Building Green: Environmental Architects and the Struggle for Sustainability in Mumbai
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If the agents of RSIEA, in this case the professor who undertook the Doongerwadi
forest assessment, reconnect contests over Mumbai’s future open spaces to the active making and dissemination of ideas and practices of good deisgn at RSIEA, then
the politics that good design thinking constructed warrant more careful attention.
We return, then, in the next chapter, to the making of a collective moral ecology
through the curricular experience at Rachana Sansad Institute for Environmental
Architecture.
6
Consciousness and Indian-ness
Making Design “Good”
“That which is working against sustainable design is the consciousness of de-
signers. Sorry if this is moralistic, but it’s my observation . . . those who succeed have this consciousness through which you feel a need for holistic design.”
(Dr. C.L. Gupta, Solar Energy Unit, Sri Aurobindo Ashram/
Auroville)1
“We don’t have to look outward; we have to look inward, toward our
own history. We invented environmental architecture! Look at the Vastu
Shastras. . . . But you won’t find that (written) in LEED standards.”
(Dr. C.L. Gupta, Solar Energy Unit, Sri Aurobindo Ashram/
Auroville)2
This chapter explores moments when RSIEA training invoked specific claims
about historical lifeways, categorized these as “Indian,” and used them to further explicate ideas and techniques of “good design.” Focusing on study tours and destinations, I note how a specific construction of Indian-ness was generated in the
process of further explicating RSIEA’s notion of good design.
With every training cycle, the suite of field visits featured in RSIEA’s curriculum completely changed, with the one exception being the visit to Auroville. In the
particular semesters I draw from below, our destinations included several sites
in Bangaluru, Auroville, Chennai, and an “eco-village” north of Mumbai. Since
specific field study destinations changed from semester to semester, however, my
primary aim is not to provide an exhaustive critique of the sites themselves, in
part because doing so risks a somewhat overdetermined attribution of impor-
tance to them. Instead, I wish to identify and better understand specific moments
when a design idea or physical feature of one of these sites was used to convey a
specific dimension of the RSIEA concept of good design. I then show how these
ideas and features were used to construct a specific category of “Indian-ness,” sufficiently expansive to provide a place for a RSIEA group populated with students
108
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Consciousness and Indian-ness 109
and faculty of Muslim, Hindu, Jain, Parsi, Christian, Jewish, and other origins. In a manner quite peculiar for a political era punctuated by a powerful politics of
Hindu nationalism, I show that in forging an idea of “Indian-ness” as part of good design, the study tours reinforced a pervasive notion that environmental concerns, when understood as universals, not only transcend existing social and political
disparities, but enable social categories capable of neutralizing otherwise volatile forms of social difference. In other words, by joining good design to a notion of
Indian-ness, RSIEA’s version of environmental architecture activated a particu-
lar kind of environmental affinity—an instance in which shared environmental
imaginaries enable social collectives, solidarities, and accepted universals that find their basis in a shared idea of a common environment.3 In a moment in Indian history marked by deeply and often dangerously anti-secular movements, mobilizing
a notion that environmental concerns may not only be social y unifying but also
potential y secularizing warrants close attention.4
At the scale of the region, then, Indian-ness in this environmental context was
constructed as unifying, but in this chapter it is equal y important to note that at the scale of global environmental discourse, the converse was true: the construction of Indian-ness associated with good design also provided a counterpoint to
“Western” values, concepts, and practices of sustainability. That tension, and its experiential production, marks the central focus of this chapter.
In the curated experience of each site visit, faculty and program leaders nar-
rated a version of Indian design history that “knew” distinctive modes of sustain-
ability. Although the environmental conditions in the India of the present may be
unprecedented, the consequent message was that their remedies could find reso-
nance with, or may even be drawn from, certain environmental sensitivities that
were evident in historical design concepts and practices.
A wealth of existing scholarship has critiqued the long history of discur-
sive linkages between ideas of broadly-construed good design and notions of
“Indian” history and identity. S. Paniker (2008), for example, describes the dis-
cursive florescence linking “wise” architectural design and narratives of Indian
history that emerged in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination and ensuing
political unrest. Among others, Lang et al. (1997) claimed in Architecture and Independence that this period witnessed a “marked shift in the architectural context, toward more traditional (Vedic and Shastraic) and vernacular ways of
building which were being re-evaluated by both users and professionals as capa-
ble of offering potential y more pragmatic solutions to the perennial problems of
housing and climate in India.5,6 In this chapter, I aim to better understand how a contemporary experiential and pedagogical attempt to explicate good design and
Indian-ness in environmental architecture formed the basis for a RSIEA envi-
ronmental affinity.
