Human Betterment by Design with Shashi Caan

Shashi Caan talks about the cultural color differences among the three continents that she has lived on, the application of color in architecture and her life mission to increase human betterment through color and design in the world.  From generation gaps to the main design principles to futurist thinking, Shashi Caan her passion for her profession sparks through the entire conversation. Shashi is all about collaboration and understanding what is going on in the world to find solutions to today's problems. 

Shashi Caan is a distinguished thought leader for architectural design internationally. As a practitioner, design educator and author, her dedication to furthering human betterment through and by design is reflected in her 30- year design career. Co-founder and leader of THE SC COLLECTIVE (2002), the inventively structured firm, Shashi is also the Co- founder and President of Globally We Design – GloWD (2015), an independent design futures think thank, through which her ReDesignEd Educators Forum facilitated the Universal Design Education Charter in 2018 and The Johannesburg Declaration in 2019. Shashi was formerly Associate Partner and Design Director with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), in New York and Chair of the Interior Design Department at Parsons, the New School for Design. In her service to industry capacity, Shashi also serves as Chief Executive Officer on the Executive Committee of International Federation of Interior Architects/Designers (IFI) Executive Board. She is a former two-term President for the International Federation of Interior Architects/Designers (IFI) and has been recognized as a Fellow of the IFI and Fellow of Royal Society of the Arts, UK. She holds honorary fellowships from the Australian Institute of Designers, the British Institute of Interior Design, as well as the American Society of Interior Design. Amongst others, her past volunteer and executive board level service includes the US International Interior Design Association (IIDA) , NY’s Interiors Committee of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and the United Nations Association (UNA). She was Contract Magazine’s US Designer of the Year (2004), granted the Golden Seat Architectural Master Award of China (2012), and appointed JDP Design Ambassador to Japan (2013), this amongst her many awards and accolades for design projects and design leadership across the world. With countless published writings, her seminal book, Rethinking Design and Interiors: Human Beings in the Built Environment (2011), has been translated into multiple languages. 

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Transcript

Judith van Vliet: Welcome back everyone after this amazing summer to the Color Authority podcast. I hope you had a good one and are ready for the next episode.

Shashi Caan: Today I'm going to be speaking to Shashi Caan, a distinguished thought leader for August architectural design internationally as a practitioner, design educator and author. Her dedication to furthering human betterment through and by design is reflected in her 30 year design career. She's co founder and leader of the SC Collective, the inventively structured firm. She's also cofounder and president of Globally WeDesign, an independent design futures think bank through which her RedesignEd Educators formum facilitated the Universal Design Education Charter in 2018 and the Johannesburg Declaration in 2019. Sashi has worked for the most prestigious architectural firms around the world. She was also contract magazine US Design of the Year in 2004. She was granted the Golden Seat architectural Master Word of China in 2012 and appointed JDP design Ambassador to Japan in 2013. And this is just a few of the words and accolades for her design projects and design leaderships across the world. She has countless published writings, but on her book Rethinking Design and Interiors: Human Beings in the Built Environment has been translated into multiple languages.

Judith van Vliet: Good morning, Shashi Caan. How are you today and welcome to the Color Authority.

Shashi Caan: Hello, Judith. I am amazingly well. Thank you so much. And thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be with you.

Judith van Vliet: I start all my podcasts with the very first same question and that's also going to be, I think, the question that we've talked about before. But I really look forward to hear your answer to what color is to you.

Shashi Caan: Oh, my goodness. Color is one of the absolute necessities of life. It is intrinsic to nature. Light, color are the two ingredients in life to give us all the information. They help us. Without light, we don't live. Without color, we don't have information. So it is intrinsic. It's essential. We need to know a heck of a lot more about it.

Judith van Vliet: Hence the podcast, and hence me interviewing as well. Indeed, I'm going to be super interested. And this is something that we talked in some of our conversations, indeed, about our upbringing and how we got where we were. But this is also something that I think it is intrinsic to what we're doing because everything we do today in life is coming from somewhere. Right? So your background is you were born in India, you studied in Scotland, then you moved to New York for, I guess, now, most of your professional career. How has your background and your operating on three different continents influence your career and, well, let's say, life in general?

