Sustainable architecture in the centre of Auroville What can individuals do to tackle climate change? What role can architecture play for sustainability and resilience? I rented a room at the International House during my three-week stay in Auroville. Not only did I enjoy the room, facilities, design, solutions, location; I also enjoyed a lot learning from Manu, the architect, his philosophy, purpose and vision of sustainable architecture. This article is about the International House in Auroville and the solutions implemented on site as well as the reason, the purpose, the vision and the mission of sustainable architecture as presented on the 26th of April by Manu to young architects. Abstract I tend to write (too) long articles. This abstract gives you an overview of the content and the key messages from this blog post. Feel free to read the complete post 😊 First, we consider some solutions implemented at the International House such as the double-roof, upcycled material and dry toilets. We use Indian examples to (once again) stress the issue of human waste and the relevance of dry toilets to solve many sanitary, social and environmental problems at once. Then, we consider the importance of choosing construction material and the reason behind those choices: protect the environment and tackle global warming. We answer to the questions that follow:
Finally, we answer the question “What solutions are available to achieve sustainable architecture?” When building a house, prefer sustainable construction material and techniques. One great solution is to farm construction material, i.e. plant trees and transform mature trees into permanent functional elements. With this choice, you make a real difference: for each 100 m2 you sequestrate 6.5 tons of CO2 equivalent. One should not wait for governments and big corporations to react: solutions are available, and people can have a real impact; go from passive follower to active builder! The International House: some solutions The International House comprises several buildings that all integrate sustainable construction techniques such as, for instance, reuse of upcycled / recuperated items and materials. During the tour of the International House we visited two buildings: the main building and the new house. This article focuses on those two buildings, some of the solutions implemented on those buildings and the reason behind those solutions: making the right choices for the good reasons leads to great solutions! Main building: double-roof multifunctional solution & “what is in for India?” The main building is in fact a collection of several smaller units: kitchen, office, living room, storage room, bathrooms… It features a double roof: the smaller units have their own roofs and on top, a complementary external structure has been built. “Why?” you might wonder. The double roof:
Dry Toilets? The bathrooms integrate Urine-Diverting Dry Toilet (UDDT) systems, western style and Indian style. Those systems allow to separate human refuses into three distinct products: urine, feces and bum wash water. “Why?” you might ask (unless you have been reading more articles from this blog, followed us on Twitter and/or you also feel it is gross to defecate in drinking water) … Urine is a great fertilizer, it contains a lot of nitrogen (mostly as urea) and potassium. It is used directly in the gardens (pineapples love it for instance). Feces are mixed with sawdust for composting. The composting process transforms the feces and sawdust into nutrient-rich fertilizer ideal for crop production (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and improved soil fertility through organic carbon). One can use plants to treat bum wash water; I do not know if that is what the International House does, though. Nature does not produce waste. The idea is simply to close the loop of the human nutrient cycle. If you are not convinced, Manu has a good story for you, the story of holy river Yamuna (see link to article at the end of this blog post): in a nutshell, Yamuna flows through Delhi; Delhi produces way more sewage than it can treat, as a result, downflow water is severely contaminated. Drinking water, irrigation water, underground water is contaminated but people in Agra still use it… Nobody wants to drink poo… So, the government spends huge amounts of money to try to solve the issue, but the problem grows bigger each day! We suggest that “if you really want to clean the river, start from home”. We had another great story to back this statement. Manu mentioned a city in India that had to deal with some inconvenient plumbing issues during flood periods: over-clogged pipes and pressure effects would generate reflux movements and, eventually, shower people with sewage from the bottom-up as they were using the bathroom. You can imagine how unpleasant such a situation might be. Even though there is a strong cultural resentment related to manipulating other people’s poo in India, those events lead the community to react. The city started going from flush toilets to dry toilets; not only for private use but also for public toilets. Public toilets went