zed universe introduction

In a four-part series on ‘The Future of Urban Living’, Chandrashekar Hariharan shares his views on the future of buildings and urban planning over the next two decades. The writer is the Chairman, ZED Habitats, the Bengaluru based global pioneer in green building.

A bird’s and a worm’s eye view of things to come…

I believe that green is the name of the game and there’s no doubt about it. There is a war breaking out in the asphalt jungle we have known for over 50 years now.

A bird’s eye view of the emerging scenario tells us that there has never been such interest in the ecological impact of buildings. In India alone, green construction is projected to increase to about 1 billion sq. ft. by 2012. At Rs 2 lakh crore, it is nearly 5 percent of India’s GDP. Moreover, the struggle to reduce carbon emissions and pollution levels isn’t a negligible fact for a country in search of responsible and sustainable methods of construction.

It’s old hat now that buildings are one of the heaviest consumers of natural resources and emit colossal amounts of greenhouse gases triggering climate change.

In India, as elsewhere in the world, construction and active energy use in buildings account for about 35 percent of all CO₂ emissions. The farm sector contributes an equal quantity, while industry and commerce account for the rest. Globally, 40 percent of all raw materials go into making buildings. Green is so fashionable that everyone is jumping on to the bandwagon, claiming astonishing sustainability or remarkably low energy consumption. But in reality, they are selling the idea; not realizing the ideal.

So what then is the future of construction? What is the nature and role of technology in a future that is scarce on coal, oil, natural gas, and indeed nearly every exhaustible natural resource? How far will renewables help the earth stop bleeding? What will happen to our own residual forests of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and the Northeast? Or of that vulnerable Dark Continent called Africa?

Worm’s eye view

Here’s a worm’s view of what urban planners, architects, and engineers should be doing to shape our cities, suburbs, and homes and offer an altogether different definition.

Sustainable architecture and design is now perhaps the fastest growing industrial segment worldwide. More and more monographs on sustainability urge us to rethink how products are designed and manufactured. This will trigger an intense greening of the supply chain for nearly every new and old material that goes into construction.

There is enough evidence of such a new language gaining currency: local economy, “prosumption”, regional typologies, bioregionalism, renewable, post-consumer, environmentally sourced – all of them are words and phrases not recognized to be part of the building lexicon until the turn of this century.

Shift in building patterns

Ahead of us lies a shift in construction patterns that will define new practices: prefabrication and assembly architecture that will promote scale and affordability. It will spell new dimensions of sustainability on use of building materials: reduced use of limestone for cement and riverbed sand for concrete—all based on renewable resources as against extracted resources. This will improve building performance, durability, and structural strength for materials.

Similarly, new technologies for air management are also finding currency. Ozone-depleting substances for air-conditioning and refrigeration are slowly being phased out. Next on the cards is creation of a new green skin through urban agriculture to reduce our dependence on ecosystem lands. Such encouraging urban farming practices are already going on in Havana, Curitiba, Barcelona, and Seoul.

In the business of architecture and engineering, you will see a new competition at every level which has captured public interest and generated a momentum towards making sustainability the norm.

Buildings with character vs. faceless ‘boxes’

India’s challenge over this decade and the next is vastly different from the sensibilities and growth approaches that the West could afford to adopt and adapt over the last half century. They enjoyed the luxury of blissful ignorance, of a complete lack of knowledge of what was befalling the planet. All that changed with the discovery of the Ozone hole in 1984 and the steady rise in the earth’s temperatures over the next quarter century to 2010.

A good building is not just a neutral vessel, blandly waiting for human activity to occur within its walls. This has happened in the West over the last 50 years in many buildings, particularly commercial; and over the last 20 years in particular in India. Such unseemly hurry to meet the demand for these faceless ‘boxes’ that give us either place to work out of, or live within, is not something the earth can afford.

