44 FUTURARC FUTURARC 45

The FuturArc InterviewYu Kongjian, China &Ashok Lall, India By Y-Jean Mun-Delsalle & Dr Nirmal Kishnani

46 FUTURARC FUTURARC 4746 FUTURARC

Yu Kongjian, China In conversation with Y-Jean Mun-DelsalleA major figure of contemporary Chinese landscape architecture and urban design, Yu Kongjian has stirred controversy with his ideas of reinventing established patterns while staying closely linked to the cultural reality, and inspired designers to seek out new ecological ways of thinking. He proposes a return to nature and reconnecting with one’s roots as farmers and herdsmen where landscape as Ecological Infrastructure (EI) becomes a cost-free provider of goods and services for urban communities. He sees this as a ‘negative approach’, where cities are built based on EI, which provide critical, free ecosystem services, with the integration of pedestrian and bicycle paths, cultural heritage, recreation and daily use by ordinary people.

Walking the talk, Yu founded his own firm, Turenscape, in 1998 and is its president and principal designer. His practice has been awarded numerous international design awards for its ecologically- and culturally-sensitive projects, including eight American Society of Landscape Architects Awards, the 2009 ULI Global Award for Excellence and the World’s Best Landscape Award at the 2011 World Architecture Festival. Yu has also produced and financed a wide range of pedagogical publications to promote new urban landscape aesthetics that are productive and functional.

YM: Describe your beginnings in architecture and your career path.YK: I was born in 1963 and spent my childhood in a village in Southern China during the Red Wave of the Cultural Revolution. My family was classified as ‘non-poor peasants’, namely ‘Bad Rich and Landlord’ (but actually poor farmers), thus we were humiliated and punished. I learned how to survive in an unfair society, but at the same time to enjoy nature and farming, which were the only fair things in my daily life where deeds were rewarded.

Ironically, in 1980, thanks to Deng Xiaoping’s open policy, I was selected (as one of 60 nationwide, passing the harshest national examinations) to learn how to design gardens with strange rockeries and water (at the Landscape Gardening Department of Beijing Forestry University), for pleasure, which had nothing to do with survival, where visual and aesthetic appeal were the dominant criteria, which was totally different from what I had experienced as a poor farmer. So I decided to search for a new way of dealing with land and people.

I pursued graduate studies from 1984 to 1992. During this period of time, I was able to access English publications, which were very limited due to the government’s restrictive import policy. I found a totally different definition of landscape architecture, which was much broader and fundamentally different from what I had learnt. Then I went to Harvard’s Graduate School of Design to pursue my Doctor of Design under Professor Carl Steinitz (landscape and regional planner), Richard Forman (landscape ecologist) and Stephen Ervin (GIS expert), focusing on an ecological approach to landscape planning and design. I was determined to come back to China to change its landscape after my education at Harvard.

In addition to various new theories, methods and paradigms I learnt at Harvard, I considered ecological security to be the big issue for China’s future development, so I focused particularly on spatial planning and design methodology based on the ‘Ecological Security Pattern’ (a term I coined in my doctoral dissertation), meaning identifying landscape elements (or ecosystems), locations and spatial configurations that were critical to safeguarding ecological processes. The whole idea was about how to safeguard ecological security patterns using strategic patterns and minimum land, while allowing urban development to be carried out in the rest of the space—to pursue smart protection and smart development at the same time.

In 1996, I was invited by the Chinese Ministry of Education, Peking University and several universities to go to China to give lectures. I travelled from Southern China all the way to Beijing. I felt the assault: urbanisation picking up the speed, streets being widened, trees being cut in order to make way for urban development, rivers being channelised, cultural heritage and old buildings being wiped out, wetlands being filled in, air and water pollution, and the new cities and buildings were just so ugly and totally out of scale. I visited my home village and what I saw was the total opposite of what I had learnt about a good city and a good landscape. The white sand creek where I had spent my childhood had been totally polluted, trees were wiped out for sand quarrying, the fish were gone, what used to be crystal-clear stream water was now black and smelt bad. I immediately sensed that opportunities were coming for me to play a role and decided to go back to China to make changes. I joined Peking University to establish the programme and research centre of Landscape Architecture and Planning, teaching students, lecturing to mayors and talking about the right way to build cities and design landscapes, trying to heal the earth of China.

