By LILIANA GIL, 2/22/2016. Ice white, glass windowed, with simple lines and square round corners. It could be just another high-tech gadget, but it’s a clay fridge. An affordable, durable, clay fridge that keeps water fresh, as well as perishables, without using electricity. Commercialized in India since the mid-2000s, the Mitticool was the result of ingenious make-do design. Many other devices have recently been developed in the spirit of practices like jugaad – a colloquial Hindi term for quick fixes and improvised solutions with whatever is at hand – in the belief that these frugal and flexible inventions have the potential to respond to the toxic exhaustion of our current modes of production and consumption. As waste accumulates, and the world turns poorer and more unequal, and climate and finance reveal themselves as less predictable than we once believed, notions of sustainability, resilience, and improvisation gain an urgent appeal. Could it be that these modest, localized practices hold keys to titanic, global challenges?
