Courtesy : northernarchitecture.us

Sustainable architecture an ancient Indian tradition

Last Updated on Fri, 07 Jan 2022 | Indian Architecture

Ancient Indian spiritual thought integrates humans with the cosmos presenting an understanding that the processes of the cosmos are directly related to human existence. With this understanding, ancient Indian civilisation has always respected its environment. Typical principles include climate-responsive design, use of local materials, use of sustainable materials, water harvesting and others. Climate-responsive architectural design is especially sophisticated with thousands of years of refinement. Unfortunately, this knowledge seems to have lost its significance in the last 50 years or so.

Today, however, a number of architects are combining traditional methods and principles of sustainable design with modern methods and principles. One example of such a combination is Karan Grover’s CII Sohrabji Godrej Sustainable Business Center (CII-Godrej SBC) at Hyderabad. The building combines traditional Indian design principles of sustainable architecture with the International Sustainable Building Council’s (ISBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED version 2) framework. A number of traditional Indian principles of sustainable design already are included in the LEED framework like the use of local and sustainable materials and water harvesting. Other traditional principles used by Grover include the use of wind towers for catching wind, tunneling it through its shaft, thus cooling and treating it (artificially, in the case of the CII-Godrej SBC) before circulating it in habitable spaces.

The design around a courtyard is another traditional climate-responsive feature. The courtyard helps in reducing the use of artificial lighting, creates shade due to the building mass and facilitates stack ventilation.6 It is CII-Godrej SBC’s objective to collaborate with the ISBC to modify the LEED framework with Indian knowledge input so that it may be applied to Indian conditions. Also, it is CII-Godrej SBC’s objective to propagate the revised LEED framework within India and Asia in an effort to make the CII-Godrej SBC’s initiative the centre of Asian green building activity7. With such intentions, sustainable building design is being institutionalised in modern architecture of India today. Obviously, the future of modern Indian architecture is likely to be green in design.

Conclusion Due to their spiritual and cultural grounding, millennia-old architectural principles continue today and will continue well into the future. I have identified plurality of architectural design, socio-cultural determinants and sustainable design as significant features of the past, the present and the future of Indian architecture. The pluralistic nature of contemporary Indian architecture makes it an exciting field for future explorations and innovations. Socio-cultural determinants are “Indianising” modern and universalised architecture, thus helping a modern Indian architectural identity evolve. India is bound to become the centre of modern sustainable architecture in Asia.

I find all three features very encouraging for the future of Indian architecture. Klaus-Peter Gast’s book must be read with this background in mind, as it aims to capture these and other features of contemporary Indian architecture. Gast’s collection of projects is representative of today’s and tomorrow’s Indian architectural directions, which are unique in that India’s past is a living reality that, most likely, will also shape the future of India’s architecture. Klaus-Peter Gast’s book will benefit anybody interested in the contemporary architecture of India.

1 Khosla, Romi. The loneliness of a Long Distant Future: Dilemmas of Contemporary Architecture. New Delhi: Tulika, 2002.

2 Hinduism came to be identified as a religion only after the faith of Islam came into India in the 8th century AD. See Singh, Jaswant. A Call to Honour: in Service of Emergent India. New Delhi: Rupa & Co. 2006, p. 82.

3 Rapoport, Amos. House Form and Culture. NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969.

4 Lang, Jon, Desai, Madhavi, Desai, Miki. Architecture and independence: The Search for identity – India 1880 to 1980. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997.

5 I use Amos Rapoport’s understanding of the term “folk architecture”, which alludes to architecture of the common people. See Rapoport, Amos. House Form and Culture. NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969. p.2.

