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

by Anne Rademacher

  familiar to a roomful of architecture students; a landscape architect introduced as Aditya, and a town planner introduced as Lata, offered more substantive ecological

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  Consciousness and Indian-ness 119

  overviews of the city, and the sustainability principles that inform Auroville planning and design at multiple scales.

  Aditya used an international planning and landscape design genealogy to frame

  his lecture. He described his primary inspirations as Ian McHarg, whom he called

  “the father of ecological planning” and the American author of Design with Nature, and Mary Jane Coulter, an early twentieth century American architect whom he

  called a “landscape-sensitive architect. ”24 He then offered a list of thematic criteria essential to designing for sustainability at large scales. These included an analysis of the site’s biophysical history, which he called its “ecohistory,” a long-term trend analysis for hydrological patterns, clear articulation of the site’s topography and water regime, and, in the category he called “human ecology,” demographics, land

  use and control regimes, transport networks, and future physical projects. These

  combined with a basic physical assessment—climate, geology, soil types, surface

  and subsurface hydrology, and biological flora and fauna—to form the baseline

  knowledge sufficient to proceed with good design.

  But we were quickly reminded of our context as Aditya turned unexpectedly

  to the importance of the Mother’s vision for Auroville. He explained that the land development pressures outside of Auroville were unforeseen by the Mother; so too

  was the fact that older visions of ecological vitality which had valued greenbelts outside of cities would later be discredited and replaced by planning strategies

  that emphasize integrating green spaces in cities. “What we want to escape as we develop the city further, and as we try to influence land use policies around us, is the fate of becoming a weekend resort city,” he said. “Planning is awareness raising,” he continued, “because most people live life in a sleep mode.”

  This last statement completed a narrative arc in which Aurovillian environ-

  mental architecture was described as a product of inner consciousness, specific

  techniques, and intentional social action. The field examples we would visit in the following days referred back to these elements; every site visit was led by that site’s creator or caretaker, and each was narrated for its value both in solving the specific biophysical challenges and for addressing the framing spiritual challenge to become the “city the earth needs.”

  That first afternoon, we would visit a private home called “Newlands,” ful y

  designed and built by a German architect who introduced herself as Regina.

  Tucked into the dense forest in a way that made it seem simultaneously integrated

  and distinct, the home was indeed an impressive example of ecological y inte-

  grated architecture. All of the materials, Regina told us, had come either directly from this forest or from the Auroville site. Using energy and machinery as minimal y as possible, Regina had literal y designed and built the home herself. The

  fourteen-year-old structure made extensive use of waddle and daub, particularly

  impressive given seasonal monsoon conditions in Auroville. As the first built form we encountered outside of a classroom setting, and as the first example of the

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  architectural experiments that were possible in a city like Auroville, the home

  made a significant impression on many of the students. One reflected later:

  New Lands . . . was located in the green belt zone. Only natural y and local y available materials can be used for construction in this zone. And indeed this house belonged to this zone. With rammed mud wal s and in situ seasoned wood and bamboo, this

  house was truly a master piece. The windows were framed with a type of seasoned

  and burnt bamboo known as Buddha’s bel y. The windows looked like a masterpiece

  by Gaudi. Nature was flowing in and out of the house. I was speechless. 25

  With some in the group charmed and others astonished, we moved on to Gaia

  Gardens, a large garden and multi-building yoga complex built and hosted by a

  man who introduced himself as Kireet. Here, we learned about the rainwater har-

  vesting techniques used in the gardens, and we hiked Utility Canyon, a massive

  erosion-born canyon that has been a restoration focus in Auroville for decades.

  Kireet coordinates the financing and operation of a series of check dams intended

  to capture and redeposit Canyon silt, and in so doing stop large flows of run-

  off from further eroding the hil sides. Again, at each site, our hosts offered their personal story of inner consciousness development and its direct expression as

  environmental stewardship and even, in Kireet’s case, environmental restoration.

  The students devoured the technical details of the designs, their consistent interest deepened by the repeated, passionately professed basis of these practices in

  “consciousness.”

  Very few of our instructors claimed South Asian descent, but by emphasizing

  that good design was fundamental y linked to “consciousness,” they reinforced the

  idea that a unique, and longstanding, “Indian” wisdom was fundamental to the

  effectiveness of their work. By virtue of their diverse national and ethnic origins, they conveyed an inclusivity to the category as well; it had the communicative

  effect of backgrounding our differences so long as our common commitment to

  “sustainable habitats” through spiritual consciousness was constantly reinforced.