• • •
110 Consciousness and Indian-ness
As is typical y the case in many kinds of architecture degree programs in India,
field trips form a vital cornerstone of RSIEA’s two-year postgraduate certifica-
tion program in Environmental Architecture. Students are offered organized
study itineraries to destinations outside of Mumbai at relatively affordable rates, and they are strongly encouraged, though not required, to attend. The trips often
introduce a given semester, and are timed to give a conceptual and experiential
foundation for the technical training offered in the classroom. They also attempt to produce a less tangible, but nevertheless important, sense of solidarity and belonging among students. This in turn ensures that the cooperative, team-based proj-
ects and assignments students regularly undertake may be completed effectively.
While the study trips included in the curriculum over the course of this research
included some city destinations, most were non-city sites. This gave the tours the added appeal of opportunities to “escape the city” and experience “fuller” versions of non-city nature while studying environmental architecture.
By far the most popular among RSIEA students, and most regularly offered,
tour is to the aforementioned experimental city and intentional community asso-
ciated with the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Tamil Nadu, Auroville. Not far from
the ashram in Pondicherry, this city of roughly two thousand has explicitly
aspired, since its founding in 1968 by the followers of the Indian spiritual lead-
ers Sri Aurobindo and Mira Richard (known more commonly as the Mother), to
become, as the city professes and its residents repeated to us, “the city the earth needs.” Consider this RSIEA student’s
description of her personal anticipation of
the “Toward Sustainable Habitats” study tour in Auroville:
Auroville has had, wel , a certain “aura” about it. As a student of architecture, I had been hearing about Auroville for a number of years but never had the opportunity
to visit it. I had heard from a number of friends and colleagues, who had visited the place to attend workshops, about what a fabulous place it was, but was unable to
comprehend it completely not having had any first-hand experience myself. That
final y changed when we were taken to Auroville for the workshop “Towards Sus-
tainable Habitats,” being conducted by the Centre for Scientific Research, as part of our M. Arch course. The topic or subject matter for the workshop itself was so
intriguing; I found myself looking forward to the workshop even more. I think it has something to do with having lived in Mumbai for most of my life and as such, never having had the opportunity to experience anything other than the crowd, noise, and the concrete jungle that is this city. I was looking forward to experiencing another way of life, and I was not disappointed.7
One of the groups I accompanied to Auroville travelled to Chennai via rail or air, and then a shared bus from Chennai, with additional brief stops en route. On this
trip, stops included two sites typical y used by school groups of many ages for narrating “Indian” history and vernacular forms, Dakshinachitra and Mahabalipuram.
Before describing the Dakshinachitra / Mahabalipuram / Auroville trip in
more detail, I note here the second study tour that I will recount later. Like the
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Consciousness and Indian-ness 111
Auroville tour, a study tour to Govardhan Ashram and Eco-village occurred near
the beginning of the new semester, in March of 2012. The two day, three night
trip involved a bus journey to the 60-acre ashram and eco-village site at Galtar,
about 100 km north of Mumbai and located in the Sahayadri Mountains. Among
other attributes, this area enjoys a “biodiversity hotspot” designation from the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Like Auroville, Govardhan
has explicit links to an international y recognized and organized spiritual practice and philosophy. In the words of its own promotional material, the ashram is “a
project dedicated to His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada,
Founder and Archarya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness
(ISKON) and inspired by Radhanath Swami.” Govardhan is just one of the more
than five hundred ISKON-affiliated temples, ashrams, centers, schools, and res-
taurants across the world.
Yet unlike the oft-traveled destination of Auroville, Govardhan was a relatively
young initiative, established only in 2003 and still in stages of construction in 2012.
The RSIEA trip was experimental; ours was the first tour RSIEA made, and so
faculty in particular were not only seeking to use it for teaching, but also learning for themselves whether it was an appropriate field study site. Govardhan did not
enjoy the same anticipatory mystique that students attributed to Auroville, but the promise of a self-professed “eco-village” made the journey appealing nevertheless.
• • •
The social and pedagogical process of linking specific study site attributes to good
design and Indian-ness often hinged on overt or implied narrations of spiritual-
ity and “consciousness.” While RSIEA faculty and students rarely invoked specific
religious texts to explain good design, they did make repeated references to “spiritual practice” and “tradition.”