People began to ask, “Maybe what you are talking and lecturing about are right, but is healing China really

1 The reuse of docks at Zhongshan Shipyard Park

project news main feature futurarc interview futurarc showcase projects people commentary happenings books products

For this ‘bumper’ issue FuturArc especially juxtaposes a pair of interviews—recorded separately by Editor-in-Chief Dr Nirmal Kishnani and our Europe correspondent Y-Jean Mun-Delsalle—with two prominent architects and advocates of sustainable architecture Ashok Lall and Yu Kongjian. Based in two of the biggest and most rapidly developing countries in Asia, they comment on the state of the city in India and China respectively, and how a sustainable future requires a sense of environmental wisdom and a paradigm shift in redefining urban design and development.

possible?” So I decided to do what I mean and prove what is right. I started Turenscape in 1998, one year after I returned to China, starting the practice in addition to teaching in the classroom. Turenscape literally means ‘dirt man’s landscape’, or ‘rural bumpkin’s landscape’, teasing myself as a farmer and trying to go back to the harmonious relationship between man and nature.

One of my first projects was to do the master plan for the city of Zhongshan in Guangdong Province, offered by the mayor who had listened to my lecture and invited me to plan an ecological city. This planning project led to another design project, to design a park on the brownfield of a shipyard, which was established in 1953 and went bankrupt in 1999. Instead of designing a conventional ornamental park or traditional Chinese garden after wiping out the dirty and rusted building and structure, I successfully convinced the mayor and planning committee to stop the demolition of the old shipyard and take a different approach by preserving, reusing and recycling the industrial structures, and ecologically restoring the site. The design proposal was almost killed by the evaluation committee formed by experts from all over the nation, but supported by the mayor and local chief planner.

Two years later, it was built and turned out to be, arguably, the first contemporary landscape design project in China, a landmark project different from the traditional Chinese approach, which gained me a reputation as a rebel of Chinese tradition, and was hated by some and loved by others.

YM: How does Turenscape’s philosophy of fostering harmony between people and the land translate into the architecture you create and address the issue of survival in modern-day China faced with environmental problems and scarce natural resources?YK: In order to achieve harmony between man and nature, we need a revolution: the ‘Big-Foot Revolution’. For more than a thousand years, young Chinese girls were forced to bind their feet to be able to marry citified elites. Healthy, natural ‘big’ feet were considered rustic and rural. Unhealthy, deformed and citified small feet, deprived of functionality and malodorous, were considered ‘beautiful’. Foot binding was appreciated as a rite of urbanity. Urbanisation therefore began with a highly privileged class that sacrificed function for ornamental and cosmetic values. This same ‘Little-Foot’ value system has been used for thousands of years by the privileged urban minority to build cities and landscapes.

By definition, ‘Little-Foot Urbanism’ is the art of gentrification and cosmetics. Its superficial condition replaces the messy, fertile and functional landscapes associated with healthy, productive people. Today, we bind natural feet in the city with fashionable, tiny high-heeled shoes, and build a 500-year flood-control dike made of concrete to surround the city and keep it distant from the water. We build a fully-controlled storm water management system that does not allow the reinfiltration of water to the aquifer before being flushed into the ocean; we replace native ‘messy’ and productive shrubs and crops with fancy flowers that bear no fruit, support no other species and serve no function other than pleasing human beings; and we uproot hardy, wild grasses and replace them with smooth, ornamental lawns that consume tonnes of water.