6 Jadhav, Rajratna. www.architectureweek.com/2004/0922/environment_1-1.html

7 www.greenbusinesscentre.org/grn/events/

At midnight on 14 August 1947, India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru proclaimed “the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.”1 India had gained her independence after over 200 years of British rule. Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi’s compassionately non-violent struggle against repression and occupation of a once free nation had been a triumphant success. Since the 16th century, at the time of the Muslim conqueror Akbar, the people of the sub-continent had been tolerant and ready to communicate, able to live together, vigorously active and ready to exchange ideas. From time immemorial, pluralism and the acceptance of many different ways of thinking had been part of a country that called itself Bharat and later Hindustan, derived from the river Indus. This part of the world had had to tolerate conquest not just since the time of Akbar, but even since the days of Alexander the Great, but it usually responded with astonishing calm and lack of violence. India always absorbed new things that came upon her unbidden, and used them for her own ends. Things alien became Indian and part of the national heritage. This is where Indian globalisation began, earlier than in any other country, without Indians ever having passed beyond their own borders: India was anti-imperial and never waged expansionist wars. And so it remains to be asked whether these extraordinary qualities have survived over 200 years of occupation and whether Nehru’s emphatic proclamation has become reality 60 years later. The “largest democracy in the world” that is now establishing itself adopted a socialist system modelled upon the Soviet Union, an ideal of justice ac cording to Nehru, with a central command economy based on five year plans. As Gandhi had been assassinated just six months after independence, he was no longer able to introduce his idea of an India of villages, largely self-governed and with small industries. Nehru implemented his ideas uncompromisingly, and relations with the Soviet Union reached their high point. His policies were followed in principle by his daughter Indira Gandhi and later by her son Rajiv Gandhi. The Nehru doctrine was not abandoned until 1992, when a new economic policy was introduced by the then prime minister and former finance minister Manmohan Singh, under prime minister Narasimha Rao. The gateway to the world was opened, the end for self-sufficient economic policies in this mysterious land beyond the Himalayas, then still almost unknown to the rest of the world. When India opened herself up to the global market, this was the second crucial turning-point for the country in the 20th century: individuals regained their old freedom in private and commercial life, and a gigantic, hitherto untapped pool of intelligence has since been able to develop freely and use its creative energy. This laid the foundations for an explosive economic miracle in the last 15 years. Ultra-rapid technological progress started in co-operation with international firms, with foreign concerns suddenly setting new standards. But critical voices were raised as well: could and should India, after having been anchored culturally for millennia, expose herself to influences of this kind? Should the materialistically driven Western world of thought and action become the new standard for an India based on spiritual values? Here, too, a

: New Delhi, government buildings

degree of calm set in, as each individual’s standard of living was and is growing. India will always be in a position in her history to use the new for her own ends, without abandoning her values.

But the desire for global markets led, as in many other countries, to protests against globalisation and the multinationals’ expansion of power. This represents an opportunity for a novice to make a very conscious move against this danger of uncontrollable power, offering a personal contribution to a more balanced approach. However, a not inconsiderable social asymmetry has to be set against the large growth rates of 8% at the time of writing and 7% predicted until the year 2025.2 The caste system, the degenerated hierarchical social structure according to birth, is only one aspect of this, generally there is a lack of willingness to accept anyone in a different social position. A democratic balance operates in politics, but India’s social and economic life is rife with imbalance. So a demand must be made for more practical and less theoretical democracy, like for example the realisation of the right to education and employment for all. Women are still the key here: over 60% of them have never attended school. Also, the political response has produced a contrary reaction: the controversial quota regulation for the “scheduled castes”, which is intended to help the so-called untouchable caste to a greater legal share of places in education, has led to new social injustices. Rural areas contrast starkly with the big cities in educational matters, and contradict the realities of economic power. Furthermore, the legal system inherited from the British, like the whole bureaucratic system, is an extremely cumbersome piece of machinery, making law and justice unjust and time-consuming: a criminal offence can take about ten years to be dealt with.

The caste system in particular is a spiritual paradox regardless of religion, as everyone is equal before God. This has always been proclaimed in tolerant Hinduism, which is not a religion, but a way of life, as demonstrated for example around 1900 by the monk Swami Vivekananda, who was particularly open to Western countries. About 80% of the Indian population are followers of Hinduism, but they are by no means a homogeneous, strictly disciplined religious community, like for example Islam. In fact it is a multicultural world faith community, of a complexity that is not so easy to grasp, ranging from atheism via the majority of believers to the orthodox-nationalistic Hindutva. While the open-minded, probably the majority of Hindus, are favourably inclined towards the innovation of contemporary Indian society, the orthodox believers, who live according to the strictest rules and traditions, range from sceptical to disapproving. What they all have in common is their reliance on the “primal knowledge” of the Veda, a philosophical moral compendium explaining the cosmos and the world. It has been interpreted in countless ways and was developed many ages ago.

A whole range of religious or even ethnic sub-groups, including Muslims and Christians, live in this land of 250 languages, whose population has just passed the billion mark. With a growth rate of 13 million people per year, it is understandable that diseases which have been eradicated elsewhere like polio, typhoid or malaria are here not so easy to get under control. With a population of this size and so many different groups of people, disintegration could be in the air. But when what was officially the first Indian atomic bomb exploded in the north-western desert area in 1998, this had to be interpreted as part of a national, all-unifying self-confidence. One of the men involved in developing the bomb, the high-ranking scientist Dr. Abdul Kalam, was then elected president of the country. National awareness unites the many different Indians, so the disintegration that was widely predicted after independence, the “balkanisation” of India, never started to come about. The nation stands together today, and Nehru would certainly have acknowledged this with particular pride.

The following part is devoted to the achievements of Modernist architecture in India, as part of the country’s great service to culture, performed especially by the philosopher Vivekananda (d. 1902), the poet and Nobel laureate Rabind-ranath Tagore (d. 1941) and the director Satyajit Ray (d. 1992), among others, with all the impact they made on the 20th century. Then selected examples will introduce the most