As Design Democracy 2026 approaches, I find myself asking what Indian designers are choosing to preserve, rethink, and carry forward.
I have always thought that design fairs are places to go looking for something new.
A new material. A clever piece of furniture. A designer you’ve never heard of. Something that makes you pause and think, Why didn’t I think of that?
But looking at the programme for Design Democracy 2026 in Hyderabad, I find myself thinking about something else entirely.
What happens when design starts looking beyond the new?
There is a lot in this year’s programme about sustainability, regional identity, craft, material innovation and, interestingly, the life of objects after they are no longer new.
That last bit interests me.
Because we are an industry that is very good at selling desire. New collections, new launches, new looks. And yet some of the most interesting questions in design today seem to be about keeping things rather than replacing them.
Can sustainability actually survive scrutiny?
Take Root & Radiance, the Gallery of Sustainability curated by Jasem Pirani and Huzefa Rangwala of MuseLAB.
I am kind of curious about this one because sustainability has become such an easy word to use. It’s a tag that has been over-borrowed just to sell stuff.
Make something from a natural material and it is sustainable. Use something recycled and it is sustainable. Make it look earthy and photograph it against a plant and, apparently, we are done.
But the curators have made the brief much harder.
The participating designers have been asked to avoid virgin materials, glue and chemical resins, and to think about disassembly, repair and what happens to the materials at the end of the object’s life.
That makes me want to look much more closely.
Not at whether the objects look sustainable, but at whether sustainability has actually affected the way they were designed.
What did the designer have to give up?
What became possible because of the restrictions?
And perhaps most importantly, would the object still be desirable if we removed the sustainability story from the label?
I think that is a much harder test.
Can regional knowledge become useful again?
The Museum of Telangana, curated by Supraja Rao, interests me for a different reason.
We frequently talk about preserving India’s heritage. But preservation can become a little static if we aren’t careful. We admire old techniques, old buildings and old materials, and then put them safely behind glass—or borrow their visual language for a contemporary project.
I’d much rather ask: what can this knowledge still teach us?
The previous Museum of Telangana explored things as fundamental as shade, stone, heat, light and the relationship between buildings and landscape.
These aren’t historical questions.
They are things we desperately need to think about now.
Can regional architectural knowledge help us build vernacular elements better?
Can local materials become relevant again without simply becoming a fashionable “Indian” aesthetic?
And can we take something from the past without being trapped by it?
For me, that is the difference between preservation and evolution.
When does craft evolve—and when is it simply repackaged?
The new Fabric of Design showcase also makes me curious about this question.
I have been thinking a lot about craft and what actually keeps a craft alive.
I don’t believe a craft survives simply because we continue making the same object in the same way. Sometimes, quite the opposite happens.
A designer takes an artisan’s skill and asks it to do something new. The artisan gets a new market. A younger person in that community sees that the skill has a future. The craft remains handmade, but its vocabulary changes.
That is evolution.
The danger is when we keep the appearance of a craft but lose what made it distinctive—the material, the process, the skill, the context.
So when I look at newer interpretations of Indian textiles and craft, I want to know:
What has actually been carried forward?
And what has simply been borrowed because it looks good?
And what makes us keep an object?
Then there is Precious Objects: After Life, curated by Monika and Sarah Choudhary of Habitat Architects.
This may be the one I am most intrigued by. As an antique dealer, I deal every day with this theme. I am in awe that something that was used in an old Gujarat palace can now sit in a Mumbai home, affordably procured because of the unorganised antiques market in India. For the buyer, It’s a version of ‘everything comes to her who waits,’ but parallelly also a version of ‘all good things come to an end’ for the erstwhile residents of that palace. It is sad and happy at the same time. ‘The Intelligence of Timber’ is an exhibit that I would have loved to see in person
We spend so much time designing things that people will want to buy. But what makes them want to keep them? An object can be beautifully made and still end up in a landfill. It can be durable and still become unfashionable.
It can be expensive and still mean nothing to the person who owns it. So what makes an object stay? Craftsmanship? Material? Memory? Repairability? Provenance (always in hindsight of course)?
Or is it something much harder to design for—attachment?
In my business, I see this all the time. An old object survives not simply because somebody made it well. It survives because somewhere along the way, somebody decided it was worth keeping.
Can contemporary designers deliberately create future heirlooms?
I don’t know.
But it is a question worth asking.
Perhaps the interesting thing isn’t what is new
This is what I find most promising about the programme at Design Democracy.
The interesting conversation may not be about the next new material or the next new aesthetic. The value of design may actually be in the way designers are beginning to think about consequence.
Where did this material come from? Who made it? What happens when it breaks? Can it be repaired?
What happens to it when we don’t want it anymore? What happens to the craft behind it?
And what happens to the knowledge embedded in it? Perhaps contemporary Indian design will advance simply by asking,
“What is worth making?”
I haven’t seen the exhibitions, so I don’t know whether they will answer these questions convincingly. That is precisely what makes me curious. I would love to know if you read this before visiting an exhibition, and if so, what thoughts cropped up? What was your takeaway for the value of design?
I deliberately chose not to include images in this write-up because the purpose is to really make my audience think when they visit their next design exhibition, be it Design Democracy or the next big one you are about to go to!
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