1

4

5

48 FUTURARC FUTURARC 49

futurarc interview

‘Little-Foot Urbanism’ is a path to death. In China alone, 18 million people are urbanised each year, immigrating to the city from the countryside. These people strive to be ‘urbane’, to be gentrified, to move away from natural functionality and a healthy, productive rural life. When poor, developing countries following ‘Little-Foot Urbanism’ encounter the ‘American Jumbo Dream’, the scenario gets even worse. Witness China and India, which pursue the American dream of jumbo cars and houses, and whatever jumbo else. Thereafter, the land can be seen as a little donkey with a heavy burden: China has only 7 percent of the world’s natural resources of arable land and fresh water, with the need to feed 22 percent of the world’s population. It can be imagined where ‘Little-Foot Urbanism with Jumbo Body’ will lead China: two-thirds of China’s 662 cities have a shortage of water; 75 percent of the nation’s surface water is polluted; 64 percent of cities’ underground water is polluted; one-third of the national population is in danger of drinking polluted water; 50 percent of wetlands disappeared in the past 30 years. How can we survive in the future?

It’s time for change, to lose the binds on the feet. ‘Ecological Urbanism’ is the art of survival. At this moment, two strategies have to be adopted to provide a guide for sustainable cities in the future. Urban development based on EI across scales is the spatial strategy of urban development planning that requires planners to understand the land as a living system, to identify EI that will guide urban development. EI is defined as a structural landscape network composed of critical landscape elements and spatial patterns. EI also has strategic significance in safeguarding the integrity and identity of natural and cultural landscapes, which in turn secure sustainable ecosystem services. Using a minimum of space, EI will safeguard the following four critical eco-services: (1) provide food production and clean water; (2) regulate climate, disease, flood and drought; (3) support nutrient cycles and habitats for native plants and animal species; (4) support culture, associated with spiritual and recreational benefits. A new aesthetic is required to allow the operation and appreciation of ecological urbanism: ‘Big-Foot’ aesthetics, beautiful big feet based on ecological awareness and environmental ethics, as an alternative to ‘Little-Foot’ aesthetics.

YM: What is your vision of a Chinese city of the future?YK: Over the past 30 years, China has successfully urbanised 500 million of its total population of 1.3 billion. China’s urbanisation has come at the cost of losing some of its most fertile land, polluting 75 percent of its surface water and tearing down most of its old cities because of its unwise spatial strategy for urban development. China’s urbanisation is on an unsustainable track. What a greatly contradictory situation when the top priorities of urbanisation and development are given the most productive fertile land in floodplains and basins, which are ecologically the least suitable for cities. Where are the other 500 million new immigrants (in addition to over 600 million urban residents today) to go to in another 30 years from now? Theoretically, 2040 is when the Chinese population will peak at 1.5 billion and the urbanisation rate will reach 75 percent. Where should China build, arguably, hundreds or even thousands of new cities to accommodate such a big population, a population larger than the US and Russia together, almost equivalent to the population of the European Union?

My proposed strategy is to build cities at the foothills between the mountains and the lowlands, leaving the productive floodplains and basins alone for agriculture and ecological recovery. High-speed train technology, the boom of a promising service industry and the new economy demand a better natural environment and minimum environmental impact. Furthermore, the aging population (it is expected that 30 percent of the national pollution will be older than 60 in 2040) is looking for a slower-paced lifestyle. The proposed foothills strategy would make all of these goals feasible, both regionally and locally.

Regionally, new cities would be planned along the foothills of great plains and around big basins. Mainland China has a clear terrain sloping from west to east, forming a flight of three steppes. This topographic pattern allows new cities to be built along the foothills of the first steppe and along the edge of major basins, which is

2 The idea of the “skeleton tower” is to peel off the cement of the existing water tower and show the inside structure 3 The Red Box 4 Bird’s eye view of the park 5 The rust rails reused as a central access to the park, along with wild native grasses

32

FUTURARC 51

not too far away from existing main cities in the plains. Thus, economic efficiency would not be lost. These cities on the foothills would use minimum productive agricultural land down on the plains, avoid flooding problems and have the benefits of access to forested mountains and quality fresh water.

