What Does a Sustainable Indian Building Look Like?

I have been going chronologically in terms of my adventures with some of these supplementary posts on my actual work, and today I’m continuing that but stepping out of the chronological a bit in terms of the meetings on which I draw for this post. As I am writing this much later than my trips to Jaisalmer and Jodhpur (which some of you may have read about last time) , I can draw on more opinions and make this post of greater value intellectually. And the reason for doing this now is that hopefully my comments about historic buildings in my last post on Jaisalmer and Jodhpur raised some issues about what sustainability looks like in the Indian context, or rather whether the current trajectory needs to be reconsidered. In this post I want to dissect this a little bit more thoroughly, highlighting what I see as the themes in the small but growing sustainability movement within India.

One of the first meetings I had, with a member of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI, which, for the climate change watchers out there is the Institute from which Dr. R.K. Pachauri, head of the IPCC hails) exposed the first trend that became very obvious throughout my time in India—developers, professionals, and building owners in India have an obsession with certifications. This means that there are a number of professionals who seek our certification under LEED, GRIHA, or other such schemes (if you don’t know these acronyms, keep reading) and become certified professionals capable of certifying green buildings and projects. On the surface this sounds very good, yet the problem is that this has led to a proliferation of consultancies in a world where developers too are clamoring for certification. As my friend David Wittenberg is fond of saying, all it takes to be a consultant is a sign on your door that reads “Consultant,” and in the sustainability movement in India this is certainly true. Differentiating the real, knowledgeable companies from those out to capitalize on the green agenda is tough, especially for the numerous small to mid-size developers who do not know the field and who lack the money to pay for some of the larger more established firms.

The result is a collection of projects that claim to be targeting certification under LEED or one of the other schemes but then fail to achieve the targets. Or, perhaps more common, many projects advertise “green” features, only to then eliminate many of these in value engineering later on. It is amazing tow walk down the metro stations and look at the number of advertisements for new, “green” housing and then actually follow it up with some online research. You find that “green” often means a higher window to wall ratio, central air-conditioning with a diesel power back-up, and a garden with the building. Can you find the green features? Well, if you go by color, yes the last one is, but if you go by performance, in Delhi’s climate none of this are (the last could be, but the images inevitably show grass and European shrubs, not native plants). But you can bet that in each of these projects there is a sustainability consultant involved who made a buck or two.

Now before it sounds like I am discrediting out of hand India’s green movement, I want to quickly say that there are some excellent consultancies and projects that really are very sustainable. Most of my information on green buildings in India comes from a dedicated group of professionals, all of whom know one another, who practice excellent design and very adeptly integrate passive techniques with modern technology. One need to look no further than the work of Ashok Lall, Vinod Gupta, Sanjay Prakash, Ashish Karode, and Rajesh Dongre to know that there are environmentally-sensitive architects practicing in India whose work rivals that of any other such designer worldwide. On the consultancy end, Spectral Services and Godrej make up the two largest consulting firms with other smaller players such as Green Buildings India and Kalpakrit entering the field with high levels of competency. The belief that India is moving toward a greener standard for buildings is also supported by the staggering growth in registered floor space under both the LEED and GRIHA sustainable building rating schemes (again, keep reading and I promise I will explain these acronyms).

However, for those who have taken a glance at the websites linked to the names above, you may already have a sense of the second trend in sustainable projects in India—they are typically of a relatively small size. With some exceptions of government, educational, and a few IT campuses (IT giant Infosys is incredibly progressive in its sustainability measures), most projects executed by the architects above are fairly small in size. They typically perhaps are a single institutional or commercial building, an office fit out, or a single home. Developers have yet to jump on the green bandwagon in a meaningful way; it has been jargon only that they have adopted. The reason for this was given to me in another meeting with one of the architects above. He said that, to put it bluntly, architects in India are often treated as “glorified draughtsmen,” and then paid as such. What this means is that on the whole, spending on the architect’s portion of the project is very low relative to the entire project budget. For those familiar with the field or who have been reading my blogs, you will know that this stage of the project where you have the most potential to integrate good, sustainable design is in the architect’s hands. Yet without a large budget, architects cannot make effective sustainable choices. It is always a fight to convince developers who do not yet understand that spending a bit more up front will save in construction and engineering later in the project. They instead go by previous projects where they limited the architect’s portion of the project and were able to sell the building for profit. This marginalization of architects deters others from engaging meaningfully in sustainability within their practices since it is a costly venture, and furthermore encourages them to hand projects to recent graduates who are paid less (“green” architects, if you will, but not the right “green”).

This latter point leads into another discouraging note on Indian sustainability but this one instead with a positive trend. Current education in Indian architectural schools does not encourage sustainability in the curriculum. Students may be introduced to simulation programs and the basics of sustainable design, but on the whole they do not get a comprehensive introduction and do not graduate with an idea that this should be integrated into the process of design throughout. Now when you think that these are the ones doing most of the designing in India you see why it is a discouraging trend. Furthermore, the sense of academic research is very different in India. Independent research is unheard of among students, graduate level work does not have the same support or culture of providing new concepts for industry as it does in America and Europe, and worst of all, I am led to believe that plagiarism is common and ignored by professors in general. One commenter even said that students graduate without reading the building codes—they read instead whatever the shortest summary is when they Google “Indian Building Codes.” Given this, you are probably wondering how I can say this has an encouraging trend. Well, the good news is that this is changing. A growing number of architects are going abroad to be trained and becoming inculcated in the sustainability and research traditions of the US and Europe. They in turn are introducing this to universities in India as visiting professors or carrying it on in their practices, thereby training young architects in new modes of design. Furthermore, under pressure from the Western world, India’s own universities are developing new focuses on research and are rapidly trying to become more modern in their methods. It doesn’t come easy to Indian schools, but it is happening. In architecture, this is indicated by a growing number of MA programs in architecture and landscape architecture.