  In the days that followed, conceptual and technical sessions further expli-

  cated good design through “sustainable habitats.” Sessions like “Green Home

  Technologies,” “Auroville’s Architectural Diversity,” and specialized course

  sequences on topics including decentralized water treatment strategies, local materials processing and use (stabilized compressed earth blocks and ferro-cement, in

  the case of Auroville), and renewable energy filled the schedule. We visited several other buildings, each with compelling names like, “Luminosity” or “Creativity.” In every instance, those who guided us through the building described a relationship

  between consciousness and good design.

  As our study tour was coming to a close, we reached our program at the

  Matrimandir. Unlike the other sites and other sessions, no host guided us through

  this day. The massive spherical building was not narrated for its sustainable

  aspects or building techniques, yet after many days of guided thinking, we were

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  Consciousness and Indian-ness 121

  conditioned to encounter it as at very least, a source of the consciousness so central to good design.

  Student reflections like these, composed after the visit, emphasized the per-

  sonal experience of consciousness that many described in connection with their

  time in the Matrimundir:

  As one walks closer and closer to the Matrimandir the mystery of the architecture

  begins to unfold. The paths through the petals draw us towards the centre of the

  globe. Everything appears to converge . . . then we start to realise the existence of each golden concave disc on the globe. As one enters the mandir, we are asked to

  wear the socks that are provided. This is a transition zone, where one starts to stop thinking about the worldly endeavours. Then we enter the great hall . . . a spiraling ramp. The salmon pink ambience and the volunteers dressed in white give it a feel of a sci-fi space ship. Now the though
ts are guided towards the ray of light that emerges from the top and escapes into the floor. After this transition there is the meditation hal . A huge void with columns creating an isle for seating and circulation. It is extremely difficult to realise the scale of the space due to absence of any reference.

  Only the vertical ray of sun entering though the ceiling and entering into a crystal can be seen. There were no thoughts. Even after trying very hard to think, there were no thoughts. Just blankness. There was silence. Silence as I had never heard before.

  It was a silence that I defined as the “screaming silence.” Silence so intense that one could hear his own blood pressure. Silence that will make you realise . . . your own shoddy existence. The hazy white atmosphere was suddenly lit and I realised that the 15 minutes of meditation time was over. . . . The feeling after coming out was bliss. 26

  Walking into the room, nothing else existed. I walked right into the ultimate

  emptiness. The whiteness is both light and dark at the same time, casting sacred

  robes around every person. I sat, I breathed in the awe of this power, this perfection. Meditating, “om,” the sound of the universe came in and out through my every breath. I at once became the perfect sphere within which I sat, and this sphere grew outward to consume all of Auroville and all of the world. We were only allowed to

  remain for ten minutes, which was enough for the time. Exiting, I felt endlessly reju-venated. I had deepened so much, emptied so much. I found a sense of peace that

  existed infinitely inside of me. From feet to my smile. Then we all sat underneath the globe in a circle, people from all over the world, around a lotus-shaped structure. It was almost flat, but with pure white lotus petals. Where a crystal sphere sits. Water flows slowly over the petals down to the center, but so slowly that you can observe every ripple, like birds of water diving into paradise. Then exiting the Matrimandir, I awoke to the world. I walked out into nature, bringing with me in my heart and

  hands all that my spirit had felt—perfect cleansing. I sat beneath the banyan tree, leaning against a trunk for support, seeing no end to peace. 27

  This so-called “abode of the Mother,” who along with Sri Aurobindo was and is the

  stated reason the city exists and persists, provided a strong symbolic spatial conclusion to a week in which the technical details of “sustainable habitats” were conveyed as only as powerful as the consciousness one brought to them. It solidified

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  the connection between good design and a form of consciousness, even if the pre-

  cise contours of that consciousness remained amorphous.

  I do not wish to imply here that students received the good design-conscious-

  ness connection somehow automatical y; on the contrary, each student made her

  own sense of the week’s course content and the individual and collective experi-

  ence of Auroville. Another student reflection conveys a sense of the questions left open and unanswered as the week came to a close:

  Overall the experience of Auroville has taught me many things. It showed the importance of simple living, caring for the society. It also brought about certain questions.

  Can we consider it as an ideal for sustainable society? Can it be replicated elsewhere and accepted by people? Or should its existence remain as something different from the mainstream society?28

  While Auroville was in some ways a “city,” its population and density suggested little that could be scaled to, and produced in, a city of the scale and density of Mumbai.

  Many of the innovative techniques we studied in such detail, like decentralized

  water management systems or mud brick manufacturing, seemed to have little

  immediate relevance to Mumbai and its challenges. The practice of environmental

  architecture, then—the ecology in practice dimension of their training—was not

  what was primarily derived from this study tour. Instead, the idea that good design depended in an essential way on both techniques and consciousness was the take-away; the remarkably inclusive notion of Indian-ness that Aurovillians assured us

  derived from this duality only made the idea of Indian environmental architecture

  make more, and more appealing, sense.

