Ar. Pavitra Sri Prakash
My architectural design style can be described as Indo-Centric Sustainability - a design aesthetic that is a blend of Indian-ness and is People & Planet friendly. It is a blend of traditional construction techniques, ornamentation, usage of materials, inspiration from crafts & weaves, and Indian philosophy with principles of holistic sustainability – that include socio-economic sustainability, resource and energy efficiency, passive architectural techniques, support of local economy and know-how, and hybrid/renewable energy-based mechanical systems for living comfort.

There are many questions I had to answer to myself during my architectural education and early practise that helped clarify the thinking of my design direction. After spending almost a decade away from India, the rediscovery of what makes Indian architecture truly unique became an obsession for me. The value of Indian-ness and all things that are culturally rooted in our daily lives became more apparent. Preserving and incorporating crafts as part of our contemporary architectural experiences made sense from a cultural sustainability point of view. Coming back with International sensibilities gave me the ability to adopt unique ideas that were culturally relevant. Things that worked for projects in Chicago, would not work for projects in Chennai – even though technically they were possible in both places. The unique geography and culture of people ensured that planning and detailing of architecture too would be unique.

Then began the quest to try and marry these two aspects of my experience. The question became – how do you change the approach to ‘traditional Indian design’ – find a way to work with tradition while being world-class and relevant? While this challenged the architectural landscape in India, which was driven solely by a ‘maximize site potential’ type of approach, the application of the sustainability filter helped shift the focus of the typical Indian project.

Private residence Staircase

As we’ve seen in recent years, the focus on profits (above all else) has led to the destruction of natural resources and has had devastating effects across the world on vulnerable populations and wildlife. Climate change is the single largest demonstration of how much can go wrong when the pursuit of profits takes precedence. In most cases, clients are not willingly causing harm to people or the planet; while most of them generally care about the earth they seem stuck within a broken system. They are only trying within their constraints to minimize their negative environmental impacts and optimize their positive social impacts.

The focus on a triple bottom-line instead of the conventional bottom-line can help reshape this thinking. With sustainability being the over-arching element of my architecture style, I work to shift the focus onto People, Planet and Profits through every design decision that we are posed with. And through an integrated design approach it is possible to deliver projects at a lower capital expenditure and at lower lifecycle costs – making Indo-centric sustainability a holistically profitable solution!