca therefore decided to found Rhizome, as a holistic sustainability design studio that would explore how sustainability could be realized in the global south.

  • Naming Our studio 'Rhizome'

    The name ‘Rhizome’ comes both from Rebecca’s extensive work in bamboo and also from one of her favourite books, A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari.

    Bamboo’s underground plant stems are called ‘rhizomes’ in botanical terms. Each bamboo rhizome sends down roots or sends up shoots, and links itself to other rhizomes. This metaphor resonates with what we believe design needs to be—a decentralized network, without a definitive beginning or end, with tremendous flexibility to inform and be informed by inputs from every adjacency.

  • Principles of a rhizome described by Deleuze and Guattari in their book, A Thousand Plateaus:

    • Principles of connection and heterogeneity: Any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be
    • Principles of multiplicity: It is only when the multiple is effectively treated as substantive 'multiplicity' that it ceases to have any relation to the One
    • Principles of asignifying rupture: A rhizome may be broken, but it will start up again on one of its own lines, or on a new line

    Principles of cartography and decalcomania: A rhizome is not amenable to any structural or generative model it is a 'map and not a tracing'

  • Be the change you want to see!

    Taking on holistic sustainability was often daunting and we often wondered if we were biting off more than we could chew. Sustainability was not the buzz-word in 2009 that it is today, but Rebecca believed that climate change and unsustainability were here to stay and that Rhizome was relevant.

    Everything we do at Rhizome is our attempt to design a better present and future. Everyone working at the studio strongly believes that faith can move mountains and sustainability is possible. Everyone matters and every drop counts.

  • Craft, Design, and Sustainability

    We believe that sustainability needs to be looked at holistically and across disciplines to actually begin to be mainstreamed. This is why we work at the intersection of craft, design, and sustainability. We go beyond eco-design and look at sustainability holistically. We consider social, economic, and cultural sustainability alongside the ecological factor because we believe that everything is interconnected and that everything counts.

    At Rhizome, we’ve been working on making the idea of sustainability sustainable through design since 2009. We go beyond sustainable design, we strive to shape a future where sustainability thrives, creating a better world for all.

GET IN TOUCH

Do you have a project you think we might be perfect for? Is there an idea or a query that you want discuss with us? Email us at info.rhizome@gmail.com or rohityagi@gmail.com, and our team will come back to you. Let's get together and bring your design dreams to life.