Each foothill city or town would have one or more centres formed around light-rail stations, which would be connected to high-speed train stations. In the current urbanisation situation, cities are planned and built right upon the floodplain. New cities could instead be planned at the edge of the plains, on the foothills, to form a ring or ‘necklace of cities’, instead of a sprawling ‘pancake’. These cities on the chain or necklace would be constructed with the most advanced knowledge about ecological urbanism and sustainability, such as TOD (transit-oriented development), mixed-use, high-density and pedestrian-friendly policies.

Each individual town or city on the chain or necklace of cities would be an independent satellite city, with a population of around 100,000 to 300,000, thriving on service industries, especially healthcare, education, consulting, tourism and information. Each city would occupy around 500 to 1,500 hectares on the foothills, backed by mountains looking down the plain, with green corridors and ravines in between for water and biological processes. The chain or necklace of cities would not be meant to replace existing megacities, but rather act as an improvement of current urbanisation.

YM: How do you design for China’s population explosions where a city’s population may double within just a few years? Does this mean that China is doomed to build cookie-cutter developments quickly, cheaply and shoddily as it doesn’t have the luxury of time—the price of the rapid pace of progress where developers are compelled to build as fast and as profitably as possible?YK: Maybe, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be this way. It is a complicated issue. Urbanism is a way of living, a form of social structure and a reflection of values and aesthetics. Local governments’ instant development and GDP persuasion, mayors’ enthusiasm for taking credit for new built cities and buildings, developers’ profit-searching and the architectural profession’s backwardness. Remember, we do not have enough architectural education due to 10 years of the Cultural Revolution, so urban planning and design really began in 1980 when urbanisation picked up speed, and college students becoming chief architects for a whole city was a normal situation. We are not prepared for such fast urbanisation; we did not have the same kind of preparation as the Renaissance (in terms of art education, civilisation, sense of beauty, sense of quality, sense of identity, sense of space and even sense of scale) in Europe. We basically jumped from an agricultural society, where 85 percent were still farmers, when the nation was moving into cities. Almost no one has been prepared to build cities. I belong to the first professionally educated generation in design after the Cultural Revolution when no schools were teaching properly. And, after all, mayors’ power is the main force for building cities.

YM: Empty buildings and ghost cities suggest that China’s building boom may have passed its peak. What happens if the social, cultural and economic environment cannot support massive urban developments after they are built?YK: So far, I did not get involved in any of these ghost city planning and design. I worry about the future cost of urban management. Overall, China is underbuilt (some cities are just rare cases due to their misconception of location and development). The major cities in China will still grow. Beijing is likely to double its population in the next 20 years—up to 40 million. The management cost for infrastructure and energy-efficient buildings, particularly cosmetic public facilities, such as the Bird’s Nest, Water Cube and thousands of these kinds of sports and cultural centres, will be a huge burden for taxpayers, as soon as the city stops expanding, meaning the government loses 50 to 70 percent of its revenue from land sales. That is one reason I try hard to promote low-maintenance public landscapes and infrastructure, including EI that will provide free services for the city.

YM: The first wave of cities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen were built quickly, mistakes were made and buildings have been torn down, demonstrating that buildings aren’t always permanent in China. Considering the pace of growth, how can architecture in China be sustainable economically, ecologically and socially?YK: That is a hard question. China now has 40 billion square metres of buildings, and only 1 percent is energy-efficient, meaning all these buildings may be torn down in the next 20 to 30 years due to energy costs. And the construction of these buildings is so poor, plus so many ugly buildings. Bad and changeable planning is another reason for the demolition and rebuilding of cities. After all, both demotion and building are accountable for GDP growth—so wasteful you might think. We need a ‘Big-Foot Revolution’ in order to practise sustainable urbanism and architecture.

YM: What do you think of Green building rating systems like LEED and other eco-labels, standards and certifications?YK: Without credible and trustful independent professional associations, all standards and certifications will eventually become fake and harmful labels. I just don’t believe any power-centred rating systems can work; it will only give some government officials new ways to collect tips.

