[4] In 2011, Vyas was awarded the Sir Misha Black Medal, given to individuals across the globe who have made a significant contribution to design education.

[5] The Sarabhais were instrumental in helping NID to form a structure of its own in its early years by inviting a number of foreign designers, architects and artists to India.

In the 1950s, Gautam, Gira and Gita Sarabhai were learning from, collaborating and organising educational exchanges with designers like Frei Otto, Adrian Frutiger, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, the Eameses, and Louis Kahn amongst many others, at NID.

[6] In the 1970s, Lowell Cross, a close collaborator of Tudor and Cage, worked at NID as a professor and technical advisor for electronic music.

Along with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, NID hosted the ‘Design for Development’ congress in 2016, following a series of working party discussions and initiatives led by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

Initially operational out of the Calico Mills complex loaned from the Sarabhai family, it moved to the Sanskar Kendra, a building designed by Le Corbusier.

Eventually Seth Chinubhai Chimanlal offered a vast expanse of land for the NID campus for a token fee of one Indian rupee.

Gautam and Gira Sarabhai worked on the building plan for NID in consultation with various architects, engineers and designers.

It was meant to be a modern experiment and its underlying philosophy was that the problems of architecture, structural design and construction techniques should be resolved integrally.

Double glazing between the studios and the workshops enabled students to observe the proceedings on the production floors without being disturbed by machines.