Shashi Caan: My goodness, that's a big question. I spent half of my life for maybe just maybe 55% of my life in New York now. And I love New York. Outside of loving the places that I have had experience to be in for extended periods of time. Growing up with the knowledge, with the understanding of cultural nuance on three continents, it makes you misfit in some ways. So not so good stuff. You belong nowhere because you are a product of so many cultures and contexts. But on the other hand, you belong everywhere. And so I think that I'm probably one of those individuals in the world that consider themselves a global citizen long in the world and love being in the bigger world, love being in the globe. While I'm proud of all my aspects of heritage from all the places that I live and work in, I am particularly proud to be a global citizen that I think I have to come today.

Judith van Vliet: Yeah. How has it influenced your take on architecture? How has it influenced, generally your take on aesthetics? Because if you're born on one continent, you've been living mainly on one continent. Most people travel. It's not the same thing when you travel than when you really live somewhere. How has that influenced how you view architecture?

Shashi Caan: Well, let me actually try to answer that through the lens of color, which I know is your area of passion. In each of those cultures, color has a significance everywhere in the world. We use color to understand, to celebrate, to bring into our lives, to represent all aspects of our being in so many ways, whether it is wearing something or bringing it into our environment or into our cities and countries. And of course, there are so many aspects that influence the heat, the vegetation, the fatness of the land, or the geography itself. There's so many aspects. And in India, color is abundant. There is no codification, and I'm talking not amongst those that are particularly literate and knowledgeable and educated with the visual literacy of it by just the general public. And color is a way that you can embrace life with all of its abundance and wealth and richness and itself expresses your sense of being in a way that nothing else so readily can. In Europe, it's interesting that it begins to be far more of an expression of the social mores. And so there are so many Dos and don'ts and the European contacts, particularly in northern Europe and the UK. And Scotland, especially, where I was, and the Scottish are so deeply influenced by their history, which, of course, is the rest of Europe. And they are very restrained, as they are with so much else in life. They're careful with how they express things. They're careful with their expression of emotion. They're careful with how they say they do not want to offend anyone. And so there's that nuance. You come to a place like New York. Which is sort of a little house of itself. An ecosystem that is not entirely representative of all of the United States. Which is a massive big country. And yet the core cultural nuance of the United States that hinges on personal freedoms and independence is one where I think maybe what appeals to me so much about being here is that you don't pay attention to what has to be. What is dictated by fashion as the style of the moment. Therefore the color of the moment. Therefore the shapes or the architecture of the moment. It's not that it's timeless. It's just that there is less care for those that are, again, stylistically aware, aesthetically astute, and visually educated and cultured. They're very keen observations, and that's a slice of society that's perhaps more rare. But in America, there is a different anything goes, but still, color is something that is still a lot more conservative. We are codified probably differently. So in Europe, I find that there is attention to detail and sometimes too much detailing. So for me, it's been an interesting sort of looking at this and thinking about, well, then what does all of this mean? And if color is representative of its context in such a strong way, where temperature, geology, what is available, what isn't right, are all influencing your choices, then how do we think about color that is applicable in architecture for the masses? And then you start thinking about color use in architecture. And certainly in all those places, there are particular stylistic trends that are being driven also contextual, context specific. But you start thinking about color less, about preference. It's never about my personal expression. It is always about who am I working with? What are their trigger points? What do they actually need? What is the question at hand? How do we solve it for the most optimal behavioral support, using architectural form and using light and color, which are the two things that shape the architectural form? So I might actually share a very quick little example of something that is a personal experience for me. My uncle was city architect in Chandigarh. I come from a family of architects. When Corbusier designed his government building there, and of course, it was an experiment for Mr. Corbusier and he designed this concrete structure that is touted in the world as being significant, as a modern architectural statement. Well, if you go there today and visit the buildings, oh, my goodness, the Indians, the natives have colored every single surface possible with every single color and hue and tone and nuance and value and sometimes even texture because they have decorated pictures, and it's just it's cultural for them. Cultural for them. And concrete is not and concrete probably wasn't the right material to use in Champagne. And Mr. Corbusier made a statement, but the natives took it over. And I always wonder about that. I always wonder what is our responsibility as architects and designers when we use the design elements in order to try to work with local context versus pushing the frontiers of architecture or color or design in a way that really is our particular interest?