dry. Such a shift drastically reduced the costs of sewage system maintenance (piping system becomes obsolete) and mitigates the risk of sewage overflow in clean water sources (no more sewage). Moreover, this lead public toilets to generate new business opportunities: the company that runs those toilets produces and sells nutrient-rich fertilizers to farmers of the region. As a result, public toilet users do not pay to use the toilets but… get money to use the toilets! It does not stop here; smart move from the company: they do not sell their fertilizer at a fixed price, they sell the fertilizer through auction; as people start to acknowledge the high-quality of the product, the prices for the fertilizers rise, as the prices rise, more people come to buy it, etc. As a result, the company gets more benefits and can rise the salary of its employees but also the reward distributed to the public toilet users… holy crap! New house: focus on material! The previous question from the official – “what is in for India?”- made our architect realize he needed to design houses that are affordable, accessible for the greater number; architecture and design should not be only for the richest. Thus, for the new house, he focused on locally-available cheaper construction material; we share some examples below. The new house is bigger: the main building is a single-story building for 12 people whereas the new house is a three-floor building for more than twenty people. It was built in 4,5 months for a total of 20 lakhs (a quarter of the main building’s price if you consider inflation in the construction industry over 10 years). The lower level is made of concrete to mitigate termite-related issues (termite do not eat concrete). However, Manu wanted to minimize the amount of concrete required in the construction and therefore opted for a very light upper-levels structure. Indeed, the weight of the building is what really determines the need for bigger beams, pillars, etc. The weight of the people is, in comparison, minimal. This building Is meant for people, so one should make it lighter. The structure of the upper levels is made of locally-available wood: palmita (pillars), coconut (for concrete shuttering, then as parquet flooring), eucalyptus and mango (stairs). Moreover, to keep costs rather low and reduce the environmental impact of the building, it integrates recuperated and/or upcycled material:
Why focus on material? Manu’s architect journey to environmental awareness Where does steel and aluminum come from? 20 years ago, Manu was an architect student and he felt it was wrong to chop down trees to build houses. Thus, he decided to not work with wood and to prefer materials such as steel and concrete. However, after seven years of no-wood philosophy, a 60-day trip to some North Indian places in crude dire straits changed his mind: he saw how mining activities destroy the landscape, rip off the trees, kill the animals, displace indigenous tribes, cut the mountains and dig the earth to extract minerals, stones and other materials. He followed the everlasting line of trucks to the cement factory nearby and felt the unbearable smell and thick air that surrounds it. All that for what? all that for whom? All that for the profit of big foreign mining companies that get their hands on tens of thousands of acres of untouched land and leave it scared; big corporations that access cheap labor and do not seem to care about the five-year work lifespan expectancy of those workers that fill their lungs with microparticles for indecent salaries and die in atrocious pain. All that destruction on environmental, social, cultural levels to answer the increasing demand for construction material. We understand that construction material can have a terrible impact on the environment; we also learned more about the contribution of construction to global warming. When one adds the numbers, we start understanding that steel and aluminum are not eco-friendly: apparently the production of 1 kg of steel generates 4 kg of CO2-equivalent, 1 kg of aluminum generates 9 kg of CO2 equivalent. Start considering the volumes of steel and aluminum used in modern construction and try to guess the equivalent volumes of CO2 equivalent… per building. Construction has an impact on global warming. What about global warming? Global warming is a reality with strong evidence to back it up: we are not going to hit the wall, we are in the wall… This article is not about this non-debate. Why should we worry about couple degrees increase? As wind was flowing through the top-level room of the new house, Manu asked us where this nice sea breeze came from. This wind mostly comes from differences in temperatures between the nearby ocean and the land. According to Manu’s sources, if we keep on following the current trend, we are talking about a +4.6°C increase in global mean temperatures in the near future. This allowed him to play with the mathematics and asked another question: knowing that water covers 72% of the surface and land covers 28% of the surface of the globe, knowing that water is a good thermal insulator (and thus does not heat