Godrej
Pillars Installation
Godrej is often described as the GE of India. They have numerous business units and work in nearly every field imaginable; from furniture and home appliances to nuclear reactor components and civic infrastructure. The company has worked with IA Collaborative on a number of strategic efforts, including an organizational initiative dubbed "pillars."
For the first stage of this effort the team at IA designed, developed, manufactured, and installed a large scale interactive experience on the top floor of the company’s global headquarters and innovation center in Mumbai.
Through a combination of lighting, capacitive technology, and textiles we created an environment where key business leaders, employees, and business partners could walk inside a space to physically explore different aspects of the new organizational strategy for the 120-year old India based company.
Concept : Banyan Trees / Connected Forest
This effort aims to shape the future of the company by reorganizing all of its businesses under a framework of six specific “purpose pillars” and through the development of new collaboration methods and processes that engage the entire organization.
The new plan encourages alignment and efficiencies within the company, while creating opportunities for synergies and knowledge sharing across categories. But, before employees can participate in this new approach they have to know about it.
The first step of this process is to create awareness.
As part of their annual board of directors meetings Navroze Godrej shared the newly developed approach. But, to kickoff the multi-day event he wanted an installation that would do more than just inform, he wanted everyone to experience a feeling (of vibrant change) even before his presentation.
For this installation our inspiration came from the national tree of India, the banyan tree.
Banyan tress grow additional trunks, or prop roots, to develop a larger connected system. Every trunk is connected directly or indirectly to the central trunk, and to one another. For these reasons, a faceted form of this tree became a perfect physical metaphor for the future strategy of the company, and drew on strong cultural connections.
Modern yet familiar.
The trees (or pillars) individually illuminate in response to the proximity of a person. Each pillar contains points of key global trends, and when touched light a colored path to another pillar, revealing future opportunities to be found in the collaboration between the two areas.
Process : From Concept to Installation
In six weeks the nimble team at IA was able to concept, design, build, travel and install everything required to fully transform a space roughly eleven timezones away. We worked around the constraints of the existing architecture, shipping times, potential customs delays, and baggage restrictions.
Calling it a team effort would be an understatement.
Client :
Godrej
Date :
2014
Studio :
IA Collaborative
Role :
Design Director
More selected projects
Mr. Stewart