YM: What can you get away with in architecture in China with its top-down system that you could never do in the West?YK: You can get away with wasting taxpayers’ money (public money) by building something useless but that the mayors or decision-makers love, like the CCTV or the hundreds of useless opera houses and museums in Chinese cities that you will not be able to build in any other part of the world.

futurarc interview

With hundreds of new towns sprouting up in China over the past decade, many of these so-called eco-cities are actually poorly planned and designed, with little thought given to environmental and ecological concerns. The new town of Wulijie, however, proposes an ecologically sound and culturally-sensitive urbanism that provides key city services, including storm water management, food production, habitats for biodiversity, cultural and spiritual experiences and mobility across the landscape. Green infrastructure is used to deliver the goods and services the city and its residents need. Thus, rather than taming nature, it is used to the city’s advantage: floods come and go to the benefit of the city, native species coexist with humans and nature’s beauty is appreciated and respected.

Wulijie is located in the eastern part of Wuhan. To its south and east is the protected, high water-quality Liang Zhi Hu Lake, to which the water from Wulijie is drained. Site elevations vary between 15 and 100 metres, with a landform of rolling hills, small basins and ponds of different sizes that catch storm water and help alleviate both floods and droughts. Built to accommodate rapid urbanisation, it will house 100,000 residents, of which 10 percent will be current locals and 90 percent immigrants working in Optics Valley and the new town.

The main design concept is to use landscape as EI to integrate various natural and cultural processes to frame the city, and to provide diverse ecosystem services for residents. Integration and connectivity of natural, biological and cultural processes are of vital importance.

A water-based EI will organise the town, designed around existing water systems and landforms. The key functions are to retain and clean stormwater. Different rainfall amounts are simulated to determine the area and pattern of the pond/wetland system so that all stormwater will be retained on site and will have little impact on the regional water system. This will reduce the construction costs of underground drainage pipes and preserve or create habitat for native wildlife and wetland vegetation. Public spaces are integrated with the EI. Three levels of green and water corridors are designed to accommodate various functions. The main corridors are 120 to 150 metres wide and will catch run-off from the whole area during the severest storms. Secondary corridors are 60 to 90 metres

Wulijie Eco-City

Project DataProject Name Begin with an Ecological Infrastructure: The Wulijie Eco-CityLocationWulijie, Jiangxia District of Wuhan, Hubei Province, China StatusUnder constructionExpected Completion2020Size10 square kilometres of urban core; 22 square kilometres with surroundings Urban Planning FirmTurenscapePrincipal PlannerYu KongjianImages/PhotosTurenscape

6 Rendering of the first-level green corridor at a typical site, with housing development along both sides. The greenways have the function of storm water retention and filtration, biological production, recreation, and pedestrian paths 7 The second-level green corridor at a typical site with mixed-use, high density development along both sides 8 The master plan of the new town: landscape leads the way, an alternative approach to urbanism

wide, and these will catch run-off from the subdivisions of the watershed during medium rainstorms. The third level corridors are 20 to 30 metres wide and will catch the water of small storms.

A network of pedestrian trails and bicycle paths will make the town completely walkable and allow residents to commute and have recreational experiences in the green space, while still being served by a transit system and roads. The town will use the EI to help people move around. The maximum walking distance from any corner of the town to a bus station will be 600 metres, and all residents will be able to reach the green network within 5 minutes.

Land overlooking EI will be given priority for residential development. The eco-friendly, low-carbon landscape and architecture will create a new aesthetic environment and lifestyle, with vegetation in the green space around EI focused on native biodiversity, low maintenance and productivity. Buildings will have roof gardens and living green façades.

6

107

8

Road Network

+

Building

+

Pedestrian

+

Bicycle Path

+

Green Corridors

+

Water System

01. Water body02. Green corridor03. Commercial corridor04. Bicycle path05. Highspeed rail50 FUTURARC

52 FUTURARC FUTURARC 53

Ashok B Lall, India In conversation with Dr Nirmal Kishnani

Based in New Delhi, Ashok B Lall is the principal of Ashok B Lall Architects, and visiting professor at the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (GGSIU). Lall studied architecture and fine arts at the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom and also studied at the Architectural Association (AA), London, where he obtained his diploma in 1970.

