By Mr. Sathya Prakash
Varnashi
Two words not
originally part of English vocabulary, but now well understood in India to
distinguish informal & proper buildings are ‘cutcha’ and ‘pucca.’
In Hindi, cutcha
buildings are supposed to be temporary make shift arrangements, while the pucca
ones are durable professional constructions.
These age-old
definitions are still valid, but with sustainability discussions having taken
centre-stage, they can also represent low embodied energy and high embodied
energy approaches.
Everything that we
can name, like building bye laws, design codes, college education, contractual
systems, bank loan procedures & such others, have continuously discarded
the cutcha approach in urban areas citing many reasons, but at a huge
environmental cost and a lost opportunity for possible personal savings.
When the British
introduced professional & formal modes of construction, backed by elaborate
procedures documented in writing, no one would have then realised that the
eco-friendly and cost-effective architecture of pre-colonial India was to
change forever.
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Mr. Sathya Prakash Varnashi
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Over those decades,
many instruction handbooks had to be produced to change the local practices
& finally when the PWD (Public Works
Department) manuals got published about a century ago, with clearly stated
specifications for materials, sketches for details and procedures for
construction as an all-India standard, the formalisation of Indian construction
had come to stay.
The PWD Influence..!
Today the PWD may
represent only government projects, but the PWD approach altered the way even
the private buildings were designed and built. The societal desire for such
pucca buildings has never stopped since then, moving from mud walls to brick
walls to cement blocks to concrete construction to aluminium coated panels and
tinted glass boxes.
Alongside the above
shift in materials, the parallel journey of cost, wastage & energy has also
been one of upwardly consuming.
Paradoxically, more
than half of the Indian population still lives in cutcha houses, in rural
structures, urban slums & low income homes, with many such houses being
centuries old. It is common to see high-end resorts build in cutcha style,
charging us astronomical tariffs.
Private roadside
facilities work 24 x 7 in simple local materials, seemingly permanently. If we
take a long train or / bus journey, every settlement along the trip appears to
be cutcha.
Driving through our
State capitals, even today we see old schools, tiled roofs, thatch huts, open
verandahs, lime constructions, surface decorations, urban villages & such
others, performing on average like any other formal city building.
Advantages..!
We not only see the
cutcha everywhere, we hear that such simple buildings are cooler in summer,
have no cracks & are cheap to maintain. If this is true, there must be
something wrong in the propaganda about the cutcha as temporary and makeshift.
Equally, there must
be some lessons on ecology & economy to learn from them, for modern day
application, if not for blind repetition.
Traditional buildings
are cooler in summer, have no cracks & are cheap to maintain..!
About the author..!
Sathya Prakash Varanashi studied architecture in Bangalore, urban design in Delhi & heritage conservation in England. A former Professor of Architecture, he is involved in academics, outreach activities, freelance writing, professional associations and NGO initiatives.
Right from his early days, Mr.Sathya Prakash Varanashi was attracted to designs ideas rooted in cost, culture, climate and creativity, thanks to the influence of architects like Mr. Laurie Baker, Mr.Shankar Kanade, Mr. K. Jaisim, Mr.A.G.K. Menon and Mr.K.T. Ravindran. His consultancy firm, Sathya Consultants, in Bangalore has been professing and practising eco-friendly cost-effective architecture for the past 15 years.
These articles were authored by Sathya and published in THE HINDU on their Saturday’s Column titled Property Plus. These are archived and republished here by Rajesh Kav.
For more details please visit
Email: sathyaconsultants@vsnl.net
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