4 min readPuneMay 14, 2024 12:45 PM IST
First published on: May 14, 2024 at 12:42 PM IST
When Pune experienced intense heat this summer, forcing many people to switch on their air conditioners, architect Rohan Nahar and his team needed nothing more than a fan three hours a day. The office of Nahar’s startup, an architecture practice called Studio Roots and Basics, is built with bare hands, using mud available on the site, construction waste and lime, among other stuff.
Nahar is the name behind an eco-village in Panchgani, a mud house in Kerala and a climate-responsive building in Bhusaval, Jalgaon, among other projects. He is also being sought out by people and organisations from Spain, Portugal and the US that want to create the kind of homes Nahar is promoting—built with natural materials available on the site—in order to reduce the carbon footprint. The main raw material for him is mud, which he calls “brown gold”.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, the construction industry is one of the highest emitters of greenhouse gases, which are among the chief causes of global warming. An overwhelming 37 per cent of global emissions are due to the production and use of materials such as cement, steel and aluminium.
Constructing with mud is an old tradition in India and many parts of the world, and modern architects have been exploring it as well. (Express Photo)
Constructing with mud is an old tradition in India and many parts of the world, and modern architects have been exploring it as well. Nahar, who has been working on environment-sensitive construction since 2013, has lectured and published widely and collaborated with government departments, says his designs are “space and people specific”.
“There are certain basic principles in architecture. You should have natural light and ventilation. If you sit under a tree and are comfortable and if you sit under inside your house and are not comfortable, then something is going wrong,” he says.
The three pillars on which he works are environmental sustainability, economic sustainability (building with alternative material that people should be able to maintain and the workers creating the construction should have economic stability) and social sustainability (one should create opportunities for local contractors and workers, among others).
Nahar, who has been working on environment-sensitive construction since 2013, has lectured and published widely and collaborated with government departments, says his designs are “space and people specific”. (Express Photo)
His clients range from people building second homes to resort owners to organisations, such as Barefoot College International, whose Rajasthan campus he is working on, though he is cultivating a middle-class base as well. “We are trying to create awareness of the fact that with conventional construction systems, 60 per cent of cost is for cement, steel and other materials and 40 per cent is labour cost but building a home that reduces the carbon footprint reverses this—60 per cent is labour charge and 40 per cent is for materials,” he says. “Such housing is not cheap, but they can help you save on maintenance later.”
The construction market in India is one of the largest in the world, and experts estimate a compounded annual growth rate of more than 6 per cent from 2023 to 2026. Even with rising consciousness about the environment, only a minority opts for construction that is more sustainable than conventional buildings.
“It is a very difficult question to answer about what we can do with the current urban situation, where people’s wants are way too many. I also don’t think that we can replace all the current building materials but we can start using recyclable materials, such as fly ash bricks that have a certain amount of recycling materials, mud concrete blocks and adobes as among the few alternative materials,” says Nahar. “The only answer to global warming is lifestyle modification. What we take from the earth should be able to go back to the earth.”
Studio Roots and Basics, is built with bare hands, using mud available on the site, construction waste and lime, among other stuff. (Express Photo) 
Constructing with mud is an old tradition in India and many parts of the world, and modern architects have been exploring it as well. (Express Photo)
Nahar, who has been working on environment-sensitive construction since 2013, has lectured and published widely and collaborated with government departments, says his designs are “space and people specific”. (Express Photo)
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