The 8th semester graduating thesis project is where students engage with a thought, idea., the context for 15 weeks. In 2020 I mentored a project called Bluespaceship. It was an interdisciplinary group. Spaceship designer, a serial space entrepreneur and climate action advocate Ms Susmita Mohanty was the co-mentor. The term Bluespaceship was coined by her.
Project abstract
We are all astronauts. We live in a beautiful blue Spaceship, our mothership, our home.
We forget that right this very moment we are all hurtling through space at enormous speeds while inhabiting one of the habitable planets in our Solar System. Space, in that sense, is not a frontier that needs conquering (that’s a coloniser’s mindset). (Outer) Space is just a natural extension of our cosmic presence here on Earth.For those of you keeping up with current affairs, you wouldn’t have missed that climate anomalies, climate unpredictability, and extreme climate events are on the rise and will only get worse in the coming decades. In many ways, we humans have trashed our home planet to a point that anthropogenic climate change seems irreversible.
Either way, if our great-grandchildren are to stand a chance, we need to take climate action seriously and build a climate-conscious generation of designers, engineers, artists, scientists, and managers. If we don’t, then in three to four generations (each generation-spanning 15 years), the Earth will not be habitable anymore.
· Human activities that are making climate change acute and accelerated
· Climate action that can help reverse/mitigate anthropogenic climate distress
· Climate consciousness
There is an urgent need to communicate this to society. Though there are many websites,
blogs and other digital platforms that are crying hoarse about the climate emergency we are facing, they are making enough impact. Is it because extreme polarisation of wealth, do the small number of people who have cornered the wealth are influencing policies and government decisions to benefit them?
E.g. – 2 million trees have been cut in the Western Ghats area within Karnataka in the last few years for developmental’ projects and there is hardly any protest or outrage. Bluespaceship will be a multilingual portal that will help in raising awareness of the need to take back and restore our home, the earth, the blue planet aka blue spaceship.
The project hit speed breakers due to Covid -19 hence more than 50% of it had to move online.
Here are is an example of the work – and documentation books of some of the students.
Documentation book (Doc Book) of few students. Please use the >> button and view the pdf in full screen/presentation mode.