His practice was established in 1981 and has won a number of awards for architectural competitions. It has executed projects for educational research institutions in many parts of India, and specialises in low-energy sustainable architecture. Recent projects include the Indian Institute of Health Management Research, Jaipur; Sehgal Foundation, Gurgaon; and the Development Alternatives World Headquarters, New Delhi.

He is actively engaged in the development of the architectural curricula for the Indian context, and contributes regularly to national professional journals in architecture. He is a member of the Committee for PhD Studies, School of Planning and Architecture and external Examiner for London Metropolitan University. He was a member of the Asia Pacific and global juries of the Holcim Awards competition 2005/06, and head of the Asia Pacific jury for the Holcim Awards competition in 2008. He was also a member of the Asia Pacific jury for the same competition in 2011. In addition to membership of various professional bodies, he is an active advocate of sustainable architecture in India.

NK: Are you finding a fundamental problem in the way cities are growing in India compared to when you started your career in the seventies? AL: Compactness is being misinterpreted as verticality. Everybody says, “You’ve got to go vertical, that’s the only way you can do it; it’s the most efficient thing to do. Go to Singapore. Go to Hong Kong. Look at New York.” But they are talking about three cities in the world, what about the cities all over Europe? In a research project on energy conservation for the middle income group housing—which is now a big market all over India—we did surveys on the trends in energy consumption and found that for those living in eight to 10-storey high buildings, about 15 percent of the energy bill is attributable to lifts and pumps. Your energy costs, just because you’re living in a multi-storey building, goes up by 15 percent. That is very clear. We did another study, looking at the structural systems going from four-storey buildings, made with carefully designed load bearing structure, to 12 storeys high buildings using reinforced concrete frame structure. We found that the embodied energy in the latter was twice that of the four-storey structure. My argument is that if we want, in this next decade, to cut down our carbon emissions or to not let them rise so swiftly, we have to look at building typologies. On the counts of operational energy, urban heat island and embodied energy, we are saying that you need high density, low-rise developments. We need to study what kind of densities we can get. We need total system studies on what we spend on the height of a building.

LEED doesn’t actually credit you for being energy conserving, it credits you for being energy efficient. I think that’s a serious flaw in the way this thing is run.

Compactness is being misinterpreted as verticality.

out meteorological data, and looked at the patterns of rainfall, and worked out an optimal size of rainwater tank that you can build and found that this will take care of the 50 percent of the water demand for the air-conditioning system. We calculated the peak load for running ceiling fans, all spaces have ceiling fans. And if that’s comfortable enough, you don’t need any chilling. We calculated the total energy load, and designed the photovoltaic array on the rooftop with one and a half days’ worth of energy storage. We found that the building could draw 25 kilowatts from it. We found that at the worst, over two years, we’d never drew more than 14.5 kilowatts! Because of the load diversity, the building is not really using its capacity fully. When the second block is built, it’ll share this photovoltaic array.

We told our clients we were not going to use any aluminium, that’d we’d use local teak wood instead. We sourced this from government-controlled forests that are managed. Even though we documented this it was not accepted by LEED because it was not FSC certified. But we found out being FSC certified meant that we’d have to bring the timber from Canada or from somewhere else. So we decided against this.