Judith van Vliet: Yeah, I think that's a very good example of obviously one of the most famous architects in the world. But how something can be beautiful, innovative, but put in the wrong context and especially, even maybe concrete would still have been a good material. But obviously you can easily color concrete. And that's what the locals wanted. That's how they live, that's how they communicate. So they needed color. So maybe it's not even perhaps his vision per se. It was the lack of that abundance in color what India is so well known for. Of course, I wonder what he thought. Or maybe there is a statement somewhere of what he thought when he saw it back. And then looking at it and thinking, what happened here to my building?

Shashi Caan: I have a feeling that in some ways you may be horrified. He's an artist and a very talented, gifted artist. And the art doesn't necessarily well, the power aspect of his art didn't necessarily come into architecture. Light did. And the experiment is this cultural interplay of light and volume is sort of genius for him. What always surprises me is that to this day, we won't show the context as is now being used. We show it in its pure form when it was built, devoid of people, devoid of how it's matured over time. And I suspect that we may have something to learn from looking at that through the use of architecture over decades in this instance. And maybe we would learn something. Maybe architecture could evolve its sensibility for color and form making. But anyway, you asked what have I learned? These are sort of I can't say that I've got luggage off. Well, this is what I think is the best way to do it, or what I've learned. I guess if anything, I've learned that you have to be contact people, well, people first, then contact conscious and know what it is that you are trying to accomplish as a designer and as an architect.

Judith van Vliet: That's also what you're known for. You have dedicated your career to the Human Betterment Through and by Design. I think we already a little bit touched upon that right now. But can you explain maybe a little bit more detail what your exact vision is? Human Betterment Through Design?

Shashi Caan: Well, you did you are telling me that I'm known for this. That astonishes me because we don't have marketing, we don't promote. I certainly don't self promote. It always astonishes me when someone in your capacity who is so well knowledgeable around what's going on in the world with a finger on the pulse of the latest and greatest, that I feel humble. So thank you for that. I suppose early on then, and probably an impact of my personal travel through trajectory, through learning, I realized that actually when we learned to do something, I suppose when doctors are learning to save lives, they're saving lives regardless of who you are. That's a given in that profession. And for the passionate doctor, you receive it for the passionate designer than the architect. For me. When I go with my trajectory so of course it's personal when I go to my trajectory of understanding at the core of what we do. The skill that we learn. The talent that we get to employ for a contribution back in the world. Which I believe is a responsibility we have if we have any talent at all and we're self aware with the talent. Well. Then for me it had to do with thinking about not what's the latest kind of architectural statement I could make or what is an artistic self expression that would set me apart from all of my peers or my colleagues or the architectural community where I may be recognized or whatever. It always has to do with. But if we're building shelter for people and in this day and age we're so fortunate that shelter is abundant in so many ways for us, we're not living in cave days when we have to find this shelter. We can build shelter of almost anything and we do. The fabulous are a form of shelter and then everything in between the most extraordinary penthouses and villas and instead of luxury living that we've conceded. So if we have done this as a humanity then ultimately the charge I've given myself is that using the skill set. The passion that I have and thinking about what my criteria needed to be to help support the world or contributed back. I had to seek betterment and betterment then when using that ingredient. It allowed me to get away from trend and style and aesthetic presence in general. It simply said well then if my client and I work more with individuals now, that's a very small experience of my career. I work with very large teams, very large projects affecting lots of people. And so when you do that, you understand what the design brief is based on well, what is it that we need to do? Why do we even need to do this? The world doesn't need another new retrofit or new building. Why are we doing it? Is it to expand in some way? Which is almost always the case. Also almost always the case is to fix problems. And so when you combine those things you understand the design brief. Then for me it becomes much easier to say well, I am bringing my artistic abilities but I am solving world problems and the world problems need to be resolved with this criteria that says it is for better month or it is whether the client wants to improve productivity, they want business to flourish better, which ultimately affects the economy in the city and the country, whatever. Or it is just specifically to say well, each individual should be super comfortable in their environment, work environment and their ability to learn or rest and relax, all of those kinds of considerations. And for me the synthesis of it is okay, this is my criteria, improve behavior through a use of aspects of design. And that's where for me, actually, the passion for color has been very dominant. I know less about light. We know that the natural light, daylight, gives us the fullest spectrum. It is the most satisfying, the most healing. And then there are the geniuses who have given us artificial light, and we can extend all activities for ourselves through the use of this around the clock. But for me, the nails of color, that is infinitely more complex.