Education and research at the university level is one thing, but with the current lack of green buildings in India, it is clear that education at the professional and everyday social levels are also needed. And frankly, this is one point that gives me some hope but also provokes an interesting question. Let me explain what I mean. I attended several conferences the week after I returned from Jodhpur and Jaisalmer and at all of them had the pleasure of listening to several ministers discuss the programs in place for advancing energy efficiency and sustainability in India. By all accounts, it seems that there is a firm foundation in place for educating professionals and citizens about sustainable building and energy efficiency. There are several nationally sponsored programs to train engineers and architects, others at the levels of cities and states, and campaigns to raise awareness about the availability of energy efficient appliances and fixtures. In addition, in the professional community, incentives for using the GRIHA green building rating system are meant to encourage professionals to become trained and implement the system. This is definitely positive.

What is interesting is that either through differences of opinion on what defines sustainability or because of the tradition of large bureaucracy in India, the green building movement in the country is somewhat fragmented. I don’t necessarily identify this as a positive or negative trend, but rather just as a trend since I’m not sure what to make of it. But what became clear at these conferences is that there are two very strong green building movements—LEED and GRIHA—for new buildings and one—the BEE 5 Star System—for existing buildings. For those familiar with the US context, you may have heard of LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Originally developed by the US Green Building Council, it spread to India through an agreement with the fledgling Indian Green Building Council several years back. This allowed USGBC to retain some authority over the program while letting the Indian leaders adapt it to their context. Simultaneously, TERI, the institute I have previously mentioned, developed its own rating known as GRIHA, or Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment. The latter has now been adopted by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy as the official rating system of the Government of India.

The challenge here is that there are strong proponents in favor of each rating system and no sign of a merger of the systems in the near future. Proponents of LEED back its international basis and reliance on codes as a baseline that are used in countries worldwide. Opponents criticize the system as being based on an American building model where technologies such as air conditioning are expected in any constructed space. This was the feeling of the group that developed GRIHA at least. They were of the opinion that India needed a system that was just as applicable to non-air conditioned spaces as to air conditioned buildings; GRIHA was seen as the means of achieving this. The problem is that now India has two systems that rate buildings in the same categories albeit with slightly different metrics, are both vying for market share in India, and both of which claim to be applicable to the Indian market. LEED currently has the upper hand in terms of built space simply because it is better established, but GRIHA now has a government mandate for all new national government spaces. There seemed to be a feeling among architects that GRIHA is better developed for Indian buildings, but at the same time most acknowledged that the international label of LEED was still preferred by some clients. The concern from my perspective is that having two rating systems could lead developers to be unsure of which to pursue and in the end either try to over commit and due both only to fall short or to do neither until one emerges as the winner. On the other hand, with the amount of development occurring in India, there is room in my opinion for both systems to coexist, have their market share, and advance thinking on sustainable buildings. This is the case now and may be for a while, but we will see how it plays out.

Personally, I rather like the GRIHA system because the thinking behind its formation highlights the trend in India which gives me the most hope for sustainable buildings in the nation. This is the penchant for looking backwards among the (few) academicians studying this subject in order to determine what happens going forward. In my post about Jaisalmer and Jodhpur I referred frequently to the sustainable “technologies” that these ancient structures incorporated and developed. Whereas LEED typically pulls from a baseline of modern buildings, GRIHA was developed by researchers who really considered what buildings were like in the past and how they incorporated passive design by region to achieve low energy, comfortable buildings. This trend is not just limited to the researchers at TERI either. Several of the independent architects with whom I met talked about performing their own research projects to study how buildings and landscapes in the past contributed to the environmental and comfort performance of the space. They studied the organization of streets, their relation to landforms, the windows and screens of the buildings, and the massing to gain insights on what a modern low energy building should be. At the Central Building Research Institute (CBRI) in Roorkee, there was a whole research team devoted to learning about traditional materials and design techniques for low-cost, high-performance housing. Some of the models they had on site were truly incredible as well. It was refreshing to see science giving credence to traditional building techniques, explaining why they work, and then incorporating those ideas into new forms of architecture and design.

This habit of looking back to go forward is something that was missing in China and was only present in Abu Dhabi through Masdar (which was initiated by a British architect, Norman Foster). These two countries were so absorbed in the Western model of development, they had forgotten to consider their own heritage beyond the aesthetics (and in China, usually not even that much). The result is buildings that do not perform adequately in the climate, are not responsive to seasonal changes, and are generally uncomfortable to live in unless you have a lot of technology to stabilize the internal environment. For this reason, I have a lot of hope for India. It is partly out of necessity with such a large impoverished population that they are looking at traditional techniques and low-cost building, but it is more because of the importance of the past in the culture that this is an integral part of the sustainable building movement. It surprised me a bit to find this to be the case, but as I have said refreshing. There truly is a lot that can be learned from these historic designs—years of wisdom and refining of knowledge went into making some of what still stands today. To dismiss that and adopt wholesale what is imported from the US or Europe is a mistake. Therefore, I think that even though the Indian sustainability movement is small now and has some other discouraging trends, if it retains its view to the past, I anticipate a strong growth in its development in the coming years. More importantly, it will be an Indian style green building movement that will cater to the peculiarities of the Indian market and therefore be self-sustaining and hopefully have fewer of the resource issues that are being predicted to plague China in the coming years.