They didn’t give us any credits for this. They didn’t give us any credit for bringing down the embodied energy in the building either. We have done this by not using aluminium, reducing the amount of glass, using earth block masonry for walls. But the LEED system does not think of that as an aspect of design.

futurarc interview

NK: Are you finding an audience for this argument? Are people listening to this?AL: Yes they are beginning to. The Indian Bureau of Energy Efficiency is interested. We have also argued that the next bomb that will hit us on the energy front is the air-conditioning of homes. So far it’s been air-conditioning of public buildings and commercial buildings. But now our homes are changing because people can afford one air-conditioning unit for each bedroom. You start with one, then you put two and so on. In the Delhi climate we are spending something like 80 to 100 kilowatt hours per square metre per year. Homes that have three air-conditioners are already at 140. This means that residential buildings are poorly designed for air-conditioning. So we have to anticipate the increased demand for air-conditioning. Part of this research project is on how to design for future air-conditioning in buildings and what are the alternative strategies.

First, all passive strategies must be incorporated: orientation shading, design of ventilation and insulation. Second, work out strategies for ventilation and evaporative cooling in dry climates, which are compatible with urban conditions of noise, as well as pollution. The idea that you can simply open the windows because it’s cooler outside is not working anymore because there is too much noise and pollution outside. What you really now need is an exhaust fan which draws air from different parts or from the periphery of the building, filters and cools it with an evaporative system. This is another area of research that we are working on. That too is attracting interest. People are beginning to understand that air-conditioning is going to be the next big consumer of energy.

NK: One of your projects that I’d like to discuss is the IRRAD building, which attained a LEED Platinum rating. The quest for this rating would have imposed certain conditions on the design team. Were you entirely comfortable with this? AL: It so happened that this particular project is for an NGO. This NGO is founded by a biotechnologist, an agricultural scientist who made his money in America setting up a seed company. He has very high ideals, he wants to serve the country, but in his outlook he is very American. To do things properly, we needed to have an external agency to tell us if we were doing it right or wrong. He asked us to take on the LEED system. He didn’t say if it should be Platinum or Gold, there was no such target; we were just to subject ourselves to this assessment.

The project started out modestly. Mid way, the clients decided that they wanted to go full steam ahead. They started asking questions about what more could be done. We had worked out a passive cooling system that relied on thermal mass. The client prompted us on rainwater and renewable energy. We took 9 10

9 & 10 The Development World Alternatives Headquarters, New Delhi

Images by Ashok Lall

FUTURARC 55

NK: Are you saying then that the LEED system is not entirely suited for India?AL: No, it’s not. We told the clients that it’s a waste of money. LEED, for instance places a huge emphasis on indoor air quality because of the American experience of poor indoor air quality. We were designing a building that is a mixed-mode building where for much of the year you’ll not have the air-conditioning on, you’ll open the windows and so on. According to the LEED system, you have to, first of all, have very fine filters. The filters have to be so fine that you have to have oversized fans to push the air through. You have to have sensors, which will then automatically operate the fresh air intake. We told our clients that it’s not worth chasing because it doesn’t make sense. We did not chase stuff that we thought was not realistic or suitable to our situation. The overall framework—I would say the theoretical framework—is fine; it’s the emphasis put on certain aspects of technology that I think are not suited to India.

NK: In the larger context of India, LEED has become the de facto benchmark of what is considered Green building. Do you see this as potentially having serious consequences? Is there a risk here, a serious risk?AL: Yes, I think there’s a very serious risk, and you can see the impact in two ways. The system does not look at absolute numbers, it doesn’t look at what is the kilowatt hours per square metre per year or per person; it looks at the relativity between what it would have been if you hadn’t designed it carefully and what you’ve achieved in relation to that. So you can have buildings that are hugely energy consumptive or profligate and yet at the same time are credited with having done extremely well! You can have very simple buildings which cannot do much better than being naturally ventilated. How much better are you going to do? You can probably shade it a little better or something like that. How can you show energy improvement of an order of 10 percent or 15 percent if you are hardly consuming any energy. LEED doesn’t actually credit you for being energy conserving, it credits you for being energy efficient. I think that’s a serious flaw in the way this thing is run. And it has actually taken a lot of people for a ride. I think this is a serious problem. This is being corrected to a certain extent by the GRIHA system but that’s still based on relative performance, it’s not on absolute numbers.

