Houzz Forum: The State of Sustainable Design in India
India's top architects reveal the truth about sustainability and their changing roles at Godrej L'Affaire
Godrej L’Affaire is a curated experiential luxury lifestyle platform, a one-day event held once a year. It is designed to bring together engagements with leaders from the field of design, art, fashion, and travel and food. In addition to talks and workshops, the event also showcases installations, performances and masterclasses.
Left to right: Panelists Preeti Singh, Asha Sairam, Swarup Dutta, Madhav Raman and Alan Abraham
Environmental thinkers Michael Braungart and William McDonough have famously said that human beings don’t have a pollution problem, they have a design problem. Do you agree?
Alan: Humans are the problem. We pollute because we exist. It is not a design problem. The moment we reproduce, we have polluted the planet anyway.
Madhav: It is a fundamental problem of what we, as human beings, think we can do with open spaces. There is a certain territoriality at question here at a very broad level. Design can help us aspire to more sustainable ways of living, and sensitise us to the fact that we are not on some planetary pyramid where we get to dictate our terms.
What does sustainability mean to you?
Asha: The word ‘sustainable design’ gets thrown around a lot. It should be about the sustenance of something that one has designed. One should be able to think about its whole life cycle – how it ages and how it dies. Whereas when we talk about responsible design, to me that term is slightly broader. I agree with Alan’s point earlier that it is humans that are the problem. By most studies, it is too late to do anything and just by design we can’t do much. We are already too many of us and we are making the wrong choices while we are living.
What do you consider sustainable practices in architecture? What is a sustainable project?
Alan: If you construct anything, it is wasteful. We should stop fooling ourselves that we are not cutting a quarry somewhere, taking a rock and killing some insects and other life in the process. When we are using materials, we are changing ecosystems. But within these constraints, too, the building should have a life cycle. If one builds something keeping the future in mind, by keeping things open-ended, allowing for certain transformations so that the building can extend over a long time, then that’s good design. It’s the intent and the materials that influence sustainability.
Environmental thinkers Michael Braungart and William McDonough have famously said that human beings don’t have a pollution problem, they have a design problem. Do you agree?
Alan: Humans are the problem. We pollute because we exist. It is not a design problem. The moment we reproduce, we have polluted the planet anyway.
Madhav: It is a fundamental problem of what we, as human beings, think we can do with open spaces. There is a certain territoriality at question here at a very broad level. Design can help us aspire to more sustainable ways of living, and sensitise us to the fact that we are not on some planetary pyramid where we get to dictate our terms.
What does sustainability mean to you?
Asha: The word ‘sustainable design’ gets thrown around a lot. It should be about the sustenance of something that one has designed. One should be able to think about its whole life cycle – how it ages and how it dies. Whereas when we talk about responsible design, to me that term is slightly broader. I agree with Alan’s point earlier that it is humans that are the problem. By most studies, it is too late to do anything and just by design we can’t do much. We are already too many of us and we are making the wrong choices while we are living.
What do you consider sustainable practices in architecture? What is a sustainable project?
Alan: If you construct anything, it is wasteful. We should stop fooling ourselves that we are not cutting a quarry somewhere, taking a rock and killing some insects and other life in the process. When we are using materials, we are changing ecosystems. But within these constraints, too, the building should have a life cycle. If one builds something keeping the future in mind, by keeping things open-ended, allowing for certain transformations so that the building can extend over a long time, then that’s good design. It’s the intent and the materials that influence sustainability.
In this Goa home designed by Abraham John Architects, roofs pitched at different angles pay homage to the monsoons and accentuate the staccato nature and fragmented aesthetic of the building. The interstitial roofs also harvest rainwater. Photo by Edmund Sumner
We have put a premium on sustainability. It costs money to build eco-sensitive structures. For sustainability to matter, it needs to be accessible to everybody. How does one deal with this inequity?
Madhav: We have missed the bus on sustainability. It has not necessarily been a problem that has emerged from a growing population like India, because our consumption footprint has been very small. We are in this situation essentially due to the transfer of a consumption pattern of an industrialised society that has landed up in our country after liberalisation. We are 1.3 billion people but 72 per cent of the population is in cities that are barely cities. And most of the big cities (like Mumbai) are actually informal, where all the consumption patterns are piped to you, such as water, piped sewage, piped TV, piped traffic. These largely service the formal city but a very small percentage of our urban population consumes like this.
