The Paradox of Missing the Boat

January 1997, Los Angeles International Airport.

I had hesitantly pointed to a “doughnut” resting amidst other tantalizing treats behind a spotless glass case that now had been marred by my oily fingerprint. “A bagel, you mean?,” the server had politely replied.

Carrying a suitcase full of spices, and $ 200, I was “fresh off the boat”. I knew right then that, despite my long time love-hate relationship with American culture, there was a lot that I didn’t know about America!

More than a decade later, I know the difference between a bagel and a doughnut. I have an Indian-American accent – one that endlessly amuses my friend in India.

He wondered if he had missed the boat during my early days in America. Now, not a day goes by when I don’t read about India Rising! or America Sliding!

I catch him just as he is headed out with his 5-year old to the driving range near his swanky new apartment in Gurgaon, an outsourcing hub outside Delhi. His son can’t wait to start skating lessons at the rink nearby! No such amenities adjoin my tiny, rental unit in Berkeley, California.

He works in a multi-national architecture firm, which spews out glitzy offices and malls, to populate the townships his wife, an urban planner, churns out at the frenetic rate of nearly one per week!

These shining glass towers of India’s new economy are grossly ill-suited to its blasting summers. Air-conditioning them squeezes India’s power resources.

In 2001, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency was formed to initiate a Building Energy Code for India. Ironically, the task of drafting the code that buildings, such as those my friend designs, will have to meet, was “outsourced” to my San Francisco employer.

Why were Americans chosen over competent and cheaper energy-efficiency experts in India? I felt chagrined! Perhaps, American consultants, and an American-style code, were not entirely inappropriate for these cookie-cutter boxes – no different from those crowding the urban downtowns and office parks of America, and quite different from older Indian architecture.

Indigenous Indian architecture’s response to local climate and materials minimized the energy needed for cooling and transporting materials. It also strengthened grassroots economy by keeping it local.

In contrast, these transplanted resource guzzlers demand additional energy to import materials, equipment, and expensive sustainable design consultants, such as my employer, till India has enough personnel and resources to meet the requirements of a Western-style code.

However, India didn’t need a Western-style code to make “green” buildings. Two years before the draft code was adopted, India gave the world its “greenest” building at the time. In 2004, the Confederation of Indian Industry’s Green Business Centre became the most sustainable building under LEED, a voluntary American sustainable design rating system, and adopted worldwide.

The code was adopted to encourage this practice, but its effectiveness is hostage to India’s beleaguering bureaucratic system, whose middlemen and bribes make it possible to flout any well-intentioned mandate.

For example, the structural mandate of the National Building Code is intentionally over-designed to accommodate its routine circumvention by greedy contractors. But buildings continue to collapse and kill people. An unreliable judicial system has done little to discourage this evil practice. In a ludicrous twist of fate, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency has been one of the chief hurdles to the code’s timely adoption.

While the energy code is a good step towards achieving a sustainable growth, an equitable distribution of resources is just as critical.

The outsourcing hubs suck power and water away from India’s villages, creating droughts. Globalization has also forced industrial farming practices and cash crops that strip the soil of nutrients. It indentures farmers to expensive, non-renewable seeds from large corporations.

When these induced droughts yeild a poor harvest, these indebted farmers commit suicide. Failed farms, increased cost of living, and tantalizing Western products have induced greater migration into cities. Once here, a growing economic disparity pushes the urban poor to crime to stay afloat.

In a country, where two-thirds of the population grows food to sustain the beneficiaries of globalization, supporting these farmers is imperative for long-term success. A return to small subsistence farms, mixed farming practices, renewable farm-generated seeds, and a strong infrastructure, is a good start, along with reliable bureaucracy and judiciary.

Aristotle believed that “the most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control”, while Gandhi believed in building the nation bottom-up.

India’s economic success, global visibility and confidence, have definitely empowered the middle-class to demand an investment in India’s villages, which would secure the comfort and opportunities that, for years, Indians went to find in the West.

For little children, that means skating and swimming. For young architects, that means a car, an uninterrupted supply of hot water, a kitchen without rambunctious rats, a roof that keeps the rain out – and the ironically resource intensive luxury of golf!

“Have a nice day!” says my friend, as he heads out to putt. Oceans away from me, he has become more American, too! Just as we have morphed into our semi-American identities, India will need to seize the best of this seamless continental transfer to create a culture that is uniquely and enduringly Indian – exactly as it has done through its long history of invasions.

