Not a rat race: Sushant Verma of rat[LAB] Studio integrates technology into his architectural practice

Sushant Jai-Amita Verma stands at the forefront of innovative architectural design, blending artistry with cutting-edge technology to redefine the boundaries of modern architecture. With an illustrious career spanning international accolades, pioneering research, and transformative educational initiatives, he exemplifies the epitome of a visionary architect, design technologist, and educator. Currently leading rat[LAB] Studio, Sushant’s commitment to bridging the gap between technology and design education led to the establishment of rat[LAB]EDUCATION, SMART LABS, and EDU[LAB] INDIA, pioneering initiatives advocating the use of technology in design through workshops, programs, and online portals. Recognising the lack of formal education in design technologies in India, Verma’s initiatives have empowered thousands of aspiring architects and designers with essential computational design skills, reshaping the landscape of design education in the country.

As a forward-thinking architect, Sushant remains at the forefront of emerging technologies, including AI, robotics, and AR/VR, harnessing their potential to revolutionize design processes and pedagogy. His visionary leadership and dedication to advancing architectural design education have earned him widespread acclaim, transforming the industry and inspiring a new generation of architects to embrace computational design and embrace the ever-evolving technological landscape. In this interview, we are delving into the innovative world of architecture as guided by the expertise and insights of Sushant Verma, one groundbreaking project at a time. Through his experiences and initiatives, we aim to convey the importance of integrating technology into architectural design, emphasizing the intersection of design, art, and technology as a catalyst for transformative architectural solutions.

Your work at rat[LAB] explores the intersection of design, art, and technology. Can you share an example project that exemplifies this multidisciplinary approach?

The recently finished HeadField façade project for a commercial office space in Noida, is a very artistic design that we created for parametric façade wherein we were playing with certain curves and curvilinear geometries which could be modularised in bespoke ways. We gave a new language to the brand in the geometric essence. Just to get that right we had to deploy technology in various ways. First, we deployed digital fabrication aspects into the façade design. Once the design was done digitally we 3D printed a couple of iterations to value engineer the façade and in the process of value engineering we also looked into the execution of the façade for which we used CNC machines and bending machines in a custom manner to give the curvature, rationalize the geometry and also do environmental studies to make it more sustainable. So, I believe that is a perfect example, in a recent project, where design, art and technology is intersected in a unique manner to realize an interesting façade while also giving an artistic branding to the project.

What first sparked your interest in integrating computational tools and technologies into architectural design practice?

The interest in technology came from an early age as a designer; not just as a designer, even before I became a designer. I think I was intrigued by technology and enjoyed exploring different software and also operating with a lot of hardware, played with computers. There was a personal interest in technology. When pursuing architecture, there was a sort of zeal to connect these technologies into design and fuse them. At the same time, I had very deep interest in complex forms and geometries in architecture, specifically very much inspired by the works of Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Calatrava, Peter Eisenman, these kinds of professionals who were really making a big mark at that time. I think that really sparked a lot of interest in me in understanding how these complex designs in geometries are being realized and designed. That is where we started to explore computational design. I was also doing masters in emergent technologies and worked with a robotics company after which I was fortunate to be working with Zaha Hadid architects. During all these experiences and exposures that I got, I realised that computational design is one of the emergent technologies which needs to be integrated into design which is also where our architectural design practice started to integrate computational design at its core. So computational design was not only limited to coding but also other aspects of parametric design, evolutionary design, and generative design and recently we started to explore a lot of artificial intelligence as well. In all, I think the interest of integrating computation to design technologies is pretty much to make unique things be realized basically and that is where I started from.

rat[LAB]EDUCATION has been pivotal in advocating technology in design education through workshops. What gaps did you identify that motivated starting these initiatives?

Interestingly while being in the UK and US, I was exposed to a lot of different forums, different conferences and workshops that were happening to train people informally about computational design which was not a part of regular curriculum. That really sparked my interest; that this is something that we want to really bring into India as well. And at that time in India, nobody knew of computational design, not many people were exposed to it and therefore a new discourse really needed to be started. When I came back to India in 2015, I realised that we need to setup rat[LAB] Education as an academic initiative. We started doing a lot of workshops in different cities across India, teaching designers and students and professionals of design about computational design. We were involved in a lot of conferences and with universities to set up their curriculum. That really set up the foundation and I think the gaps that we identified was that there was no formal education in design technologies or computational design in general in any of the colleges and the question aroused about how someone would learn about these tools. Likewise, when I was doing my master’s at AA, I realised that I was lacking with the right information and knowledge and experience beforehand on these subjects. I had to really put in the extra effort to learn about computational design and technologies to make the best of the opportunities that I was offered during my own learning course. It was another notion that anybody planning to go for higher studies should be exposed to these tools and techniques beforehand. That was pretty much how we started to fill the gaps and ten years from then I think going over 125-130 workshops with about 4000+ architectural designers across India, we have really made a big mark in changing the flavour of the industry I would say.

How are emerging technologies like AI, robotics, AR/VR influencing the future of design education and pedagogy? With your global experience, how do you see the adoption of design technologies differing in India compared to other regions?