Judith van Vliet: Do you use color to make betterments, as you do human betterment in your work? How does color apply to that?

Shashi Caan: Always.

Judith van Vliet: Always.

Shashi Caan: It is intrinsic, it is so fundamental. So if I use the modernist architectural theory, which is that we're going to be purists, we're going to build the most perfect volume, it's going to be considered for proportions and the correct material that really talk to modernity. And now I'm talking about classic modernism, not about modernity in our day and age now, because we're always living in a modern moment, right? So there's a nuance between the stylistic modernity when they do it and they say, well, you know what? Okay, so when we use color, we're going to let the colors of the materials be expressed. We're not going to layer with another applied color. Because God forbid that's paint that's wrong. Then you're talking about nuance of color that becomes far more muted. Far more tonal. And there's that use. But that's color. When they take that and say. Well. We'll just make that wall all red. And it can be a massive wall. But without realizing the impact of that red or blue or yellow. The three primaries that are the purest color in that theory of modernism. Well. They have an impact that is very specific. Yet stylistically. In the mid to late eighties, when I entered the workforce in the United States, there was stylistically in corporate architecture to dictate that all their colors should be neutral. And so I did color studies where you walk into these environments, it was just this weak colored on the floor, on the walls feeling you ignored, or you probably was also slightly, maybe a lighter value. But you asked about the impact. So if you work in that environment, which I did, whatever time of day or night you're entering that building, let's assume it's early in the morning. I go to the office at seven in the morning, and I may or may not be awake yet. In the winter, it's still dark, so I need my space dark outside, I'm in artificial light and some transportation. I get to the office, I go into the elevator cap. It's beige, the doors open. I walked into another beige environment. Then I walked through the elevator lobby to corridors, to the space. As I do that, and it's all based, I have this sense of never being able to waken up until I go to a window and I see natural light. So that's one kind of haziness that begins to happen, which is why we actually don't do it anymore. But then the opposite of that is also true. That when it gets super. So I find that these days, and sometimes in Europe, when the architecture is designed with a level of dynamism angular spaces or angular environments, geometrically interesting, but somewhat disconnected, and you color those surfaces with all kinds of brighter cues, it just adds to a different level of chaos and disorientation. I guess if there was one thing I learned, was that the balance of the three total values the light, the media in the dark is really important to support our ability to move through space and have a sense of being alert.

Judith van Vliet: Yeah, but also comfort. I mean, in very bright colors, depending what use you choose, depending on what you're doing in that space, of course you can't be comfort, you can't focus. There's multiple of other issues. There's emotions coming at you that you're maybe not really wanting in that moment as well. So it is true that how color, although some people tend to use the neutrals to avoid these issues, still picking out the right color for a certain space can really enhance how we as humans behave and feel.

Shashi Caan: Well, you're so right. I avoid the word comfort, and I avoid it because it is so complex, it's as big as the word color. And so I do talk to some of the new owners that ultimately we seek to be in charge of our environment. We seek to be alert. We want to make our choices, our decisions. We want to be able to move through our days with environments that support all of our activities and allow us to feel most full or the best we can be. And so for me to do that, then it is being very conscious, as you say, with color choice. And it isn't necessarily using tonal values, not using bright colors. It is all about balancing the tonalities in a way that is really supportive, that ultimately then allows us to be the kind of hassle to be able to do what we need to do. And which, of course, is as you.

Judith van Vliet: Stay comfort in using, you have many initiatives. You're a very busy woman when I look at your volume, like, how she even have time to talk to me? But, okay, globally, We Design is one of your initiatives, and it really encompasses how you can obtain new design visions and aesthetics. How does this come to work, really? Because new design visions, new design aesthetics, it's a constant evolution, right? So how do you get to these new visions?

