You Must have Respect for Nature: Architect

Can sustainable architecture make a big contribution towards reducing global warming? How can this be done?
Since building-related emissions contribute to a significant proportion of the total emissions of this sector (up to 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions, depending on how you count the direct and indirect demand of the sector), this obviously makes some contribution towards reducing global warming. However, the building industry today is a part of a complex web of activities that we call industrialisation – of which the most striking lifestyle choices that contribute to global warming are: undifferentiated consumption, dependence on the personal car, industrialisation of agriculture, and addiction to air-conditioning – all of which have to transform for humans to evolve into a viable post-industrial world. In the field of global environment, even if you pick up one part, the entire web comes away in your hand. So, the change will only happen integrally – it will not be piecemeal. The way sustainable architecture can contribute is to make buildings more efficient in their use of resources, substitute non-renewable resources with renewable ones, and reduce the demand for services through supporting an alternative lifestyle of sufficiency.

How ecologically sustainable are your buildings? How have these been rated?
I have always tried to design buildings (or other products and processes) with what I considered were my personal values of thrift, respect for nature, participation of the user, and energy efficiency. With this background, I guess I am considered one of the leading practitioners of what has now been labelled green architecture. By the way, none of my buildings so far have been rated, unless you count the platinum rating given to one of our housing complexes in Bangalore, the first to be so rated. But it was after completion and sought by the rating agency and later the promoter without my support.

Another building, a manufacturing unit in the National Capital Region, is being rated and will be our first consciously rated building (aiming for LEED Platinum).

How do you work on designs/ plans for a green building?
The process is not too different from what a mainstream architect does, except that the design values informing the choices are different. In a day-to-day sense, the work consists of conceiving the idea, which is an undefined process with a mix of judgement and experience thrown in, followed by the relatively mundane processes of drawing and modelling, checking and analysing, collaborating with engineers of many disciplines, specifying, costing, repeating the steps required for optimising (value engineering), and then supervising the design so that it is implemented as per the intent of the conception.

Architecture, especially green architecture, in practice is like film production (though the outcomes of both processes are vastly different) – multi-disciplinary, creative, participatory, technically complex, value- and goal-driven. You could say that an architect like me who heads a team is the equivalent of a film director. 

Who will hire a ‘green’ architect?
In a few decades, everyone! Today, promoters like to have a ‘green’ project when the tenants demand it, while owners often want a green building for themselves simply as a lifestyle choice.

Has there been an increase in interest/queries in green design?
Tremendously! Unfor-tunately, no one (not even architects) fully understands what the new directions to our current modes of building are.