Luxury Resort

Location: Jaisalmer, India.

Aditi Raychoudhury. Site Model. Luxury Resort, Jaisalmer, India. 1994.

BACKGROUND:
A luxury, sustainable, desert resort?? Usually we don’t associate any of these words with a harsh desolate desert, but Jaisalmer, is home to luxurious palaces, as well as a stellar example of sustainable urban design.

With such time-proven sustainable design strategies at hand and modern technology, the proposed resort design set out to achieve these seemingly disparate goals.

What makes sustainable design in the desert particularly challenging is that -
- The sun and heat, plentiful in the desert, have to be kept out.
- Cooling elements such as trees and water are in short supply.

But the city of Jaisalmer, has dispelled the notion that an abundant supply of water and vegetation is necessary to create a vibrant, beautiful and – the now trendy phrase – sustainable design.

Jaisalmer:
When Jaisal Singh built his new capital city, Jaisalmer, in 1156 A.D. on the western fringes of India’s Thar desert, he did not think of damming and diverting rivers to sustain his home and his people, as we do now, to feed our golf fixes and desert farmlands.

Jaisalmer, India. Source: Wikipedia.

Instead, the city, and the proposed design use elements such as

- thick masonry walls
- narrow streets
- assymmetric volumes
- contiguous low-rise courtyard dwellings
- cantilevered building floors
-screened windows;

(elements also used in the proposed design along with -

-wind scoops,
-wind towers,)

to perform the double duty of creating a dynamic built-scape along with achieving a milder micro-climate within the walled city, and proposed design complex, and cooler and relatively stable temperatures inside the buildings, by incorporating-

-Thermal Lag
-Shade
-Ventilation

Proposed Design:
In addition to incorporating existing passive cooling strategies, the proposed design re-interpreted the city, as a cluster of air-conditioned guest blocks on the north east ridge of the site, and Jaisalmer’s surrounding adobe villages of Sam, as an earth-sheltered “village” of non-air-conditioned guest rooms. Placing the public services in between the “city” and the “village” of the resort facilitates access, transition and operation.

Dense Urban Fabric of Jaisalmer with Low-rise Courtyard Dwellings. Source: Google Maps

Aditi Raychoudhury. Site Plan. Luxury Resort, Jaisalmer, India. 1994.

PASSIVE COOLING STRATEGIES:

Thermal Lag:
Thick masonry walls of local sandstone in the lower floors were built as security devices in Jaisalmer, but they also reduce conductive heat gain by delaying the transfer of heat from the outside to the inside. Heavy materials such as water, adobe, stone, and concrete take much longer to heat up and keeps the interior surfaces cooler for a much longer time than lighter materials such as wood. This phenomenon is known as thermal lag. The principle of thermal lag works differently from insulation, which reduces the heat conducted instantaneously to the interior surface due to temperature differentials between the inside and the outside, in that it actually creates a time delay in transferring heat from the outside to the inside. The extent of the time delay depends on the heat capacity and thickness of the material.

Density, Specific Heat and Thermal Mass of a Range of Materials. Recreated from www.ecospecifier.org

In Jaisalmer, the thickness of the walls (up to 4’ in some places) along with the heat capacity of the local sandstone, delay the heat transfer to the inside by 8-12 hours, so that the low night-time temperatures reach the internal surfaces around the middle of the day, cooling the inside air down.

Thermal Lag. Source: CLEAR.

Thick masonry walls of local sandstone in the lower floors also aid in keeping the building interiors cool by damping the diurnal range of temperature. The degree by which the material dampens the diurnal swing is called the decrement factor. In Jaisalmer, the masonry walls dampen the external temperature extremes of over 43 deg C during the day and near freezing at night, to a reasonably steady internal temperature, with little variation between day and night time temperatures.

Impact of Thickness on Decrement Factor. Source: CLEAR.

In the proposed design, the air-conditioned guest rooms have stone masonry combined with insulation to reduce thermal load on the air-conditioning systems, while the non – air conditioned rooms are made of thick walls of rammed earth and are partially earth-bermed to take advantage of the earth’s thermal mass and transfer its stable temperatures to the interior of the guest rooms.

Shading:

One of the obvious steps to minimizing direct solar heat gain is shade, shade, shade and more shade. This is achieved by creating a seemingly erratic mix of solids, voids (courtyards), and overhangs, which creates self-shading along with a dynamic cityscape.

Clustered Buildings. Jaisalmer, India

Aditi Raychoudhury. Model. Luxury Resort. Jaisalmer, India. 1994.