Shashi Caan: I want to say, though, that I find the time to do what I do because I don't deal with normal life as well. So I don't have children. I do spend time with family, extended family a lot, but it's judicious how I do that. So these are my children. These are my contributions back to the world. And therefore, this is very fulfilling for me. And globally, redesign is an idea that evolves out of cumulative build up. When I work with the big firms, I work with three major American architectural firms, but pretty significant firms have impacted life across the planet. I learned the nuts and bolts application, project after project observation, learning about people. Just a lot of experience got accrued along with the teaching. I've always had a foot in education. Then when I left that to start with collective, it was the first time that I actually left some job with some kind of personal goal. And the goal was that I felt that in the practice, with the pressures, the day to day pressures of project delivery, satisfying clients with diminished budgets, with diminished timelines, with larger expectations from creators, but zero time to actually focus on creativity itself, that we were doing the service, we were no longer walking the talk of being at the cutting edge of design. And I have to clarify that cutting edge of design for me is not being stylistically future forward. Okay? So I don't have to be a Zaha Hadid or a Frank Gehry or Laura Ashley. Is that's kind of what you're into for me? That none of that matters? Or Steve McQueen. I don't have to be edgy. I just have to be relevant with new knowledge, with an understanding of what's going on in the world. And at that time, there was an awful lot of talk about collaboration. And still to this day, we don't actually know how to collaborate. We use the word we assume we understand, but the process of it is not so clear to us. We don't have it down path to say, I'm going to compile this team. This is what we'll do. That's what the collective did. So we started the collective. We called it collective in order to use a word that was bigger than just make it more than just an adjective out of the dictionary. And we were amongst one of the first few to use that methodology for design. Now there are Gazillion collective. I don't know that we really push their envelope on identifying the process for collaboration or that we have really shaped an improved world through that. But certainly there are lots of efforts where people come together and they work globally. Redesign is the next generation of that. So it evolves because actually it was conceived before the pandemic, but the pandemic sealed the deal for us. It demonstrated for us some of the broken systems and our challenges, one of which was that we actually live in a borderless world today when we're all concerned with inflation in our economy, and we're concerned with it in whatever country, Italy and the United States, wherever we are, the reality, the realization we have is that actually it's a world economy. The inflation managed in America is affecting the rest of the world. So we live in and then of course, the Covet virus itself was so borderless that we realized that being global is essential. We design this collaboration. Design, of course is fundamental to this. And it was born for us to rethink all of our processes. How do we do what we do? Are the processes still applicable today? Knowing full well that our systems have changed, our ability to deliver has changed, our ways in which we talk to each other has changed, world demographics have changed. We have a 20 year window in which the analog and the digital have to become a mesh. Right now there is a generation gap. How will we address these things? And those are the sort of big hairy questions globally redesign grapples with. And we do it in a very applied way. We have new knowledge now and we think that by addressing topical questions that come out of world trends. So those trends used to work very carefully. The fashion cycles that are in a three month season of fashion itself, that's not what I'm talking about. We know that technology, as it advances, shapes the evolution of everything in our life. And so we know that we are at a place with technology where evolutionary evolution wise, we need to embrace it very differently. We know that industrial processes have changed. We know economics have changed. We know globally we've changed, demographics have changed. And so those are the big cycles that affect us that we then use. We look at big world challenges, such as major challenges, whether it's hymactic or it's delivery systems or its travel through this time, health related, you name it. There's so many of the elderly.

Judith van Vliet: It's the mega trends, really. It's a really big picture. 50 years ahead, 100 years ahead, which of course is what architecture is all about. I love that saying about you're planting a tree, knowing that you will not sit in its shade. And that's very much what you are doing with globally redesign. But how can we keep on building? How can we keep on producing and at the same time respect our environments? How can we move forward? Because technology is pushing us also to move forward. But how can we still keep that deep respect that I think right now sometimes it's lacking for the world. How can we do that? This is a very big question. If you have the answer.