Swarup: To your point, Madhav, about our footprint being small, we consume 40 per cent of the world’s electronics and we recycle only 2-3 per cent of that.
Madhav: Cell Phones are an excellent example. Doesn’t matter if you are the top 1 per cent of the income group or the bottom 40 per cent, everyone has this little piece of plastic. But the technology that goes into increasing the battery life or into using fewer of the metals that extract a huge carbon footprint is pitched to the higher income group. So, it’s the more cutting-edge technology that becomes the Tesla. There is something to be said about designers knowing how economics work globally and for policy makers to have design education while growing up.
We have put a premium on sustainability. It costs money to build eco-sensitive structures. For sustainability to matter, it needs to be accessible to everybody. How does one deal with this inequity?
Madhav: We have missed the bus on sustainability. It has not necessarily been a problem that has emerged from a growing population like India, because our consumption footprint has been very small. We are in this situation essentially due to the transfer of a consumption pattern of an industrialised society that has landed up in our country after liberalisation. We are 1.3 billion people but 72 per cent of the population is in cities that are barely cities. And most of the big cities (like Mumbai) are actually informal, where all the consumption patterns are piped to you, such as water, piped sewage, piped TV, piped traffic. These largely service the formal city but a very small percentage of our urban population consumes like this.
Swarup: To your point, Madhav, about our footprint being small, we consume 40 per cent of the world’s electronics and we recycle only 2-3 per cent of that.
Madhav: Cell Phones are an excellent example. Doesn’t matter if you are the top 1 per cent of the income group or the bottom 40 per cent, everyone has this little piece of plastic. But the technology that goes into increasing the battery life or into using fewer of the metals that extract a huge carbon footprint is pitched to the higher income group. So, it’s the more cutting-edge technology that becomes the Tesla. There is something to be said about designers knowing how economics work globally and for policy makers to have design education while growing up.
Where are we in terms of awareness towards design?
Swarup: I don’t think we even have awareness towards our immediate environment, let alone design awareness. It’s just not hard-wired into us.
Isn’t it a two-way street, though? There are countries which have been successful in changing behavioural patterns because of sensible policies.
Madhav: I think education is key. Design students are not trained to look at the world beyond a very limited, two-dimensional view of aesthetics. They don’t see the depth of design as a form of consumption retardation or reuse of materials. Typically, an architecture course barely gives you any information about types of materials. You are more and more dependent on what the market will make available to you rather than thinking long and hard about materials use.
Asha: Change is happening from both ends. Last year we worked on Krushi Bhawan for the Department of Agriculture in Bhubaneswar. This was our first project with the government. We proposed a radical design where 60 per cent of the building was not air-conditioned. Making large buildings with glass walls and pumping them with air conditioning is not something that is contextually Indian. We suggested that only office spaces be air-conditioned and not open and public spaces. The entire ground floor of the building has been left open.
Also, in India, strangely government buildings are not seen as inclusive buildings; they are not seen as spaces for people. We sort of changed that, as well. The idea was that since the building was for the Ministry for Agriculture, we could get farmer communities from across the state to come over, do workshops and upscale themselves.
It was incredible because the government bodies we were dealing with were very encouraging of the idea. They really championed it.
On the other side is Amazon that has said that they would get rid of plastic by the end of 2020 in India. That is a huge thing. Amazon may not be a design company but they are aggregators of products of so many brands, so many producers. By their proclamation, they are forcing all these vendors selling through their portal to change their packaging and their processes.
Swarup: I don’t think we even have awareness towards our immediate environment, let alone design awareness. It’s just not hard-wired into us.
Isn’t it a two-way street, though? There are countries which have been successful in changing behavioural patterns because of sensible policies.
Madhav: I think education is key. Design students are not trained to look at the world beyond a very limited, two-dimensional view of aesthetics. They don’t see the depth of design as a form of consumption retardation or reuse of materials. Typically, an architecture course barely gives you any information about types of materials. You are more and more dependent on what the market will make available to you rather than thinking long and hard about materials use.
