Urban Ooru

Let’s start at the beginning. We purchased our plot around 25 years ago. It’s located in a little enclave of 2 streets. This enclave of about 2 acres was close to a large upcoming suburb in Bengaluru hemmed in by a large tract of litigated land on one side and a much larger tract of defence land on the other. This meant that we had no paved road to our place. There was just a mud track that would disappear in the rains when we would skid and slide on our motorbikes – not a very nice experience. As the land was litigated, we did not have a water and sewerage connection. Luckily, we got the electricity connection through the transformer in the wooded army land. For water, each plot drilled its own borewell and for the sewerage we built our own septic tanks. The land had another complication with a small storm water drain on its west and south sides. This later became the receptacle for our sewage. Much to our dismay, we found that this drain would get blocked downstream much farthe...

I step out onto the street. There are no pavements. Actually, the road hardly exists now. The BWSSB has dug up our road for the 5 th  time trying to the get the sewerage right this time. And prior to that, they were trying to get the water supply right. And prior to that? Oh well, they were laying the sewerage, only that the contractor wouldn’t listen when a few of us (architects residing in the area) told him that he was laying it much higher than what he should have done. Prior to that? They laid the sewer lines for the first time. Got us to close our well-functioning septic tanks to connect our building sewerage to the spanking new sewer line. Great work, you would think, just that they had no sewage treatment plant in the area. So, they connected it to the storm water drain by the side of our building. And prior to that, they had laid the water lines for the first time. Now, let’s talk about the electricity! A few months ago, they installed a new transformer. The contractor did...

This month saw us celebrating our 73 rd Independence Day. It is a day that fills our hearts with a renewed sense of patriotism and pride. India is on a developmental upswing and there is a palpable energy that one can find everywhere. We have reached Mars – Mission Mangal, the blockbuster film on the historic Mars mission just released this month to rave reviews while our second mission to the Moon – Chandrayaan 2, has successfully locked into the lunar orbit. Despite all the inherent inefficiencies of our cities that we complain about, there is construction everywhere – buildings, metro lines, flyovers, pavements, underground service lines - the list is endless. Broadband penetration across the country is growing at a blazing speed and we are on the verge of getting 5G services. This is all great news! However as per a recent UN report released in June 2019, India will become the most populous country on earth by 2027 – a mere 8 years from now. The growth that India will s...

Most of us write technical articles when we have answers to a problem. Usually, technical articles will have an introduction, the description of a problem and then the possible solutions. Good articles will even give a road map of how solutions could be prioritised and put into action. However, this article is definitely not technical and will raise more questions that it can answer. It is the description of a dilemma – that of a mainstream architect in a metropolitan city. It is also a dilemma that most of us face – irrespective of our backgrounds and the trades that we follow; we suppress these thoughts to the back of our minds. It has been almost two decades since I graduated as an architect. My interest has always been in the area of environmentally contextual architecture along with an interest in social housing. While my first job as an architect was to engage in a tribal housing project with a participative approach, I gradually got involved in other projects that were mor...

Introduction The aim of  this article is to introduce the reader to the concept of passive solar architecture and to stress its importance for achieving building energy efficiency.  “The passive solar concept is to allow nature to operate our systems with a minimum of mechanical interference. We know that the potential for heating, cooling, and powering our dwellings, factories, and office buildings by non-mechanical means exists. Our ability to allow this to happen is limited only by our imagination.”  David Wright, AIA In today’s context of global warming, the quote, by one of the foremost proponents of Passive Solar Architecture, is an important reminder for a more sustainable way of designing, building and operating our buildings.  The concept of passive solar architecture has existed since time immemorial. Human beings in the pre-fossil fuel era have always built their dwellings with intelligence combined with an intuitive understanding of thei...

Introduction Growing population compounded with increasing affluence and affordability is exerting an unprecedented pressure on natural resources in India. The building industry is at the forefront of consumption of these resources. The construction industry has been growing at a CAGR of 13.3% [i] and this translates to a similar growth rate in consumption of building materials like cement, steel, bricks, stone, etc. There is an urgent need of understanding the materials manufacturing industry and introducing sweeping reforms in the manner in which they are extracted, manufactured, used, recycled and disposed off. This article is essentially an introductory primer on the concept of “green materials” and the basis on which the “greenness” or sustainability of a building material could be measured. Life cycle energy of materials The concept of life cycle energy costs of building materials is something that is becoming a subject of interest for many scientists across the wo...

Green Buildings or Sustainable Buildings is the latest fad that all of us have caught on to. This is now being bandied about as the latest “it” thing to be done – by property developers, by home owners, by hotel operators, by hospitals, by industries and by anyone else who may have any connection with the building industry. As on date more than 40 Crores sft (400 Million Sft) is under Green Rating. As in any mass movement there is the complete spectrum of followers. On the one end are people who truly are passionate about the entire philosophy behind sustainability and on the other end are people who are just joining the bandwagon because it’s the “in” thing to do. In the absence of a well-researched and well-thought of mandatory system that defines what it means to be sustainable, numerous versions of sustainable practice have emerged. Along with a whole lot of good measures there are also some misconceptions of what Sustainability constitutes. If one were to go by modern definiti...