Shashi Caan: I wouldn't presume too. But I do suffer a lot of futurists and there's one I like a lot, Gert out of Germany, which is fantastic, and I use it. I've lifted his theme, which I think is so true, that we will see more transformation in the next ten years than as we have seen in the past 100. So while these are mega, I actually don't like the word. You're right. To call it mega trends.

Judith van Vliet: I don't like what people know them for.

Shashi Caan: No, that's right. But still it becomes trendy. And yet we have a responsibility to think about implications, consequence. And we know that transformation is happening so fast that architecture or the leases today are not 2025 years. They literally are three to five years sometimes. But if they're only three to five years, that means that commercial interiors, such as for corporate office, are actually changing within three to five years. So the cycle of that transformation is so much faster and it then, of course, adds to the environmental impact in a major, big way. And so we kind of need to get ahead of this. But it's a Renaissance moment, I think, where something dynamically different has to happen. We hope that by bringing people together to understand knowledge, by sharing knowledge, by experimenting, exploring collaboratively, that we can shift the basis of education, we can shift the basis of practice so that we can begin to put in place new ways of conceiving and new ways of handling some of these big challenges. Wildfires. How do you build communities where we already know that our world is heating up and that there was a wildfire in the UK this year, just months ago, less than that. How do you fire proof environment? If you can't solve the global warming issue, then how do we solve a more immediate issue of housing or architecture or lives that get destroyed because the structures need to actually be designed differently. So we've gotten away a little bit from color. But of course. If we go back to this idea of comfort. Your word. That is a really big vessel for all the attributes that color ultimately combines to give us. Well. Then how do we shape a new kind of architecture. New kind of living environment for all of the myriad of activities and then use the right color palette or palette to induce a sense of comfort in a world that has changed. Now it's already transformed. In the next decade, it will transform so much more. How will we manage this difficulty?

Judith van Vliet: The technology behind color. So the technology behind pigment development I remember seeing again an article about at the time when they developed finally the whitest white, which then in Greece, of course, being right now in Milan is very hot. But in Greece they're used to that. It's always hot. So there's a reason why they paint or the house is obviously in white because that, again, it helps them in their living conditions very much. So I also wonder, just as a general thought, like how color not only can make us feel better and adapt to our living situations, but also how again, technology, because you mentioned technology before, how that can actually evolve with it to create colors that either adapt to us but also to living conditions.

Shashi Caan: Really good example. So that's an interesting one because it's the. Only color I ever use on ceilings. All ceilings bring in white and the reason to use it as far as reflectivity. But also if you do a lighter tool on the wall we know that when the plane changes direction, when it goes from horizontal to vertical, this shadow will shift the car. We know that the two planes will meet very differently. Well, what we often are not prepared with are the unintended consequence. So when something gets painted that brilliant white and the light reflects that back through windows of neighboring buildings now we have, rather than solve the problem for that one building that we want to remain cooler, we've actually enhanced the problem for all its neighbors because the light now reflecting back is going through their grass which is accentuating the heat. Now you've got a level of light and heat that is being impacted. That's true for materials too. The Frank Gehry building that he just did in La that is of that great value. So the architecture is fragmented in its surface on the outside, the windows from it are reflecting the sunlight at angles nobody expected and it is causing glare and heat and level of light that is affecting all the neighborhood community. There are some of the unintended consequences that we don't think about when it's considered singularly. So we actually model that a lot in our work to try to understand the implication which we don't think that color will have that impact. Your example of white and Greece, but clearly it does for me. It's just so important that we understand color, we understand the problem aspects and then the new technologies in our way, as you said, to continue to make improvements.

Judith van Vliet: Talking about technology because I know you're.

Judith van Vliet: Also a futurist yourself. When we talked a few weeks back, we also talked about the metaverse, which is a huge topic. But you asked the question that if people would still live in ugly places here too and it made me laugh because it was a very good point. What do you think that this parallel world can mean for interior designs and architect?

