Vidyut Naidu

Vidyut Naidu is an established multi- disciplinary designer who comes with a broad knowledge base, having garnered design experience in a variety of fields before joining the RCA.Growing up in an environment where his major influences were creative in the form of his mother and grandmother, Vidyut naturally developed an affinity to all forms of creative practice. During his childhood, like most little boys, he had a particular fascination for all types of vehicles, which led to him drawing cars on any piece of paper he could find, even his schoolbooks. 

He began his journey as a designer while he was still in school, through a summer internship. That internship yielded a range of designs that made it to market and further pushed Vidyut into expanding his horizons through bike, industrial, strategy and vehicle design. 

Continually driven by a quest for knowledge and an urge to implement, Vidyut has utilised his experience in Industrial design and melded it with his passion for Automotive design to create meaningful and relevant pieces of work that address topics of growing importance.

My thesis project at the Royal College of Art is called ‘DVAITA’.Dvaita is an age old concept that comes from traditional Indian philosophy, it’s counterpart in thewestern world is Duality. However ‘Dvaita’ looks at achieving tranquility by looking at the synergy between the mind and the body I.e. Physical and Spiritual. The project has allowed me to use my background in Industrial Design and my current expertise in Transportation Design to develop a unique vehicle for a unique experience.

The application of such of a philosophy led me to researching adventure activities or thrill seeking activities that usually link the mind and the body through various biological processes. I further delved into researching the activities available on travel/leisure holidays that people with disabilities could access and zeroed in on the ones that had some format of mobility involved. 

What I discovered was that the vehicles used were not designed to include a wide range of people or disability, the vehicles had parts retro fitted in order to be included in these activities and most importantly the weren’t empowering enough for people to actually experience the link between physical and spiritual.

 After looking through a range of disability, I focused on Paraplegia as the focal point because it was perfect representation of people who have the will or the mindset but may not necessarily have the physical capability to follow it through. Furthermore this allows me to create a distinction point in the mobility/transportation sector about the importance of ‘inclusivity’ or ‘inclusive design’. A philosophy where you design for a specific focal group instead of designing for the norm.