The FuturArc Interview

Morphogenesis is a design practice based in New Delhi, India, that, since its formation in 1996, has become internationally recognised for strikingly contemporary works that blend architecture and urbanism. In the shortlist for the FuturArc Green Leadership Award this year, the firm walks away with two accolades: winner in the institutional category for the Pearl Academy of Fashion in Jaipur and citation in the residential category for N-85 residence in Delhi. FuturArc Editor-in-Chief, Dr Nirmal Kishnani, speaks with Manit Rastogi, one of Morphogenesis' founding members, and discovers the thinking behind the firm's blend of Modernist sensibility and social consciousness.

The following is an excerpt from the interview.

NK: You have been a critic of the application of LEED to the Indian context. You have specific concerns about what it brings to the drawing board?

MR: Most of the architecture in India prior to '91—through the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s—was by its very nature, Green. It responded to the sun, had shading devices, thermal mass, courtyards, etc. Post '91, there was a dramatic shift; we started getting buildings designed by a variety of international architects which had a big influence on domestic architects and clients. Clients started perceiving all-glass buildings as a symbol of corporate power even though most of India is in a hot climate. Along came LEED at that point in time, bringing with it a mechanism for rating buildings Silver, Gold or Platinum without due consideration of climate, of where the project was in India, whether it was in a warm-humid, or in a hot-dry or composite climate with stringent requirements on indoor air quality which necessitated hermetically sealed air-conditioned buildings. There was no emphasis on passive and low-energy architecture which further gave license to these high energy consuming, modernist, non-climate responsive blocks to further percolate through the country, qualifying themselves as Green architecture. It also gave license to a lot of engineering firms to proclaim themselves as masters of Green. Within a short span of 20 years, we disbanded thousands of years of knowledge of passive and low-energy architecture.

In a country where a large portion of buildings are still naturally ventilated—and you can't achieve a LEED rating for a naturally ventilated building—this rating tool has caused, I think, severe, irreversible damage.

NK: LEED is administered by the Indian Green Building Council, are you therefore also saying that they have not in the time that they've been around adapted LEED to local conditions?

MR: It's beginning to happen now. But I think a lot of the damage was done in the first decade of LEED. They are now beginning to acclimatise it to local conditions but still it is mostly in the gambit of hermetically sealed, centrally air-conditioned buildings.

NK: With rising affluence in big cities, hasn't air-conditioning become a comfort expectation. Is it not also the consumers who demand it?

MR: That is true. That's the shift that's happened in the last 20 years but having said that, the question is how much air-conditioning. We've just completed a large retail complex for Bengal Ambuja in Siliguri where the corridors and the atriums are naturally ventilated along the line of the prevailing wind direction. The shops have been given the option of either being naturally ventilated and/or being air-conditioned; what we're finding is that the public areas all work superbly well without air-conditioning and that some of the shops are actually opting not to go for air-conditioning. Good design can reduce the requirement of air-conditioning and the amount of time you use it in a year.

NK: You haven't got to the point then with consumers where air-conditioning is a must-have?

MR: We are still at a slightly advantageous position because the comfort range for most people in India is still quite broad. We're not conscripted to 24 degrees C, plus-minus 1 degree, or to an RH of 60 to 65 percent. A big shift will take place if our homes, schools, institutions, colleges all start shifting towards air-conditioning; the comfort ranges will then become narrower and we will become less tolerant. But I think this is still far away; we still have an opportunity in India to explore opportunities of designing for adaptive comfort, linked to the external environment.

NK: You have been active in the formulation of GRIHA, the other Green building rating tool in India. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

MR: GRIHA fundamentally is the brainchild of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and TERI, The Energy Resources Institute and I've been a member of the TAC, the technical advisory committee that formulated GRIHA. We took into cognizance the fact India has five climatic zones, that passive and low-energy architecture has to be given the maximum emphasis as far as possible. We took into cognizance that there is a certain amount of local materiality, and in effect we took to promoting local materials and local technology. GRIHA is rooted in the region and climate. And it is applicable to one of the largest typologies of naturally ventilated buildings—the housing sector—which is maybe 80 to 90 percent of all buildings built in India today. Ninety percent of housing is still designed to be non-air conditioned.

To read the complete interview, get a copy of the 3Q 2011 edition at our online shop or at newsstands/major bookstores; or subscribe to FuturArc.

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