In Auroville, the city’s very existence is predicated on adherence to the spiri-
tual interpretations, teachings, and philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and his primary
follower, Mira Richard (“The Mother”). Sri Aurobindo famously reinterpreted a
range of Vedic texts; his “elaborations” or “revisions,” depending on one’s point
of view, led him to develop his philosophy of Integral Yoga. To follow Aurobindo,
then, is to adopt Integral Yoga as foundational to correct and appropriate spiritual engagement in the contemporary world. Despite this, our field visit to Auroville
never detailed, or even mentioned, Aurobindo’s philosophy. While there was a
brief orientation to the founders of the ashram and to the city, our Auroville program was dominated by an agenda framed as its title implied: Toward Sustainable
Habitats. A less overt but nevertheless omnipresent sense of reverence for some-
thing repeatedly referred to as Indian “history” or “wisdom” infused the Auroville-based environmental architecture learning experience.
By contrast, our hosts at Govardhan Ashram and Eco-village professed an
overt commitment to what they called the “Vedic lifestyle;” the site represents
112 Consciousness and Indian-ness
itself publical y, in fact, as a living demonstration thereof. Consider the following excerpt from the organization’s promotional literature:
Govardhan Eco-village il ustrates “Simple Living & High Thinking”—a principle
which is so succinct, yet profound, and formed the basis of life in the bygone age of wisdom. Life in the Vedic times was focused on Service, but not on exploitation; this was the cardinal rule of living and the very essence of people’s dealings—with each other and that with Mother Nature. With the concepts of eco living being innate, the Vedic lifestyle was truly an eco friendly way of living life as instanced in the timeless Vedic scriptures like SrimadBhagavatam and Bhagavad-Gita. We at
Govardhan Eco-village hope to present this model to the world as an alternative
way of lifestyle and perhaps a solution to the impending ecological crisis. . . . The purpose behind Govardhan Eco-village is twofold—one is to present a sustainable
living model based on community living and second is to educate people in the field of traditional sciences including Yoga and spirituality. . . . Since its inception in the year 2003, Govardhan Eco-village has made steady progress in Organic farming,
Cow protection, Education, Rural development, Alternative energy, Eco friendly
constructions and Sustainable living. In the scenario where environmental crisis is on the rise, Govardhan Eco-village is an example of living in harmony with nature.8
Here, certain modes of relating to environmental processes and resources are
termed the “traditional sciences;” these are then undertaken as demonstrative of
the ashram community’s commitment to the “Vedic basis” for sustainable archi-
tecture and, in fact, all aspects of sustainability’s moral parameters in social life. 9
Study tours to these sites inevitably focused on the architectural practices and
features to be observed in each, but our hosts’ narrations of the principles of good design that produced the places themselves offered a kind of contemporary evidence that the idea of Indian history—less as a bundle of texts or repertoire of rituals than as an enduring set of wise guidelines for environmental y responsible living—was thriving in each site’s material form. This precolonial historical “basis”
for the material and social dimensions of sustainability that students could observe in real time and form underpinned consequent claims that linked good-design in
environmental architecture to a specific construction of “Indian” identity.
This does not, of course, mean that faculty and students automatical y and
uncritical y accepted those claims. Full or even partial acceptance was never pre-
configured, or complete. Nevertheless, the social y inclusive and simultaneously
spiritual and secularizi
ng dimensions of historical narratives of Indian good
design gave it a particular appeal.
• • •
Once assembled in Chennai, our bus filled with eighteen architect-students, fac-
ulty, and one visiting anthropologist made its way toward Auroville. En route,
we made intermediary stops, the first of which was at Dakshinachitra . A site
described in its own promotional literature as “a center for the living traditions
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Consciousness and Indian-ness 113
of art, folk performing arts, and architecture of India,” Dakshinachitra opened in 1996 as a project of a non-profit organization called the Madras Craft Foundation.
The complex was designed by the architect Laurie Baker and is widely visited by
students of architecture and other interests alike.
Our stop there was unstructured, so there was no singularly narrated experi-
ence of the place. Students moved in smal , self-selecting groups through a land-
scape of what the site’s promotional literature cal s “heritage houses,” each labeled and organized along streetscapes modeled after Southern Indian regional vernacular architectural styles. In al , there were seventeen structures to explore, and the walk between them was an experiential sampling of specific and highly stylized
representations of what were referred to as “typical” or “authentic” South Indian
vernacular architectural forms. Explanatory plaques associated each structure
with specific southern regions and identity groups.
Moving between different clusters of students and faculty, I walked from built
form to built form, experiencing the physicality of careful y rendered re-creations with names like, “Kerala House” and “Syrian Christian House.” One environmental
architecture student wrote, in a post-trip reflection: “(this place) had the magnificent character and style of Kerala, Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradhesh and Karnataka. It
(had) architectural details and elements which you never get to see in one place. It was a place where you can find all types of traditional architecture of South India. ”10
In the absence of a scripted tour or single guide, our movement across this