Asha: Change is happening from both ends. Last year we worked on Krushi Bhawan for the Department of Agriculture in Bhubaneswar. This was our first project with the government. We proposed a radical design where 60 per cent of the building was not air-conditioned. Making large buildings with glass walls and pumping them with air conditioning is not something that is contextually Indian. We suggested that only office spaces be air-conditioned and not open and public spaces. The entire ground floor of the building has been left open.
Also, in India, strangely government buildings are not seen as inclusive buildings; they are not seen as spaces for people. We sort of changed that, as well. The idea was that since the building was for the Ministry for Agriculture, we could get farmer communities from across the state to come over, do workshops and upscale themselves.
It was incredible because the government bodies we were dealing with were very encouraging of the idea. They really championed it.
On the other side is Amazon that has said that they would get rid of plastic by the end of 2020 in India. That is a huge thing. Amazon may not be a design company but they are aggregators of products of so many brands, so many producers. By their proclamation, they are forcing all these vendors selling through their portal to change their packaging and their processes.
Artist’s Anita Dube’s home studio in NCR by Anagram Architects. Swivelling panels allow for fluid interaction between the interior and exterior spaces. Photo by Suryan/Dang
Madhav: We get a lot of requests for pools in large second homes. The tech exists to let the cooler water from the pool transfer heat from the rest of the house, as a part of the cooling system. The choice is ours to convince our clients to make this decision; it is no different than convincing them of the best stone to use. If there is cutting-edge tech, it is possible for designers today to intervene and drive the narrative and to create an aspiration and help change behaviour patterns.
Swarup: I think a critical mass needs to be achieved because there is only so much that designers can do. If it catches the imagination, then it will work. In Kolkata, 70 per cent of the architecture is old. Most people don’t know how to restore the structures. It’s more expensive than using concrete, so how do you restore them?
We are trying to figure out other models of restoration. Perhaps it might take a building longer to breakeven but then you are retaining what you want to retain … in that sense, it is sustainable.
We did the restoration of a Calcutta Bungalow. After its completion, we invited the neighbourhood to experience and see it, because they are all living in houses similar to that building. We shared our resources and information from the project, hoping that it would inspire them to do the same. It’s important for us to capture the consumer’s imagination
In view of what you all said about the scope of sustainability – what are your thoughts on biomimicry in design? Should buildings now repair and regenerate rather than only neutralise?
Madhav: There is a technologists’ view to biomimicry, where you look at technological systems, like can we technologize how a plant creates its food through solar power and so forth … that’s not a space a designer can operate in with a lot of freedom.
The design route into this is philosophical. The biomimicry that designers need to adopt is to accept human beings are a part of the planetary system.
It starts with being empathetic to what you are designing, with your client, with the context of what and where you are building, and eventually keep enlarging the scope of this empathy. It starts with being empathetic to the people; then you start thinking about how people live together as cities, societies, villages.
Madhav: We get a lot of requests for pools in large second homes. The tech exists to let the cooler water from the pool transfer heat from the rest of the house, as a part of the cooling system. The choice is ours to convince our clients to make this decision; it is no different than convincing them of the best stone to use. If there is cutting-edge tech, it is possible for designers today to intervene and drive the narrative and to create an aspiration and help change behaviour patterns.
Swarup: I think a critical mass needs to be achieved because there is only so much that designers can do. If it catches the imagination, then it will work. In Kolkata, 70 per cent of the architecture is old. Most people don’t know how to restore the structures. It’s more expensive than using concrete, so how do you restore them?
We are trying to figure out other models of restoration. Perhaps it might take a building longer to breakeven but then you are retaining what you want to retain … in that sense, it is sustainable.
We did the restoration of a Calcutta Bungalow. After its completion, we invited the neighbourhood to experience and see it, because they are all living in houses similar to that building. We shared our resources and information from the project, hoping that it would inspire them to do the same. It’s important for us to capture the consumer’s imagination
In view of what you all said about the scope of sustainability – what are your thoughts on biomimicry in design? Should buildings now repair and regenerate rather than only neutralise?
