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

by Anne Rademacher

  blame for what he viewed as a destructive culture of consumerism in Mumbai:

  America became a consumer society a long time ago, and India is going through that right now. We’re doing it right and wrong. We’re picking up a lot of the negative sides of consumerism much faster than we should. I think the beauty of India—at least

  with Nehru was that . . . (historical y, the market sector in) India . . . remained closed.

  We industrialized and didn’t allow any sort of foreign products in until I think 1990

  or so. . . . I think economic globalization is good and fantastic and the way forward.

  However I think India needs to keep it in check. It needs to slowly introduce it, which is not the way things are happening now. 9

  He continued, connecting his reference to an emergent, bustling consumer market

  to the “way things work” in the urban development sector:

  These days, it’s all a numbers game. The money is all that matters. At the end of the day if the client can save one lakh he will save one lakh. On one hand, one lakh means nothing to him in the context of these mega-projects he’s doing for millions of lakhs, but then on the other hand it’s a mindset. If he can save it he will save it. And if that means taking an illegal route, eight times out of ten, in my opinion, people will be fine with it. Unfortunately this is India. This is the world we’re living in. It’s sad. 10

  When I asked him to say more about what he meant by the comment that, “this

  is India,” Darius echoed views voiced earlier in the book, in which the state and

  irresponsibly built form development are coproduced. His discussion of Mumbai,

  almost instantly pointed to the state of Maharashtra:

  The entire state is run by the Shiv Sena. . . . Take a simple thing like roads. Ninety-six percent of the BMC is Shiv Sena. The election just happened, as you know, and they won in a landslide. So for instance you have a simple road that gets built and does not last even for one monsoon. It fal s apart. Then the building contractors are not held accountable . . . because the problem is that the building contractors are also Shiv Sena. So they’re not going to pull them up. The political groups protect their own, and the sense that we all belong to Bombay, or to Maharashtra . . . is total y missing.11

  A 2007 RSIEA graduate whom I will call Amrit worked with “a typical commer-

  cial architect firm” until 2010 and then established a private practice that allows him to work with individual clients on small projects “according to environmental principles,” explained to me that while he is enjoying using some of his green design techniques in this new practice, he regarded the scope for any kind of environmental architecture in Mumbai to be limited to small scale projects within a

  very small arena of affluence. 12 It turned out that all of his current projects were

  144 A Vocation in Waiting

  in that scope, each for a client who wanted “eco-friendly” bungalows for weekend

  escapes from Bombay. These projects were in Ali Baug, a common destination for

  Mumbai’s elite to establish second homes. When I asked him to describe his expe-

  riential impression of the scope for environmental architecture in an interview at RSIEA, 13 Amrit explained,

  Basical y Mumbai has a lack of space, so nobody’s coming to an architect to design new construction. You simply can’t apply all your thoughts or work the way you want to practice. . . . It’s completely builder governed, this industry. I would say in Mumbai, it’s probably because they want to sell the property in a very limited span of time.

  There are also redevelopment projects and they are booming. But there you have that ratio of sel able areas and so within that constraint it’s very difficult to achieve any of the environmental design aspects you’ve learned in the (RSIEA curriculum).

  Where Amrit did find scope to practice RSIEA-style good design was in making

  precisely the kinds of interventions that were so heavily critiqued as inadequate

  back at the Institute. In the context of Mumbai, they were “better than nothing:”

  General y, I would say just going for (LEED or GRIHA) certification is not a great idea, but for Mumbai I would say actual y, go for it, because something is better than nothing. At least builders are beginning to recognize the value (of certification) for marketing purposes . . . so to a certain extent it is helping to save our environment.

  It’s not ideal. It can be completely impossible in some aspects to practice green architecture here.14

  A survey quotation from a recent graduate underscores Amrit’s point about finite

  space in Mumbai and the work of the environmental architect, offering yet another

  complicating point:

  A lot of design is governed by development control regulations and though it is necessary, in many ways it does not give any design flexibility to the architects. Clients are always demanding that extra inch more. Plots in Mumbai are very smal , and

  where every square inch has great value, any architect’s focus lays much on consuming the entire FSI and so many times the focus on sustainable issues is left out. 15

  Ideas of spatial, political, and economic restrictions on architects’ work often connected to descriptions of a cultural sensibility that animates the urban develop-

  ment process in Mumbai. Its primary characteristics might be mapped back to

  a portrait of the city’s contemporary political ecology of urban development, but

  many architects emphasized a world of associations and meaning-making which

  they also attributed to image and marketing.

