Building Green: Environmental Architects and the Struggle for Sustainability in Mumbai

by Anne Rademacher

spectacle of historical architectural styles prompted rich conversation. Students

  and faculty noted certain attributes for their aesthetic qualities and commented on the extent to which certain building features promoted thermal comfort, natural

  lighting, practical uses of regional materials, and other aspects of good design.

  Though interpretive plaques marked each building as indicative of an his-

  torical place and identity group, there were no references to the social hierarchy and power relations that would have produced vernacular spaces in any specific

  moment in history. Offering no context for a given building’s historical maker or

  dweller, to say nothing of their social positionality, had the effect of bundling all of the structures together as a set of political y neutral, regional y representative examples of good design, each at risk of becoming, or already, lost or unfamiliar

  forms in the postcolonial modern present. The buildings were meticulously con-

  structed and presented as both exhibits and as forms to be traversed, explored, and experienced. Moving between clusters of students, I was drawn into conversations

  about the aesthetic contrast between the vernacular homes and the contemporary,

  modern building forms we had just left behind in Chennai.

  With Dakshinachitra the first stop on the tour, we began by physical y moving

  through a curated cluster of regional vernacular forms that stood for a certain

  dimension of the regional past, seeking in them good design techniques for the

  present. At the same time, we were locating forms and ideas through which to

  trace the regional origins of “Indian” sustainability.

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  The student reflection noted earlier went on to observe:

  Dakshinachitra, which is a craft centre and exhibition space all rolled in one, was a fabulous campus. . . . Stopping here, I felt that our workshop on “Sustainable Habitats” had already commenced because these homes were prototypes of the kind of life that was till we became industrialised and consumerist. 11

  A historical sentimentality thus joined with the aesthetics of the forms, leaving

  questions about the selectivity, stylization, or power relations embedded in those same forms of little expressed interest to most students. The point, it seemed, was not to critique their historical context, but rather to seek in the forms a set of qualities that could be regarded as enduring, and therefore timeless; here was a first hint of attributing a social y neutralizing power to this particular idea of sustainability.

  Rao (2013) reminds us that such a quest to recover “harmonious” architec-

  tural technique from a vernacular past almost erased in the industrial present is

  not new. For him, it is a 1939 essay that epitomizes this for the case of Mumbai.

  Titled “Traditional Domestic Architecture of Bombay,” Rao writes that the author,

  Janardan Shastri, “appeared to sense that something harmonious was being irre-

  vocably destroyed by planned, regulated building of the sort undertaken by certi-

  fied professional architects. ”12 The essay gives a historical account of Bombay and relates different social groups to different types of dwellings. In it,

  He selected houses he considered “typical” of some of the older neighborhoods of

  the city, such as the Fort, Kalbadevi, Girgaum, Parel, and Mahim. The mediating link between the people and their dwellings was, for Shastri, religion or dharma. Hindu life was so saturated with the notion of dharma, a concept that cannot be abstracted into a category like “religion,” that it also suffused the Hindu dwelling. 13

  This in turn created, according to Shastri, aesthetic continuity. The coming of

  the Portuguese, and eventual y the British, brought changes that Shastri uses to

  explain the break that ensued; there is deep nostalgia in this piece “for a time when buildings were authentical y Indian. ”14 A major force in the disruption of an imagined precolonial harmony is the hybridized figure of the builder, contractor, and

  developer: “In the absence of an overarching Hindu cosmology, redemption from

  the godless, profit-seeking purgatory that is the modern city is only offered in the synthetic vision of the architect. ”15

  Another series in which Rao takes interest appears in the Journal of the Indian Institute of Architects called “Lesser Architecture of Bombay.” These pieces, which appeared in the 1930s, “represented an acknowledgment of the widening understanding of what constituted architecture in the Indian context. “Most impor-

  tantly,” he argues, “this series adumbrates a compromise between “traditional” and

  “modern” dwellings.” 16

  It is useful here to underscore the malleability of terms like “vernacular” and

  “traditional,” particularly in the instances of environmental learning that took

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  Consciousness and Indian-ness 115

  place on RSIEA field visits. Tamara Sears (2001) provides a useful distinction

  between these terms when she cal s vernacular “something that grows out of lived

  experience, that is embedded in the social, cultural, and environmental conditions in which people conduct daily activities, and is therefore intuitive to the people who produce it. ”17 Vernacular architecture, then, can signal the “informal, usual y domestic architecture that is rooted in local tradition and is general y produced

  by craftsmen with little or no formal academic training.” 18 Sears distinguishes this from “tradition” as “a larger category, encompassing a variety of assimilated phe-nomena, of which “vernacular” becomes one part. ”19 Distinguished in this way, we notice that the vernacular is dynamic, so moments when it is “fixed” in time and

  reproduced as valuable, such as in the structures we toured at Dakshinachitra—

  and the specific contents, materials, styles, and forms that were implicated as a

  result—are important for understanding the construction of “Indian-ness” that

  informed the RSIEA concept of good design. Sears continues:

  In the discourse of colonialism, vernacular was seen as something inherently indigenous, pre-modern, and uninformed by the concept of civilized society emerging

  from the enlightenment. In more recent times, vernacular and traditional architec-

  ture has become a glorified notion, and, as Miki Desai noted, an aristocratic folk paradigm often emerges when scholars and practitioners talk about tradition. The

  authenticity of the vernacular is often praised, and educated scholars, preservation-ists and other elites often seek to save what they see as a tradition going extinct in the face of the onslaught of rapid changes brought on by modernity.20

  Clear tensions emerge here, as the agenda at Dakshinachitra was to learn good

  design techniques from a historical vernacular: as we noted points of evidence of

  good design, the puzzle was whether and how we might import those elements

  from the past to the present was quite obvious, as was the impossibility of making so many of those same forms relevant in the population-dense urban context of

  Mumbai itself. Perhaps in this way, our visit to Dakshinachitra was less an encounter with the vernacular for its demonstration of “ assimilation, change and hybridity (as) ongoing processes,” and more of a gesture of “sifting through (the vernacular) to find the truly pure. ”21 At least, it seemed, the truly “good” in good design.

  • • •

  After a few hours touring Dakshinachitra, the group returned to our bus and

  journeyed further to the coastal town of Mahabalipuram. A significant seaport as

  early as the first century, Mahabalipuram is historical y associated with the Pal ava Dynasty and is comprised of dozens of carved rock structures that remain essential y
intact. These include magnificent rock-cut temples, sculptures and reliefs.

  The site was a remarkable spectacle of resilient built forms, made even more

  powerful by the harsh coastal setting. A coastal location may signal automatic

  vulnerability in an era of climate change, but Mahabalipuram seemed to embody

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  resilience—its structures still standing, and remarkably intact, after centuries of coastal weather and change.

  Our group traversed this site with a palpable air of reverence. In contrast to

  Dakshinachitra, this was a cluster of built forms that needed no reconstruction or re-enactment. These forms, a RSIEA faculty member reminded the group, were

  widely considered to mark the material beginnings of Dravidian architecture;

  before us were strking shrines to Shiva, Vishnu, and other Hindu deities that had

  withstood centuries in a harsh coastal climate. Nearly all of the RSIEA students

  spoke of learning of Mahabalipuram in their school textbooks, and many had

  visited the site in past field trips. This place had iconic, national identity-making power far broader than our good design mission, but in this context it stood as

  evidence that good design could be traced to deeply histories.

  As I walked among faculty, one noted that the diversity of forms at Mahbalipuram

  indicated that the area was also a center for teaching, joking that we should see it as a kind of analogue to RSIEA. “Their carving skil s are our environmental architecture skil s,” she said. The point was not lost in the laughter; we were students on what may have been a site of ancient learning, seeing before us a striking example of efficient, undeniably resilient use of local materials. As we boarded the bus,

  Dr. Joshi joked with a student, saying, “See again! Sustainability is just ancient common sense!”

  I note again that no mention was made of how this site was invoked, or why, in

  other teaching contexts, to say nothing of critiquing its use in constructing nar-

  ratives of Indian national identity. Our collective purpose seemed focused on the

  structures and their resilience, not the social or political dimensions of the past they emerged in or the present that glorified them. To do so, after al , risked attach-ing this place to certain social identities or foregrounding power relations that, in the good design sociality of RSIEA, found no explicit place or endorsement.

  If each site simply il uminated some dimension of a multi-dimensional notion of

  Indian-ness, then each could provide welcome and potential y useful guidance in

  service of good design.

  We boarded the bus yet again to complete the journey to the place that so many

  students were eager to experience, Auroville. Through many hours on the bus, a

  Tamil film, sing-alongs, and constant laughter consumed our attention. A light,

  almost celebratory air of excitement combined with the freedom of the journey

  far from home and the hours passed quickly. By the time we reached Auroville,

  the sun had long since set, and a deep darkness veiled our surroundings. Tired, we poured out of the bus, and into large, shared dormitory spaces in a ferro-cement

  building called Mitra. We set down our bedrol s, and soon fell asleep.

  At the light of sunrise, we gathered around the two massive teakettles that had

  appeared on the landing. Within half an hour we climbed back on the bus, only

  to arrive just a short drive later at Auroville’s Center for Scientific Research. As we disembarked, it was clear that our training at Auroville would begin here. We

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  Consciousness and Indian-ness 117

  marched up its stairs, and into formation for the women to receive jasmine hair

  garlands, for all of us to pick up our information packets.

  Midway through the week’s itinerary was a group trip to the Matrimundir, the

  city’s iconic spiritual center, and in many ways its distinguishing global symbol.