Madhav: There is a technologists’ view to biomimicry, where you look at technological systems, like can we technologize how a plant creates its food through solar power and so forth … that’s not a space a designer can operate in with a lot of freedom.
The design route into this is philosophical. The biomimicry that designers need to adopt is to accept human beings are a part of the planetary system.
It starts with being empathetic to what you are designing, with your client, with the context of what and where you are building, and eventually keep enlarging the scope of this empathy. It starts with being empathetic to the people; then you start thinking about how people live together as cities, societies, villages.
By means of thermal mass of the laterite walls, open northern facades & open internal courtyards, the Goa house is designed by Abraham John Architects to be environmentally responsive to its site. Photo by Edmund Sumner
How has the role of designers and architects changed?
Alan: We need to be educators as well as designers. We end up educating clients and the government.
Madhav: As designers, we need to figure out how to disaggregate our design practices. How do we ensure that our services and our products and our ‘aspirational building ideas’ can divert consumption patterns so that they don’t go down the same traditional globalised way? Another thing architects and designers aren’t talking about is climate change and climate calamities. When we build a building for 100 years, we are not realising that because of a calamity we would have to build again. So, the question now is: can we design for resilience?
For a designer to operate successfully, the designer must have a sense of all these worlds. She must not only understand materials but also their politics. The advantage we have in India is that we have the most diverse landscapes for these types of thoughts – this is very rich ground for designers to step in. So, I am hopeful that we actually have the potential to be more disruptive than the technologists because we are not specialists. We have our fingers in all the pies.
Swarup: We are in a renaissance-like space where the boundaries between art, technology and science are again merging; and increasingly, these are areas that a designer needs to get involved in.
Asha: We need to look at the whole ecosystem. And though the act of building is damaging, we are building, and we still will build. What we can do is build more responsibly. We can make design respond to the biology of the site and bring empathy towards those we are designing for. Increasingly, people are more and more nomadic; they don’t necessarily stay where they grow up in.
One of things we have been exploring is the possibility of a house that can be dismantled and can move with the homeowner. It’s a prototype, an idea we are experimenting with that can be used for smaller individual dwellings or larger buildings for quick construction. Tomorrow, when you don’t need it, it can be dismantled and it doesn’t impact its site as much.
Madhav: This is a key thing that designers can and are beginning to do, which is non-project-based research. This will end up disrupting and will allow design to bring change.
Tell us: What are your views on sustainable design? Share in comments below.
How has the role of designers and architects changed?
Alan: We need to be educators as well as designers. We end up educating clients and the government.
Madhav: As designers, we need to figure out how to disaggregate our design practices. How do we ensure that our services and our products and our ‘aspirational building ideas’ can divert consumption patterns so that they don’t go down the same traditional globalised way? Another thing architects and designers aren’t talking about is climate change and climate calamities. When we build a building for 100 years, we are not realising that because of a calamity we would have to build again. So, the question now is: can we design for resilience?
For a designer to operate successfully, the designer must have a sense of all these worlds. She must not only understand materials but also their politics. The advantage we have in India is that we have the most diverse landscapes for these types of thoughts – this is very rich ground for designers to step in. So, I am hopeful that we actually have the potential to be more disruptive than the technologists because we are not specialists. We have our fingers in all the pies.
Swarup: We are in a renaissance-like space where the boundaries between art, technology and science are again merging; and increasingly, these are areas that a designer needs to get involved in.
Asha: We need to look at the whole ecosystem. And though the act of building is damaging, we are building, and we still will build. What we can do is build more responsibly. We can make design respond to the biology of the site and bring empathy towards those we are designing for. Increasingly, people are more and more nomadic; they don’t necessarily stay where they grow up in.
One of things we have been exploring is the possibility of a house that can be dismantled and can move with the homeowner. It’s a prototype, an idea we are experimenting with that can be used for smaller individual dwellings or larger buildings for quick construction. Tomorrow, when you don’t need it, it can be dismantled and it doesn’t impact its site as much.
Madhav: This is a key thing that designers can and are beginning to do, which is non-project-based research. This will end up disrupting and will allow design to bring change.
Tell us: What are your views on sustainable design? Share in comments below.