  Particularly in the residential development sector, several interlocutors empha-

  sized that despite what seems to be a proliferation of LEED and GRIHA certi-

  fied projects and buildings, “actual” environmental architecture was virtual y

  nonexistent. Both Siddharth and Darius repeatedly used the term “gimmick” to

  describe what, on the surface, can appear to be a proliferation of green-certified developments in Mumbai. Siddharth described one of his current team projects

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  A Vocation in Waiting 145

  by telling me of a developer who approached his firm with a request for an LEED

  gold building design. After working on the project for a few months, Siddharth

  was convinced that,

  Right now it’s a trend—a marketing gimmick. This builder doesn’t actual y want a

  green thing happening, in the way we think about good design. He doesn’t care about the ecology at al . It’s just a marketing thing. He’s like most developers, I think. They know if they say it’s LEED, it will affect their final sale. 16

  Darius substantiated this point to some extent, when he described the “green phi-

  losophy” of the builder for whom he works. Rather than signaling principles of

  environmental architecture or urban ecology, Darius explained that “green” quite

  literal y often means adding green-colored things to building plans. He explained, Look, the way we think about green is in a pretty naive sense. We put greenery on

  our buildings. So for instance we build terraces. We (plant) trees. We build beautiful, but artificial, landscaped podiums. For instance in my township, my 300 acre township in Pune, in my plans I showed a bird sanctuary. Because it’s a gimmick; it’s what the builder can sell to his public, saying, “we have an urban forest.” They are the cool words we use; I don’t think they’re true. When we say bird sanctuary, we just mean that birds will be there, or birds will come there. We’re not actual y developing a bird sanctuary. . . . It’s a term we use to draw people in. It’s a gimmick. So that’s the obvious way we show green.17

  Even as we spoke, many parts of Mumbai were plastered with bil boards promot-

  ing new residential developments that promised “green bliss,” a “green lifestyle,�
�

  and “green luxury.” The impression these boards and their attendant advertising

  campaigns created, if only through their ubiquity and visibility, was of a luxury

  residential sector that was literal y transforming. With these new developments,

  they seemed to convey, the city could final y provide the discerning Mumbai buyer

  with the tranquility, efficiency, and general moral ecology of environmental architecture that he had been so desperately seeking. At very least, even I had assumed that these buildings were securing open spaces (albeit likely private and highly

  exclusive), vegetation, and, importantly, the infrastructure for an energy and water efficient domestic and service sphere.

  Nearly all of the architects with whom I spoke convinced me otherwise, but

  none with more chiding than Aditya. He was unsurprised to learn that I had

  gleaned this impression, but he was quick to reform it:

  AR: You are saying there is absolutely no authentic interest among any

  builders to erect green residential structures, but when I drive

  through Bombay, it seems that all I see are bil boards advertising the

  new green luxury buildings. What’s going on?

  Aditya: Wel , where is that building? (laughs) What is that building? Of course they are making all kinds of green claims, but there is

  nothing green about the actual buildings except the pictures on

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  the signboards. I can tell you with my experience of trying to make

  even little changes that are green, in the residential sector there is

  nothing truly green. Yes, in the commercial sector you see a lot of

  push for certification, but even there it is about green cents (spel s

  out c-e-n-t-s). There is no motivation to think in terms of environ-

  mental architecture, and it’s even harder to imagine the residential

  buyer wants to use less water or energy or AC. Okay, in the residence

  they want some green lawn or something. But they will put a gate

  around it; they will use chemicals to keep it green . . . they will be

  anti-environment. This is why I am saying that my work is actual y

  anti- your thesis. 18

  A collection of key actor categories consistently organized architects’ narrations of the political economy of urban development in Mumbai. Here, the popular

  image of all urban development professions, the relationship between government

  and private sectors, and the ultimate room for choice and action which architects

  ascribed to themselves made the optimism and imperatives of responsible action

  that so characterized RSIEA’s good design ethos seem almost ripe for caricature.

  These descriptions echo, nuance, and in many ways return us to many of the basic

  points to which Laxmi Dashmukh al uded much earlier in the book. Each came,

  however, with the personal narratives that brought these categories to life as facilitators of, or obstacles to, doing environmental architecture—structural obstacles

  to ecology in practice. I turn now to some of the descriptions of choices architects faced, and discussions of how those choices resonated with their ideological imaginaries. These connected to the deeply personal, moral, and even familial logics

  through which RSIEA environmental architects described professional compro-

  mises between RSIEA training and ecology in practice.

  Perhaps the most prevalent figure in nearly every interview was that of the

  builder. Roundly despised, and often pointed to as the source of urban disorder in all its forms, the popular image of the builder in Mumbai is unquestionably negative. At the same time, many of India’s wealthiest and most powerful figures are

  themselves builders. Even as they may be regularly critiqued in the press, in activism, and in many aspects of everyday Mumbai life, the names of the city’s most

  prevalent builders are as known as any famous media or political figure, often with a mix of reverence and disgust.

