Cruise & Ferry Interiors 2021

4 5 Lifelong learning Shashi Caan outlines how she advocates for designers to continually develop their design knowledge and experience through the SC Collective G ood design requires a finely balanced sense of aesthetics, meaning, function and support for improved living and quality of life, according to Shashi Caan, co-founder and leader of US- and UK-based design and architecture firm SC Collective. Caan also believes that designing is a creative and inventive act that requires designers to intentionally combine imagination, knowledge and responsibility, which is why she advocates for SC Collective’s team to continually expand its design knowledge. “We cultivate team members who practice reflective awareness of the world around us – we want them to innately think about how each task will cumulatively give improved end results,” explains Shashi Caan, founding partner of the SC Collective. “Ensuring that each team member (regardless of experience or expertise) proactively develops an interest in the knowledge, art and craft of our work forms a strong underpinning for ongoing and extended learning. All our work requires thoughtful and step-by-step synthesis of our daily process to ensure client satisfaction and design success.” Caan advises that designers closely follow economic, technological, environmental and scientific developments and explore how they are impacting on the global design industry. “We look for interconnections and impetus as the basis for creating meaningful solutions to design challenges,” she says. “This helps to shape our outcomes for human advancement and behaviours, which impact the world at large. Although we keep an eye on current business and cultural trends, as well as emerging and popular ‘how to’ methodologies, we also adopt new and more efficient design processes that don’t necessarily have wholesale buy-in.” Caan’s best piece of design advice is to focus on foundational value. “For me, this equates to the ‘meaning’ that we make for contemporary life quality, well-being and business success shaped by transformational new knowledge,” she says. “We dwell less on the prescribed or regurgitative rollouts driven by short-term solutions. Instead, we imaginatively and responsibly apply broadest best value to make a big impact and tick all creative and practical boxes for good design and business.” CFI “ We cultivate team members who practice reflective awareness of the world around us”