  The mundir’s unmistakable spherical form, plated in gold and fused with glass,

  underscores the influence of Sri Aurobindo’s religious philosophy on the city and

  its making; the unique design also makes clear that the “city the earth needs” traces its basis to a specific spiritual practice that has historical y guided its approach to urban design.

  The presence of the mundir on our Toward Sustainable Habitats itinerary

  suggested that this religious center also had techniques and concepts of good

  design to impart. Formal lectures would later refer to the Matrimundir as a

  symbol of “perfect human consciousness emergent from the earth, or from

  the old, unsustainable human consciousness. ”22 This would be the conceptual frame through which Auroville’s instructors would narrate the city’s built forms

  throughout the week.

  As we settled in our classroom seats, our primary instructor introduced himself

  by his first name, Tency. His accented English suggested Austrian or German ori-

  gin, and the ashen hair swept over his neck invoked a kind of bohemian aesthetic.

  His voice was gentle but austere as he delivered his first lecture. It felt somewhat disjointed, then, when Tency invited us to begin our week of studying “sustainable habitats” by discussing our personal passions. My field notes from this first session read,

  (Tency) distributes name tags and asks that we identify our personal passion as he hands us our tag. My name is read first, and I find myself anxiously blurting that my passion is teaching and learning. I am immediately struck by how utterly different Tency’s pedagogical style is from the classrooms back at the RSIEA, and I wonder

  how these architect/students will respond to his style . . . After we each somewhat uncomfortably state our passion, Tency begins a puzzling presentation. It features a slide of the Rosetta stone, slides showing other examples of carved stone tablets, and it seems to be general y about writing systems. I try to discern a clear pedagogical message, but I can’t. Tency concludes this section by telling us that each day we’ll begin with a short “passion presentation,” and then we will listen to some music. He then plays that day’s music, a video of a French fusion musician flanked by Hindu-stani classical musicians. The musician strums his guitar in combination with a tabla and sitar player.

  As the music ended, Tency shared a series of images. A first slide read, “THE CITY

  THE EARTH NEEDS.” He acknowledged that while this may sound like an arro-

  gant label for Auroville, it was a simply a declaration made by The Mother, and

  something Aurovillians truly believed. This was the first time we heard an explicit reference to The Mother by name, but the ubiquity of her photo in the buildings

  we had visited made her difficult to ignore. Tency explained that those who live in

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  Auroville “don’t like a lot of publicity,” and that as an experiment in sustainable living, the city has “gone through some tough times.” “All around us,” he continued,

  we see that we are not on a planet that is solving its problems, so perhaps this is, despite its flaws, truly the city the earth needs.” He then framed the week’s course on Sustainable Habitats as a guide to some of the steps we can take—as architects

  and as human beings—to actualize that needed city. “The conditions in which we

  live are a result of our state of consciousness,” he said. “The external, built world reflects only our inner state of being.”

  As noted in a prior chapter, Auroville was founded in 1968 by the followers of

  Sri Aurobindo and Mira Richard (the Mother). Its master plan is set on 3500 acres, arranged in a circle that is 2.5 km in diameter. Eighty percent of the land area in the master pl
an is owned by Auroville, but Tency explained that real estate values in

  the region were skyrocketing, and development pressures on the remaining land

  that Aurovillians wished to acquire was intense. Tency offered no details of the

  city’s formal governmental or institutional structure, nor did we glean the city’s relationship to the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, in which it is located.23 Instead, Tency offered us Auroville’s ecological origin story.

  Nearly all of the land inside of Auroville’s contemporary boundaries was, he

  said, severely degraded forest when Sri Aurobindo’s followers first committed to

  building the city. Their initial grueling task was to re-vegetate the landscape; this was nothing short of a massive undertaking, and it formed the basis for regarding

  Auroville as a fundamental y “green” city.

  Tency continued by noting the key biophysical challenges facing those who

  design the city’s buildingscape and conduct its urban planning. In 2012, Auroville’s population was only two thousand persons (representing forty nationalities), but

  its founding mission was to grow to a city of fifty thousand. In order to do this while remaining ecological y viable, the city would need to secure forested “greenbelts”

  on its periphery, and ensure a stable and adequate water supply. Water was a par-

  ticularly vexing factor, and so, Tency explained, as the city has grown so too have experiments with urban-scale and building-scale techniques of water recycling,

  wastewater treatment, and decentralized water purification. Tency also discussed

  the challenges of providing adequate and ecological y viable energy supplies; he

  noted Auroville’s extensive use of photovoltaic technologies and energy-efficient

  thermal comfort strategies. Rather than air conditioning, for instance, Auroville

  buildings use in-house dehumidifiers, which allowed them to achieve at least a

  quarter reduction in energy use relative to conventional air conditioners.

  Tency concluded his introductory lecture by declaring that, “this is a city that

  desires and expects to grow.” With that, we were invited to share tea on the building’s sunny terrace. When we reconvened, the session assumed contours more