  Darius works for one of these prominent builders, and so it was in conversa-

  tion with him that I was particularly interested in narrations of builders. One

  of our conversations took place on an evening when the day’s newspapers were

  saturated with reports of a threatened strike by the Builders’ Union. Our dis-

  cussion thus turned to his views on the strike and its potential, but this quickly turned to the broader role and image of large construction and development

  firms in Mumbai.

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  A Vocation in Waiting 147

  When I asked how he felt working for a firm with such a renowned, but also

  somewhat notorious, figure at its head, Darius shrugged. “Wel , he’s a builder,

  and . . . nine times out of ten, I think, if you ask people, “What do you think

  of a builder?” they’ll say, “they’re corrupt.” But in his view this image was

  unfair; whilst the processes by which construction and development proceed in

  Mumbai are anything but transparent, builders are nevertheless facilitating the

  provision of material development, he explained. “At the end of the day,” he said,

  “(builders) are doing a service and without them the nation would be pretty lost.

  (Builders) are at the forefront of everything, in the sense that without them the

  city wouldn’t work.” 19

  Expressing some confusion about what, precisely, a builder union was, not to

  mention its relative power, Darius replied:

  Everyone talks about a builder lobby, but it’s real y a big bad ghost because they don’t stand up for each other; there is no unity among builders. (I’m talking about the

  main firms, like) Lodha, Hiranandani, Raheja—these are the old names, and then

  you have newer ones like Peninsula. They were the ones who did Phoenix Mil s, so

  they revolutionized the entire building industry. They managed to convert one of the old mil s into a huge commercial district and this had never been done before. . . . It was amazing how they did it. The mill lands had been under litigation for thirty-odd years or forty-odd years and somehow they managed to twist the system, get the

  workers compensated—not wel , but they sort of got the problem to go away—and

  then they built Phoenix Mil s.

  Hoping to probe the idea that the well-known, and comprehensively studied, case

  of Phoenix Mil s could possibly have undergone such an almost magical trans-

  formation, I asked “do you mean to say that no one knows how they did it?” He continued:

  Look, there are a lot of loopholes. Indian law is written with vague intentions, so it’s completely up to interpretation. And I think it’s also partial y luck. So for instance, if you can get the right officer to interpret (a law) in a certain way, it’s all well and good and your project gets through. If you don’t get that—and an honest officer is a joke; there’s no such thing as an honest officer—you’re basical y working around the system. And the system is set up for you to work round it. If you try to do something through the legal channels, it will never get done, and the system is set up that way.

  You accept it, you move on. If you don’t accept it, you don’t survive.

  Darius’ response reinforced points that were echoed repeatedly in conversa-

  tions with environmental architects: the laws and regulations are never the actual medium for effective action in urban development, and “the system” is actual y

  designed in a way that invites “interpretation” and requires the capacity to shape that interpretation. To learn to see that system not only as it was, but to “accept it” and move in accordance with its choreography, was not just about practicing
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  environmental architecture; it was about survival itself.

  148 A Vocation in Waiting

  “What use is a Builder Union, then, if the process depends so much on subjec-

  tive interactions with officials?” I continued.

  Wel , for example, they (the Builder Union) have been trying to get rid of the new BMC commissioner. But it hasn’t worked. Everyone claims that the Builder Union

  is the strongest lobby in India and they push and change things whenever they

  want to. But see, it’s not the case. I think the Indian government has the ability to push back and keep them in check. The beauty of (his employer and head of the

  firm) is that he knows whose ears to whisper into; I think we get a three month

  warning before something is going to change, and we plan accordingly. So nor-

  mal y none of our projects get stopped, but even our projects over the last year have been stopped. This is real y unusual. Under this BMC commissioner, there

  has been no leeway. . . . The stoppage is for all the violations that just a few years ago were pretty standard. What used to happen was if you had done something illegal, and you were caught, you would be fined. But then you would be allowed to

  continue. This has stopped.

  What has changed, I asked, to allow for such a dramatic shift in enforcement

  norms? Why was the Builder Union having such a difficult time realizing their

  goal of “getting rid of” this most recent municipal commissioner?

  Yes, every municipal commissioner who has stood up to the builders in the past

  has been thrown out. But this time, I think he just has (the central government in) Delhi behind him. They claimed he wasn’t going to last a week, because in the past they haven’t. In the past they have been transferred out. But now I think the Congress government has had so many scams, between the Commonwealth Games and

  the Adarsh scam in Cuffe Parade, I mean they recently arrested a few people for

  that—and high up people. So he seems to be honest; they claim he’s honest. And in

  India you can get that: at the head, yes, the honest are not corrupt, but he cannot control his fifty other minions that are below him. Every one of those people is corrupt.