  By the close of the visit, our group showed discernible signs of an emergent envi-

  ronmental affinity, one that traced the general sense that “consciousness” formed an important dimension of the good design we wished to understand, as did identifying that dimension as linked to an expansive and, at least in an implicit way, a rather political y ambivalent notion of Indian-ness. We could be effective environmental

  architects, and visceral y understand good design, it seemed, without having to

  “opt in” to the messy and often opaque political economic questions and structures that determined the course of so much urban development. The essential reflexivity when it came to good design, then, was environmental, ecological, and integrated;

  it was not political or economic, save as an item in a site visit analysis.

  Tamara Sears reminds us that, “the self-conscious and intentional assimilation

  of forms, for the purpose of creating new social identities, has been an ongoing

  phenomenon in architectural history and practice. In this sense architects have

  the potential to make real interventions in society as the mediators between indi-

  viduals, tradition, and government policy.” 29 Yet here, in Auroville, we gleaned little that might guide us to be strategic mediators, effective practitioners of good design. The aspirational life of good design was unquestionably crystalized, which emboldened us, but the sociopolitical reflexivity we would need in order to bridge

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  Consciousness and Indian-ness 123

  that aspiration to effective ecology in practice was left, as a consequence of omission, to the domain of others. The journey, in any case, was lauded as an over-

  whelming success.

  • • •

  At the RSIEA Opening Day Welcome Program in 2012, a short program item had

  featured a presentation by Lucky Kulkarni, a representative of Govardhan Ashram

  and Eco-Village. This would be the first study tour of the semester, and unlike

  Auroville, it was a new and experimental addition to the RSIEA curriculum. There

  was no doubt that it sounded perfect for our purposes: Kulkarni promised what

  seemed to be an ideal eco-village setting, distributing multiple colorful brochures that promised serenity, sustainability, and spiritual growth.

  Her comments were animated by colorful images of bucolic landscapes and

  cozy lodges. Kulkarni told the audience that Govardhan is “a vil age planned

  with urbanites in mind—the place where urban dwellers can come to experience

  nature.” It was comfortable, she assured her audience, and yet natural. She continued by describing the lodging accommodation at Govardhan as “the way we

  (urban dwellers) want to stay, but with a rural touch.”

  The eco-village was designed by the environmental architect Chitra Vishwanath,

  and buildings throughout the complex were designed for maximum, if not com-

  plete, environmental self-sufficiency. From generous use of local y available building materials (which included compressed earthen blocks that we later learned

  came from Auroville), to interlinked vil age-scale solar energy systems, bio-gas

  systems, organic food production, on-site sewage treatment, small scale cottage

  industries, and extensive cowsheds, Kulkarni narrated an idyllic setting in which

  to both learn and experience the fundamental elements of good design in environ-

  mental architecture.

  Unlike the much longer journey to Auroville, the drive to Govardhan from

  RSIE
A was just three hours long, allowing students and faculty to make smaller

  group travel arrangements. I joined faculty members who chose to drive to the

  ashram the night before our two-day workshop began; some students arrived early

  the following morning, and a final group joined us for one intensive final day.

  Our small faculty group arrived as the first from RSIEA to reach Govardhan;

  two young monks greeted us at the vil age gate and showed us to the yoga shala.

  In almost total silence, and with virtual y no introductions, we were served a light vegetarian dinner and shown to a lodging center where our guest rooms were

  pre-assigned. Aesthetical y, the building nearly blended with the landscape; func-

  tional y, it used a solar water heater and drew energy from sources across the property. In the rooms, a collection of Ayurvedic toiletry items produced in the vil age supplied us with our basic needs. What was completed seemed integrated and

  potential y quite interesting, but we also noticed right away that a surprising portion of the eco-village complex was still under construction.

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  As we retired to our rooms, we joked about the very early morning start time,

  and the first item on the agenda: “morning prayers and short class on mantra med-

  itation.” For a group more accustomed to a concept of “consciousness” that did not map to a specific set of prayers or even a specified religious tradition, this struck us as an unusual—if perhaps unsurprising—way to start a weekend course on environmental architecture. Agreeing we would keep an open mind, we woke accord-

  ing to the schedule and assembled again, some bleary-eyed, at the yoga shala.

  An adult monk arrived, accompanied by a young boy. The monk explained that

  he would lead us in a brief “class,” which ran for about ten minutes and consisted of a discussion of how to assume a “prayerful mindset” for the day. He then led us through a short series of yoga poses, basic stretches, and continued meditation.

  Our faculty group giggled as we awkwardly sought to balance the glaring contrast

  between our flexible, fit, and soft-spoken monk leader, and our own physical limi-