Being the Change

Rebecca Reubens believes in creating systems that will bring sustainability into mainstream design.

What awakened your interest in sustainability?

RR: I studied Industrial Design at NID, majoring in Furniture and Interiors. For most of my time there, I wanted to be a mainstream industrial designer. Then MP Ranjan coerced me into working with bamboo and with craft-groups. I was astounded by the poverty in terms of money and infrastructure and the richness in terms of so much else – craft, technique, culture, producer-base, material palette, etc. I decided to work for people who most needed design, but couldn’t afford it. The obvious next choice was working in the development sector, so I could do this, and still sustain myself. I joined INBAR and stayed with them for seven years.

During this time, I took a long hard look at the development sector and realized that the system didn’t make designers (or anybody else) accountable for the funds spent and for the outcome or even the output. I wanted to work in a system which was more real – where I was more accountable and more committed to doing better work because I had more skin in the game.

How did Rhizome come about?

RR: In 2009 I started Rhizome in Delhi to see whether sustainability could be sustainable. It is a for-profit sustainability design firm - where sustainability is not linked to public funds, or a typical not-for-profit operational and funding structure for sustenance. I wanted to see whether I could transition from the ‘sustainable design’ model of the West to a sustainability design model for the rest of the world (including the West). Rhizome was born to be the vehicle for this investigation.