A good building possesses character, or more precisely, emotional resonance—the capacity to inspire thought and feeling among its occupants. Whether you are a builder of an office space or a home, you seek out professionals whose work resonates with your aspirations. Designing buildings that connect emotionally with owners is something that will happen with far greater conscious actions and decision in future. There can’t be a more opportune time and exciting decades for architects or engineers if only they know how to seize with both hands this rare challenge ahead of us.

How do you figure out how buildings stir imagination? With increasing premium on lands in every city, particularly the top-20 of them in India, you will see a conscious effort being made by every professional on how to collaborate with land. Altering the land and the landscape is easy. You can mow down a small forest or old vegetation and rearrange a hillside in a few days. Solid rock that is seemingly unsuitable for building upon is a nuisance for builders and architects if they are unwilling to be sensitive and take on either additional time or expenses to protect them and work around them.

Urban reality

Urban reality

23/02/2011

Dr. Chandrashekar Hariharan Sustainable Living Energy, Green, Karnataka,Urban, Water Leave a comment

Urban India has nearly 4,000 agglomerations, cities, and towns. Seventy percent of food, water, and energy demand come from this 2 percent of urban landmass. Since this tiny landmass is driving over 75 percent of India’s GDP, more and more people are gravitating towards it. In India, urban population will rise from the current average of 28 percent to the world’s average of 50 percent by 2030. There is no stopping this.

Interestingly, a cursory look at the state of Karnataka offers a microscopic version of what prevails in every state. Bangalore, its capital, hosts eight million people on 800 sq. km. of area. The remaining 238 towns host just 12 million over no more than 1400 sq. km. Of these, as many as 140 towns have less than 75,000 people with less than 20 sq. km. of area. By 2030, the population in these towns will double and towns will become twice as large.

Yet, it is not hard to see how the future is not so much about technology as it is about effective management of only four challenges: energy, water, transportation, and waste. If we introduce a few simple measures on the demand-side for both energy and water, we could turn the clock back to 1980 levels. Well, that will need awareness of the grim future ahead, determination to bring change quickly and firmly, and a groundswell of resolve from each individual. This bit of value-engineering can alone ensure that we meet demand without those indecently large investments in either power infrastructure or supply-side water management.

In the last 50 years, the government has only looked at enhancing power generation yielding thoughtlessly to those popular and incessant demands for ‘more energy and water’. Political parties and governance of every hue have gone on the defensive while making decisions on demand-side management. Even as you read this, a plethora of infrastructure projects are being launched to enhance water supply through long-distance pipelines to our cities from rivers and fragile ecosystems. The Polavaram dam on the Godavari, the Giriganga’s diversion to slake Delhi’s ever-growing thirst, the further depletion of the Cauvery to offer drinking water to a burgeoning Bangalore…. the list is scarily long.

What is clear is that supply-side solutions won’t work. What we need is a war against wasting these two exhaustible resources. What will work and indeed should become a norm is a combination of legislation to ensure the following:

1.    Ban deep bore wells and use of high-energy lighting systems.

2.    Encourage higher reuse of waste water and greater savings on flow of water with aerators and flow restrictors.

3.    Impose higher tariffs that deter callous consumption and practices that increase output per litre of oil or water on both industrial and farm fronts.

Colouring it green

Institutions like the Green Building Council, the Energy Research Institute, Adarsh, BEE, GRIHA, etc., have been trying to answer certain complex questions on the environmental impact of architecture. Although these are but like a flailing in the dark, these institutions have been doing their best by offering acceptable benchmarks in design, construction, and operation of green buildings.

The word green was never associated strongly with buildings until the beginning of the last decade. With 20 percent of all buildings already slated to go green by next year, an orbit shift in the way we look at buildings is imminent in the next five years.

Beyond certain private sector initiatives in construction, there is a significant transition in every town in urban India towards understanding efficiency in energy and water consumption as well as waste management. If we only aligned our goals and objectives on urban sustainability, the ease with which we can create solutions and achieve simplicity of growth throws up an extraordinary pattern.