Shashi Caan: So the metal versus new and the jury is out. We don't know what will happen to it. We do know that it's a multibillion dollar industry already I heard a fact or someone say that the money spent on gaming today in the world surpasses the money spent on entertainment, for movies, for music, for TV. I would need to be researched to make sure that fat. But I heard it from a very reliable source. So then the reason it comes up for me is that if that is the impact of a new technological advancement that is shaping generations of our next generation to think about life and a lot of it is in this imaginative world of gaming and it's a perfect place for entertainment and escape. And it's worth saying, well, what's going on here? I live in the future. So I want to understand what the future looks like. I suppose being an architect or designer, that comes with a territory. You have to be at the cutting edge of innovation. Otherwise you're not really an architect or designer. And so, at least that's my interpretation. And so then when we know that this is, as you said, one of the mega trends, this is happening here now, and I started doing some research, and I look around and I realize that Hollywood, I follow the movie, and it's a big major movie industry. Nollywood in Africa, Bollywood in India, which is the second largest. Hollywood, of course, which is the largest. And while we can have whatever cultural opinions we want about it, reality is that those forms of entertainment are going into the psyche of masses across the world. And so when a Hollywood starts to show Sci-Fi movies such as Ready Player One or X Macchina, where they're grappling with, yes, it's all entertainment, it's all fun and games, that you're going to play this game, you're going to survive it. But on the other hand, what you're seeing in the movie in terms of the built in the environment already Player One, what you're seeing in that movie is this huge disparity between where they live. They show you these scenes of this city scape, and they're literally living in slums. You see that, and then you see where they escape to where they become improved, super humans, anything goes. There is a democracy to that design. It's not being designed by experts. It's been designed by anyone and everyone. Well, that's a good thing, but what is it doing for us? So it could follow that that's kind of one trajectory where we're headed. And then if that is one possibility of a future for us, that I suppose, in our conversation, I was sort of exploring, well, it's not really what we want. And right now, when we see the precursor to some of these consequences, of the unintended consequences of meta verse and gaming, then what do we need to do now? Meta verse is never going away. We don't know whether that's ever going to be real. We do know that cryptocurrencies exist, that NFPs exist, that there is an entire business world that is already supporting metadata development. So we know there's a tremendous development going on, a tremendous investment, and therefore, we know that we need to look at it and try to impact its trajectory as we possibly can. It's not something that I feel I'm personally not qualified to do, but it is something that we kind of look at as an implication for humanity, human environments, and people. And again, coming back to the beginning with, well, we practice our art. I practice my art in the context of design, which is problem solving, identifying the largest problems, using all the elements of design that I know. The biggest one, light and color and form, making to improve our world, to improve lives. And so in that big equation, then it's thinking about how much should we be paying attention to that? And therefore exploring it with smart colleagues like you to say, hey, are you guys thinking about it? What's going on in the color world with the metaverse?

Judith van Vliet: It's true because it is a place where anything goes. But I do feel that sometimes when everything goes, people freeze up. Because if you can do anything, that means you need to construct stuff from scratch. And that's where designers are needed. That's where architects are needed. Because in another podcast that I did, it was very clear that most of those people that are now working in the meta verse are people coming from the gaming industry. People from the gaming industry are not necessarily architects and designers or industrial designers, product designers, graphic designers, you name it. So it's interesting how that aesthetic palette is not quite there yet as where it probably could be in order also for humans to be again at full in these spaces.

Shashi Caan: So one of the biggest criteria in that you said you summarize it so well, the biggest ingredient in that is it's the next generation. And I have to tell you, I have a huge, massive problem with this, the process.

Judith van Vliet: But that was indeed going to be my next question. Like, what are your struggles in your career, but also what are going to be those struggles for the next generation?

