Before design became a calling card for Ahmedabad, the city had already spent decades experimenting. It started with mills, craftspeople, ambitious patrons and a city that was willing to try something new. Over the decades, textiles, architecture, craft and education came together, from its industrial boom to NID and CEPT, with names such as Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn leaving their mark along the way. Today, that legacy still shapes how Ahmedabad designs.

In 3 Idiots, Aamir Khan’s Rancho became shorthand for a student who questioned convention. Ahmedabad had its own “Rancho” long before the film. Ranchhodlal Chhotalal set up the city’s first textile mill in 1859, at a time when Gujarat was still part of the Bombay Presidency. The mill helped establish a culture of making.

By 1960, when Gujarat became a separate state, Ahmedabad had roughly 60 textile mills. The city became known as the ‘Manchester of India’. The 1950s to the 1970s marked what architect BV Doshi called Ahmedabad’s ‘Golden Age’, fuelled by textile wealth, self-reliance, community and philanthropy.

In the 1950s, American designers Charles and Ray Eames travelled across India to study its crafts. Their findings became The India Report, published in 1958. One of its central recommendations was the creation of a design institute. That vision became the National Institute of Design in 1961. NID went on to cultivate generations of designers across textiles, products, fashion and branding. Designers such as Neeru Kumar, Meera Mehta, Sujata Keshavan, Nipa Doshi, Rahul Mishra and Aneeth Arora are among those associated with its legacy.

In 1962, Ahmedabad Education Society established the School of Architecture, which became CEPT University. Its approach placed architecture, planning, technology and design within a broader understanding of the city and its surroundings. Together, NID and CEPT helped create generations of designers and architects who stayed connected to materials, craft, industry and local contexts.

That is perhaps what sets Ahmedabad’s design identity apart. Its foundations were already in place before design city became a fashionable label. Textile mills supplied the industrial base, craftspeople supplied knowledge, philanthropists supported institutions, and design schools brought new ways of working.