as quick as rock for instance) if mean temperature rises to +4.6°C and the ocean temperature rises +1°C, what would be the raise in temperature over land? Tricky question, however, if you do the math, you will get a value above 13.8°C! Let’s just consider a 10°C rise over land… In Delhi, recently, temperatures have been reaching 50°C, even 51°C; imagine what could happen with an extra 10°C? If you are into compost, especially thermophilic composting, you might already know that 60°C is a great temperature for thermophilic bacteria. What does that mean? Simply, at 60+°C organic matter composts, organic matter decays as thermophilic bacteria do their job. With a 60°C temperature, people would have to wear suits to not decay… We skip the new business opportunities for anti-compositing suits fashion designs and understand that “if we want to protect ourselves, we must take action now!” What can we do? How can we shift from passive follower to active reducer? Planting trees seems like a good idea! And it is a good idea. However, Manu recalled an interesting fact about trees and forests: globally, the balance of CO2 equivalent of a forest is neutral; the forest sequestrates as much CO2 equivalent as it releases CO2 equivalent; more trees will not cool down the earth… how come? As trees die, they decay which is a great thing for the forest soil (for instance fungi love it) and forest succession, but it also generates a lot of methane. Some say that methane is 28 to 44 times more potent than CO2 in terms of greenhouse effect! So how can one benefit from the tree as it grows and is alive and not suffer from its end-of-life consequences? Use mature wood in permanent installation! In an unexpected nutshell, Manu’s plan is to plant trees and cut trees to create permanent elements to cool down the planet. Let’s check if this solution makes sense. Let’s compare the carbon footprint of industrial prefab houses and the carbon footprint of natural houses. Apparently, one can buy prefab houses on Alibaba website. Manu cited a study of the related carbon footprint for such a house:
Our decisions shape the world, we do not need to wait for the politics, governments, big corporations. We cannot make sure that their decisions are made to benefit the earth and the people. This lead our architect to confirm that ordinary people can do more than government: “look at the numbers! If the farming practices are good, farming your construction material makes it renewable and resilient; that is one great contribution you can make to the world.” Complementary and subjective remarks Again an article about dry toilets? I feel like this is becoming my mission this year: minding our crap 😊 jokes aside, I remember reading an article about “urine is gold”. It was rather interesting to read that people managed to feed more than two million people in Paris without any chemicals; some people were in charge of collection urine and feces, preparing them and selling them to farmers as fertilizers… Those jobs do not really exist anymore, and we prefer to flush our refuses down the drain and spray chemicals on our fields. I also remember another article about how Nairobi is dealing with “flying toilets” through the combination of public toilets and biogas production plant: how to solve sewage and energy issues at once! On top of that, when you consider the dry public toilet story mentioned earlier in this article, I truly feel there is a real business opportunity here to revive such jobs; the benefits are plentiful. If you are interested, feel free to comment and/or contact us, minding our crap might be the most accessible an efficient way to do our share and make a real difference. Electrosensitivity Are you sensitive to electric fields? Sleep for eight hours, meditate, are you still sleepy? If yes, you might be sensitive to some electric fields disturbing you in the room where you slept. Those fields are generated by cables, electronic devices (especially WiFi routers…). Remember those industrial pipes and how they could be used to protect us against electrical cable radiations? One should be vigilant when it comes to new technologies; research might take several decades before confirming the related health hazards. Go futher… Website: https://internationalhouseauroville.wordpress.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/internationalhouseav International house page on Auroville website: https://www.auroville.org/contents/2908 Planet Custodian article about the Yamuna river: http://www.planetcustodian.com/2015/10/28/8311/ugly-reality-of-yamuna-indias-most-polluted-river-in-pictures.html Nice illustrated Earth Temperature Timeline (if you still question global warming): https://xkcd.com/1732/
8 Comments
Barbara
5/23/2018 12:08:14 am
This article is so informative. I didn't know that decaying trees produced a high volume of methane - so what a good idea to use mature wood to build houses.
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Mathieu
6/2/2018 01:28:01 pm
Indeed, using mature wood for permanent functional elements is a great idea :)
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