Nikhil Garde’s Sea Shelter in MoMA’s Permanent Exhibition
Nikhil Garde died suddenly of a heart attack in 2014 while water skiing at sea, a place he loved dearly. We have asked Elle-Mie Ejdrup Hansen – the Department Head of Industrial Design and Interactive Media when he graduated – to write about Nikhil and his project.
“In his work Nikhil was a humble, but at the same time uncompromising human being with a special knack for creating coherence between conceptual and elementary concepts. With his vast technical knowledge and craftsmanship Nikhil had the unique ability to combine his skills with an intuitive and empathic understanding and incorporate them all in the design process.
His graduation project Sea Shelter (2004) was in line with the thinking of the department and became groundbreaking – a full-scale prototype of a life raft, which embraced user participation and business collaboration. Nikhil also made a video documentary of a test with the prototype at Viking Life-Saving Equipment A/S’s large specially designed wave basin in Esbjerg.
With Nikhil’s practical and methodical approach as well as his experience as a yachtsman Sea Shelter was manufactured in close collaboration with Viking Life-Saving Equipment A/S. Sea Shelter is a life raft for passenger and commercial vessels. A unique feature is an improved easier access to get on board the raft in emergency situations, even under extreme weather conditions. It was a natural fit that Viking hired Nikhil after graduation, and he worked there for several years.
When the Department of Industrial Design and Interactive Media was approached by Paola Antonelli from MoMA, Museum of Modern Art in New York, to submit design projects for its first design exhibition, ‘Design Takes on Risk’ in 2005, it was an obvious choice to recommend Sea Shelter and Nikhil’s video documentary, which became part of the exhibition, together with 300 other objects from around the world.
I was thrilled to receive a photo from Nikhil in which he poses proudly next to the life raft – a unique and radically innovative design – at MoMA, in New York.
Sea Shelter and the video documentary are now included in MoMA’s permanent exhibition.
May he rest in peace”