Back in 2011, I started getting exposed to emergent technologies while I was doing the master’s to gain emergent knowledge in design at the AA, EmTech. That was the time that I really started to understand robotics. AI was not very developed at that time, but machine learning was still in the dialogues and discourse. Then of course parametric design was at the crux of becoming the next big thing at that time. How is it influencing the design education is I would say these tools and techniques when you master them, they really offer you a very broad creative insight into what you can design, what you can realize, what you can rationalize and what you can optimize. I think these tools are very powerful assets in your hand to be able to design much better spaces much more designed and optimized spaces. All these tools facilitate the design process and make the design a lot better. In education, it is definitely the important aspect of future education because we have to deploy the future architects and designers with the right kind of skills and toolsets of the future. We can’t just be working with the tools of the past. India has been catching up really well in the last four or five years, I think especially post-covid when the world became disconnected yet much more connected than ever before. People got really exposed to what is happening globally in terms of design education and gained the ambition to learn more and more and to adapt to new tech and new tools. There is still a big lack of formal setups providing such education, that’s why different informal or unconventional workshops and educational forums are much more powerful right now. Very similar to that is smartLABS, what we started as a six-month programme at one time. Now, we have eight batches graduating out of that. More than 150 participants from different parts of the world were able to learn about computational design. I think that is a big change. Slowly the colleges and education system is also adapting to that and we are catching up with the global education system.

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What drove the decision to establish “laboratory-cultures” of explorative design practice through rat[LAB]? How does rat[LAB] approach the sustainability and ecological impacts of the built environments you design?

The idea of laboratory culture is obviously deeply ingrained in the studio because when we set up the practice, me and Pradeep, we were coming up with the whole idea of a practice of a small close-knit group, an initiative of like-minded people who would come together and be experimental in their approach. This is where the research comes into the picture. That’s why it is called ratLAB – Reseach in Architecture and Technology. We truly believe that innovation happens through deeply engraved design research which is where the laboratory culture comes into the picture in an experimental practice. We always like to experiment with something new and be innovative in whatever we do whether it is small furniture or a façade or a city scale project.

I don’t think we are in any way different from any other conventional architectural practices which are sensitively and sensibly looking at sustainability and ecological impact because that is the need of the hour. It is something that we do in whatever we design, whatever we do, particularly in how we design a lot of facades. Most of them are protective building envelopes that can have an impact on what we are building. We really like to control the microclimate and the environment by the appropriate configuration of geometries, the right kind of designs that are sustainable and have a better environmental impact as well. The kind of materials that we use also bends towards the idea of sustainability. We try to use local materials and try to innovate with local materials itself. I don’t think there is anything that we do which is not looking into or factoring sustainability.

You’ve mentioned making design education more scalable and accessible. What innovations are needed to achieve this?

When we started rat[LAB] Education, we were obviously not working at a large scale. We were working on a smaller scale to create smaller workshops and have a smaller impact thereby. Over a period of time, we realised that a lot of people need accessibility to these kind of education systems and so instead of going from one city to another and doing this kind of workshops and collaborations, we set up smartLABS which was a hybrid programme much of which was online. The hybrid programme started in the pre-covid era when nobody had heard of a hybrid or online education, but we tried that as a pilot project wherein we could open up a programme which is partially happening online and partially in studios wherein anybody from different parts of the world could be a part of it. I think that was the first step to making design education scalable and accessible. Apart from that, we also had been in the process of setting up EduLAB India which is a platform that we have been working on in the last couple of years wherein we are documenting all our educative initiatives into a self-learning guided programme which is very affordable, accessible to anyone. Anybody can subscribe to it and learn from that without any intervention of being a part of a workshop as such. The kind of innovation this requires is of course the technology of the platform, creating the subscription method and documenting our whole educational knowledge with the knowledge bank that we have produced in the last ten years. This is where we are also deploying artificial intelligence to recreate the programmes, to train the programmes and the curriculum to adapt to different needs and changes of people. We are still on it; this is a work in progress. Maybe in the next couple of years, when we have this technology out for the public, I think we can talk more about accessibility and scalability of design education. That is the impact which we wish to create.

For young designers, what advice would you give on upskilling in computational design and embracing new technologies?

One needs to be very open to learning new technologies, whatever is coming in the profession or even outside the profession. Because, if you learn a technology now five years down the line it is going to be redundant. That is the pace at which technology grows in the world. One has to really open up the mind-set to learn about design thinking and develop a knack for learning new technologies. It is not about learning software, but it is more about learning a soft skill which allows being adaptive to learning anything new. My advice would be to upskill themselves in terms of computational design for sure. Whether they want to embrace it to the next level or not, that totally depends on the individual’s interest and alignment to that technology. But I would say it is the need of the hour to be updated with what is happening around the globe in terms of the design profession and if you are updated with it, obviously you can make much better use of it. So, to all the young designers, my main advice would be to be open-minded, learn things which are new and not be complacent with what you already know. With that mindset, you would always continue to evolve.