Earlier this month, Chennai recorded its hottest March in 25 years. With one other intense summer time forward in this coastal city, and humidity exacerbating the results coronary heart, there may be a want for conversations on designing climate-responsive cooler properties and outside urban areas of tree-lined parks, lakes and wetlands. Increasing inexperienced cowl, implementing reflective roofing supplies, including vertical gardens and inexperienced partitions, designing buildings with pure air flow and creating wind corridors are a few of the options at hand.
The interiors of a home at Kadiapatti in Pudukottai district.
| Photo Credit:
B. Velankanni Raj
At a latest workshop at Egmore Museum performed by Roots Collaborative, and curated by artists collective Basement 21, about 30 contributors from India, Canada, the U.Ok. and Malaysia took half. They explored the structure of this campus on Pantheon Road, reliving its context from a hundred years in the past. At the core of this investigation had been questions on the potential of structure to reply to new imaginations of Madras. The inherent prospects of Tamil Nadu structure to subdue the results of a harsh hot-humid atmosphere had been explored as a part of a a lot bigger creativeness of “reading a building”. Unlike European structure that experiences chilly climate, in India the crafting of porous screens, terraces, thick partitions and cool interiors, design of facades with shadows and a number of different features have each a social and climatic relevance.
A heritage home in Karaikudi, Tamil Nadu.
| Photo Credit:
Getty Images/istock
Recreating such buildings in the present day could also be a problem because of the price of supplies and labour however we deciphered the components of such buildings — Madras roofs, perforated screens (jalis), lime plaster, cool roofs and thick masonry partitions — which have the inherent potential to subdue excessive warmth, creating a cooler micro-climate. The intention was to craft areas that are imaginative, whereas pragmatically responding to create a cool interiority.
Tree-lined streets and micro-climate
Avenue timber kind a inexperienced cover at Adyar, in Chennai.
| Photo Credit:
Akhila Easwaran
Environmental scientists and urbanists surmise that it’s important to revive the custom of tree-lined streets of Adyar and T. Nagar. They created a cooler outside urban micro-climate and resulted in shaded pedestrian walkways. Until the introduction of the industrial period, a century in the past, Tamil Nadu’s cities continued to advertise a climate-responsive structure. Quintessential heritage dwellings in Kumbakonam and Karaikudi present insights into how communities responded with progressive architectural designs. They encompassed ingenious passive design ideas akin to pure air flow and shading units. The colonial bungalows got here with deep-shaded semi-open verandas and roofs of Mangalore tiles.
DakshinaChitra
| Photo Credit:
Special association
Traditional knowledge at DakshinaChitra
It is feasible to design buildings to create a cool interior micro-climate that contrasts with the hostile summer time warmth. You will see this in the reconstructed dwellings at DakshinaChitra on ECR that mirror a conventional knowledge in constructing construction and climatic understanding: utilizing domestically out there supplies, orientation, perforated jali home windows, shaded balconies, rain water harvesting, semi-open verandas for pure cross-ventilation, giant overhanging roofs and shading units, and at occasions inexperienced roofs or Madras terraces.
A sequence of workshops for structure college students from Hindustan University, DY Patil-Navi Mumbai, Rajalakshmi School of Architecture, and a number of others have sensitised college students, college and younger architects to vernacular ideas for climate change.
“Through a tour and in-depth discussion of the beautiful environmentally-sustainable houses at DakshinaChitra, students will begin to consider how the materials we use and the architectural designs we employ can align more harmoniously with our natural environment,” says Anitha Pottamkulam, director of tradition at DakshinaChitra Museum.
Unfortunately, with the introduction of concrete buildings over the final three many years and the indiscriminate felling of timber to accommodate the speedy sprawl of the city, these ideas are usually missed. According to the State Planning Commission’s Heat Analysis report of 2024, “the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect intensifies warming trends, with cities like Chennai, Coimbatore, and Madurai experiencing average night-time land surface temperatures of approximately 26 degrees Celsius. In 2023, the State government signed an MoU with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to develop a comprehensive urban cooling programme. Scientific research indicates the complex causes of this heat retention: urban density, loss of vegetative cover, and thermal properties of building materials, among other factors, collectively contribute to a warmer urban microclimate.”
Today, practically 74% of Tamil Nadu’s inhabitants is uncovered to air temperature above 35 levels Celsius. There is due to this fact an pressing have to construct warmth resilience. Citizen teams, architects and environmentalists are exploring new methods of design, that may guarantee the indoor temperatures are diminished by a minimum of 4 to five levels, inside the dwelling, throughout intense summers. These vary from shading components akin to overhangs, louvres, orienting buildings to create shade, to making sure satisfactory spacing between buildings, selling airflow. The revival of indigenous domestically out there supplies like lime plasters, recycled supplies, terracotta, and renewable vitality enhances the shift to sustainable practices.
Semmozhi Poonga is a botanical backyard, which is dwelling to over 500 species of crops and over 80 timber, in the coronary heart of Chennai.
| Photo Credit:
S.R. Raghunathan
Hope in roof terraces
How can new housing townships incorporate these climatic ideas to mitigate the impending summer time warmth? Through historical past, such challenges have usually change into a supply of innovation, offering prospects for re-imagining each design in addition to technological options like cooling programs, new supplies and construction practices and shading units.
For occasion, remodeling uncared for roof-terraces into community areas with shaded cowl and inexperienced landscapes can create new types of social gathering whereas considerably mitigating warmth.
Situated in the tropics, the area receives ubiquitous daylight to generate photo voltaic vitality as nicely. Scientists agree that cities can not resort to air-conditioning as a panacea to urban warmth. As per the International Energy Agency (IEA), refrigeration and air-con causes 10% of the international CO2 emissions. Only 9% of Indian households have air-con, however this demand is projected to extend 20-fold by 2050. Holistic options integrating passive measures alongside technological options are required to strategy the notion of urban cooling.
Global analysis signifies that rising temperatures might erode financial progress in cities and peri-urban areas. As a part of the State’s warmth mitigation technique, a number of cities of Tamil Nadu, together with Chennai, are in the technique of formulating their long-term Master Plans.
Integrating the initiatives to regenerate inexperienced areas accessible to all communities, in addition to lakes and water reservoirs, and conserving wetlands is crucial. Green open areas inside a strolling distance from all properties, if rejuvenated, understanding its environmental science, can create cooler urban neighbourhoods. Climatically well-designed urban areas, which represent nearly 30% of Chennai, might reinforce the resilience, to mitigate the opposed impacts of warmth waves and climate change in the future.
Reviving lakes and urban parks
Tholkappiya ecological park, Chennai.
| Photo Credit:
Athullyea Padmanabhan
Appropriate urban design consists of reviving pure lakes and conserving inexperienced areas. A case in level is the revival of Adyar Poonga, Semmozhi Poonga and different inexperienced areas, water reservoirs and parks in Chennai, that may be a panacea for summer time warmth.
Community participation and engagement in urban planning, neighbourhood governance, tree-planting efforts, cleansing drives of the coast and lakes considerably contribute to those efforts in any respect ranges.
The author is founding father of Artes Roots Collaborative and is concerned in the revival of urban greens and ecological precincts.
Published – March 21, 2025 04:37 pm IST
