The pandemic has taught us the real values of nature and our natural resources. It has taught us that we need to be minimalistic in our design approach and create human settlements wherein we live closely with nature. The built environment needs to encourage natural circulation and cross ventilation indoors, and avoid creating air syndrome which is caused by circulating stale air. If you do only cosmetic architecture then we create the air syndrome in spaces that are 100% air conditioned, which subsequently become a source of infections.
We need to pledge to make mother earth less polluted and not destroy it; and focus more on natural resource management to create healthy environments. The surroundings of the built form should have various layers of landscaping and waterbodies, and barriers like jaalis to reduce the sun’s glare and heat. We need to understand that the human lifestyle needs to oscillate along with the natural resource management, solar movement, water resource management, air circulation, wind direction, and the landscape. In fact, all of us need to see how we can minimize our lifestyle so that we consume lesser energy, lesser water, and protect our natural resources from being exploited.
The built environment should not be treated as a mass of brick and concrete, but as a living organism, as it needs to breathe and be embodied with the environment.
To improve the quality of our built environment, the design of any building should follow passive strategies like the shape and size of the building, its envelope and layering etc. To minimize heat gain, we should plan courtyards, natural shading, use jaalis, and follow the principles of our vernacular architecture.
The building material selection should be local materials. The embodied energy needs to be calculated consciously in any building so that any material which takes lot of energy during production could be avoided. We should also use local technology and application techniques in terms of design elements. We also need to use natural, cyclable, recyclable, and recycled materials so that a natural balance can be maintained.
Today, what we are creating is cosmetic; we need to understand that organic architecture and passive strategies will improve the quality of our built environment. We also need to plan high-density, low-rise housing, courtyards, and streets, and also undertake grid-iron and radial planning. Use of intelligent building systems, automation, and artificial intelligence should be encouraged to create sustainable architecture.