Shashi Caan: Well, thank you. For me, personally, a big question, because disconnect we have is that in the gaming world, those educated in an understanding of technology and program writing and writing the technology to shape those worlds, and they're super brilliant, they are not necessarily aesthetically trained, nor are they people that I don't know them well. So making a categorical statement, which I need to take back without even saying it, perhaps, but we don't know their social skills. We know that to spend time on computer means that you're spending hours and hours and hours looking at a screen. And so you're communicating with people through this medium, it changes our behavior. And as someone deeply concerned with human behavior and wanting to understand it, now, we have a differently shaped behavior in next generations. We also know from our history that youth brings a level of vitality, a level of fearlessness, a level of this ability to go where no man has gone before. All of that is fantastic criteria. We also know that use can have with their folly, it can have with their lack of judgment, that there is a learning process. There's something called experience that's really needed and wisdom that comes from that. And that's a big disconnect for me between the generations right now. So we have a future that's being shaped, not all of it. There's probably just as many young people who deeply care about the ethics and morals, the values and traditions and are very much in the world. So I don't mean to make this black and white, it's not at all. But just speaking specifically to the metabolic and new technologies, the images of our future are coming from a very specific kind of next gen person that we have a major disconnect between the wisdom presented by all those people who have a depth of knowledge through analog processes. But then we have the skill and the talent and the expertise of the digital world and the two are not together yet. And that's a goal that unless we can find a way to work with that and to learn from each other and to begin shaping that, it's problematic. And this is one of the big things that we focus on the global redesign by connecting with education, find education institutions from around the world to grapple with this question that says well, but then what is architecture, design? And all of the color for me is such a fundamental for all aspects of design and there is a core foundational knowledge in all aspects of design. So not everybody can design everything. That's a policy. I don't care for all those multidisciplinary naysayers. It is not fact that everyone can design everything. You need expertise. But within that expertise then we need to understand, we need to talk each other's language and this is where we construct design studios and master classes and forums with educators globally we design. Right now we're focused on education in a big way to say but we need to get to the crocks of how do we begin communicating with next generations? How do we put our arms around this kind of knowledge that's here already shaped the world? And then how do we begin to envision the world that we do want? How do we use our imagination in a really responsible way to shape a world that is going to be fantastic for the elderly? Judi you expected to live to 110? I hope not, but you might. Our medicine, our technology has advanced enough that you potentially could feeling more pandemic crisis and economic crises. We're on a trajectory where we made such advancements as humanity that the next generations, their lifespan is much, much longer and that is scientific fact.

Judith van Vliet: It's going to incorporate in architecture and in design and how we live generally exactly.

Shashi Caan: So how will we do that and who will do that and what is the knowledge base they have and do they feel social responsibility for this? Because a lot of the young people I said the education has changed so much that sometimes I question simple things like moral values. Is there enough respect for older people? How do we care for them? How do we care for them knowing it's a big segment of our community that we need to value. But do we value them enough in the Asian cultures? We do. So I learn to live with a level of value in a form of respect when addressing an elderly person. But the next generation aren't necessarily doing that, particularly not in the United States, because we're all equal. So how do we cultivate this in a social context when my future sits and then your future sits in the hands of this next generation or these next generations?

Judith van Vliet: That actually is a very beautiful, open question. It's almost like a call to action to this podcast, right? To all designers and architects out there and color designers such as myself. How are we going to practice?

Shashi Caan: So we're trying to do it in the expertise that we have through design. The architect will actually all of the foundation of design for all design disciplines, addressing its education, sharing knowledge, looking at the frontier of that knowledge, integrating it back into our asking the right questions and the solutions that may be correct for those questions. That's kind of what we're exploring together with what is actually becoming a formidable platform, a network of incredible people that I feel so privileged to be working with and be a part of. And so coming back to the very first question you ask, what drives me? Color people? I think that if I can help do this and share some of this and prompt and find the courage to be there. And as I've been, I've made my contributions in the world. You have?

Judith van Vliet: Well, you have certainly made a great contribution to this podcast, and that's what I want to thank you for. Sashi Khan, it's been amazing talking to you and such a bubble of energy, but also so much information for all those generations that I hope are going to be listening.

Shashi Caan: Thank you so much. It's been an honor and a privilege. I think you're amazing. I think you and your community, you are our future. And so taking this knowledge, you're even being open to listen to this is a gift for me, and I really appreciate it. And I look forward to seeing how you advance with all of this and, of course, interconnecting in so many different ways into the future.

Judith van Vliet: Thank you, everyone, for listening to my podcast with Shashi Caan. I hope you're inspired and that you're energized if you are. So please go to Apple podcast or spotify and rate and review the show. My next episode, launching September 20, is going to be with Keith Recker. And we're not just going to be talking about his new book. We're going to be talking about all that is color, but mainly the misperceptions about color. So stay tuned and see you back then.