I am part of another group of alternative practitioners, about 15, 20 of us, from across the country. We meet twice a year, and we discuss these issues and we want to actually hold a conference next year, where we will bring this issue out and try to define Sustainability as against Green, with great clarity and force, we’ll try to bring that out. I’m sure that what we really want to look at is how we can achieve and improve levels of comfort and security in our buildings by minimising the impact on the environment, and how to measure that. It’s a very different approach to the whole thing.

I think we need (appropriate) tools. And in this group, this is one of our objectives. So we need to have a framework, which will encourage us towards environmental wisdom. That’s the key phrase.

NK: We seem to be overwhelmed by the technical wisdom of assessment tools, not the environmental wisdom that we speak of.AL: There is another factor at work here and that is urban condition. The boundary conditions of the urban systems are crying out for new innovations that are not so energy dependent. The urban economy puts into place frameworks that consume more energy. The materials that we build with and the systems that we use for construction consume more energy. For instance it is difficult to be productive in the hottest months of Delhi. If you are going to have an urban economy where you are confined to a nine-to-five routine, you’re not going to be working in the evenings when it is cooler. The urban economy is putting certain boundary conditions, which are inherently energy intensive. Our dependence on the motorcar, high-rise high-density construction, and air-conditioning are creating a vicious cycle. In this cycle pollution and heat are discharged into the urban atmosphere. When it gets more polluted, there can be less natural ventilation. As it gets hotter, there must be more air-conditioning. With more air-conditioning, we pump more heat out into the city, and you’re into a vicious cycle.

The strategy has to be low rise, high density. Minimise the demand for air-conditioning, and wean yourself away from the motorcar, clearing space in the city. These two strategic directions have to be established for the future of urbanisation and we will find a solution there.

Our dependence on the motorcar, high-rise high-density construction, and air-conditioning are creating a vicious cycle. In this cycle pollution and heat are discharged into the urban atmosphere.

India’s emergence as a significant actor in the global geo-political sphere, and New Delhi, its capital, presents a paradox. On the one hand, the city’s increased affluence has not only meant a greater degree of social and physical mobility for its populace but also a greater access to a world of knowledge and lifestyle opportunities. On the other hand, with its consumerist aspirations amidst conditions of great scarcities of basic amenities and land for large section of the population, it threatens city life through a magnification of inequities and hardening of social stratifications and increasing environmental stress. ‘Progress’, it would seem, is not without a sense of despair.

This project addresses the paradox through a hopeful process of regeneration. That is, a method in which design-as-praxis remains orientated to the unknowable nature of the future and, thus, continually reaffirms itself as an open-ended processual possibility.

The project has been awarded the “Cities That Learn Award” in the Living Cities Design Competition 2011. In this proposal a representative transect of the city of Delhi was chosen and through a series of strategies of corrective interventions in the existing fabric of the city, it demonstrates the possibilities of evolving into a sustainable city system with a much improved quality of life.

The strategies move from the first step of designing a mobility and transportation alternative, which removes the intrusion of motor vehicles in residential places. This improves the environmental quality and releases spaces

The City (Re)generates

Project DataProject Name The City (Re)generates Location India, Delhi Project TeamAshok B Lall Architects (Ashok B Lall; Shruti Narayan; Jaideep Chatterjee; Akshay Kaul; Chitranjan Kaushik)

for pedestrian streets, markets and parks. There is now surface area on the ground for harvesting rainwater, treating wastewater locally, urban agriculture and also regeneration of natural flora and fauna. The city becomes self-sufficient in water. There is a parallel strategy of integrating solar PV in the form of solar trees and roof top panels. Building typologies are evolved to optimise thermal comfort by passive means of orientation, open space configurations for shading, and integration of plantation with buildings. This produces a city-scale microclimate of outdoor habitable spaces too.

The quantitative findings of this exercise are theoretically extrapolated for the city of Delhi to show the beneficial results of such strategies for the city as a whole.

futurarc interview

11

141312

54 FUTURARC

11 Aerial view of the design site 12 to 14 Perspective views