At the building level in Jaisalmer, and the proposed design, the built volume gets progressively lighter from the ground up. Unlike the lower floors, which have thicker walls for thermal lag and are completely shaded by the upper cantilevers, the indented and intricately carved stone facade is a clever adaptation to create a finned surface that reduces direct solar heat gain by creating pockets of self-shade for cooling, while losing heat from the entire surface at night, causing a net increase in the relative surface area for heat-loss over heat gain.

Floors Cantilevered for Shade. Jaisalmer, India

Ventilation:
At night, ventilation is the primary mode for heat loss.

Air movement is just as necessary as cooling to achieve thermal comfort, in extremely hot places such as Jaisalmer. Ventilation extends what is called the thermal comfort range, by increasing the rate if evaporation from the skin, and heat removal through convective heat transfer from the building.

Observed and Predicted Indoor Comfort Temperatures RP-884 Database, With and Without Natural Ventilation. Recreated from: Brager and de Dear, Climate, Comfort & Natural Ventilation: A New Adaptive Comfort Standard for ASHRAE Standard 55. Center for Environmental Design Research, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1839 USA

Adaptive Comfort Range. Recreated from ASHRAE Std - 55.

Pressure differentials created between completely shaded and partially shades open spaces in Jaisalmer and the proposed design, induce air currents – through the courtyards, buildings and streets. At the building level, courtyards, wind pavilions and the intricately carved fenestration screens induce air movement while filtering the sand particles out.

Carved Facade, Jaisalmer, India.

Aditi Raychoudhury. Plan of Guestroom Cluster. Luxury Resort, Jaisalmer, India. 1994.

In addition, the curved top of the wind-shaft in the proposed design creates a low pressure zone that draws warm air out of the room while drawing in cooler air from the shaded courts.

Aditi Raychoudhury. Section Through Guest Room Cluster. Luxury Resort, Jaisalmer, India. 1994.

Aditi Raychoudhury. Section Through Guest Room Cluster (2). Luxury Resort, Jaiselmer, India. 1994.

All the non-air-conditioned rooms were earth-sheltered and ventilated through wind scoops, whose slanted opening is designed to capture the desert winds, and the wetted charcoal mesh filters and cools the wind, before it enters the earth-sheltered room. The warm air of the outside assists in drawing the cool air out of the room through ventilators placed high above the room.

Aditi Raychoudhury. Section Through Non-Airconditioned Guest Room. Luxury Resort, Jaisalmer. 1994.

Aditi Raychoudhury. Detail of Cooling Mesh and Charcoal in Non-Airconditioned Guest Room. Luxury Resort, Jaisalmer. 1994.

Aditi Raychoudhury. Detail of Roof for Passive Cooling in Non-Airconditioned Guest Room. Luxury Resort, Jaisalmer. 1994.

The landscape uses a small water channel to unify the space and cool the air before it is drawn into the system of courts, a drip irrigation system and native plantation, to conserve water, and provide some relief from the hot desert sun.

Hauz Khas Cafe And Gallery

Location: New Delhi, India.

Aditi Raychoudhury. SITE PLAN. Cafe And Gallery, Hauz Khas, New Delhi. 1991.

Allauddin Khilji built a gigantic tank for the residents of Delhi in 1269 AD. A century later the reservoir was restored by Firoz Shah Tughlaq, who added a small complex of tombs and a traditional Islamic school along an eastern embankment. The traditional urban village surrounding the monuments, has undergone rapid transformation to accommodate designer stores. Orienting itself to the numerous staircases, the café and art gallery complex is inspired by the garden like walled setting of the surrounding architecture.

Aditi Raychoudhury. PLAN. Cafe And Gallery, Hauz Khas, New Delhi. 1991.

The building is contained within a square, a springing point for monumental Islamic architecture, and broken up into enclosed, formal outdoor and indoor spaces, contained within the unified geometrical space.

Aditi Raychoudhury. MODEL. Cafe And Gallery, Hauz Khas, New Delhi. 1991.

Aditi Raychoudhury. Cafe and Gallery at Hauz Khas, New Delhi. 1991.

The walls are constructed out of local quartzite, random rubble masonary, which provide thermal mass to stabilize the extremes of temperature, and reinforces the building’s connection to its surroundings. Enclosed courtyards become outdoor eating, and exhibit areas, which the plantation of native trees and shrubs provide color, living sculpture, a cool microclimate, and cross ventilation.