Humanscapes

Auroville Today: What need is Humanscapes fulfilling?

Suhasini: We were looking to pursue several goals. In 2014, when the Government of India undertook the task of amending the national building codes, a national group of architects, planners, energy experts and policymakers working towards sustainable settlements voluntarily offered their expertise to the governmental body. I invited some of the members of this group to participate with the Auroville experts to frame the Terms of Reference for building materials, energy, water use etc. which we are trying to implement in Humanscapes. We will be monitoring these over the next three years. The idea is to use this project as a demonstration of the innovative building materials and technology developed in Auroville as a region specific contribution to the national building code.

Secondly, we wanted to help meet Auroville’s needs regarding housing. We saw the Humanscapes project as a means of bringing significant government funding for housing into Auroville. The Government originally agreed to fund the project for 75 crore rupees over three years. If everything worked well, a further 75 crores would have been made available to us.

Initially, we were planning to provide housing for about 1000 people over five years. However, the full funding could not be realised due to a change of government but we are trying to re-establish the channel and hope to get the funds.

Sonja: The specific need that the first phase of this project is meeting is providing housing for young Aurovilians. At present, we have about 80 people between the ages of 20 - 35 who do not have financial means and are looking for accommodation. A whole generation of young Aurovilians cannot live independently, so this project gives them this opportunity.

Suhasini: Basically, there are only three ways you can live in Auroville at present. You have either independent means, or the capacity to earn money outside by marketing a product or skills, or you have to live in housing that is inappropriate to your needs as you cannot finance a house on an Auroville maintenance.

Auroville doesn’t have the means to support young people with an incubation time to find out their vocation and interest and to develop it before they are asked to contribute to the community. Humanscapes is a kind of incubator that allows them time to focus on how they can positively participate in Auroville rather than on how they can survive here.

Sonja: Actually, the criteria now for these units is that they are for young people who have been actively working for at least nine months in an Auroville service or activity and are on basic maintenance. Many second generation Aurovilians are already in this position and are ready to move away from home. It is important for the future of Auroville that they remain in Auroville, or return if they have already left, as the original pioneers are now aging.

Suhasini: We also want to experiment with a value system that does not divorce work from the rest of life. So how do you bring life and work together? It’s by allowing people to function in a more fluid manner, to work at different times of the day, and to work from home or a place near home. In this way, you don’t have a heavy investment in mobility, in traveling backwards and forwards from work.

The other thing we wanted to do with Humanscapes was to experiment with co-living in Auroville. Co-living is a huge trend in the US and in Europe where people up to the age of 35 work long hours for little money and lack the means to buy into the conventional property market. So people buy up old houses and convert them into reasonably priced co-living apartments where facilities like bathrooms and kitchens are shared.

In Humanscapes we have various combinations. There are individual rooms which share a bathroom, kitchen and dining area, one bedroom units for couples, and two bedroom units for families. The shared kitchens are designed in such a way that six people can be cooked for.

There is also a multipurpose space that includes a kitchen that can provide meals for forty-five people, a self-help laundry and a small amphitheater with a screening wall where people can watch films. The multipurpose space will not be just for residents of Humanscapes but will be shared with everybody, young interns, volunteers, Aurovilians etc.

What happens when residents get to the age of 40?

Sonja: They will have to vacate. But there is another phase planned in Humanscapes that will have family units for those who are older than 40. There are also two other housing projects in the pipeline which will also be for older people. Hopefully, they will be ready in the next two years.

The Terms of Reference for Humanscapes put a huge emphasis upon sustainability (see box). Among other things, it means that residents’ consumption of energy and water must be fairly frugal. The per capita water target, for example, is only 45 litres per day. How will you achieve these savings in water and energy consumption?

Suhasini: In a number of ways. We will conserve water by extensive use of low-flow faucets and hand-held spray faucets, and by recycling grey water.

There are also very few changes that people can do in their lifestyle that can bring down their water consumption by half. For example, you do not need to flush the toilet after every pee. If two rooms are sharing a toilet, they can agree upon this. In the summer, when people take more frequent showers, you can fill up a bucket and leave it overnight. The next day, the water is cold so you only need a few mugful's to bring your skin temperature down. Then you only need to take one good shower a day using soap.

Regarding decreasing energy consumption, we hope to install high-efficiency, low-energy lights, fans, cookers, fridges etc. We also hope to cut down on the number of appliances that are purchased. If we have two or three blenders/mixies in the multi-purpose hall, that should be enough for everybody. The point is, people don’t have to own these things to use them: this is the kind of consciousness we need to develop.

Sonja: If four people are sharing a kitchen, they need only one mixie, ironing table, iron etc. But if everybody has their own independent studio, they will all want to have their own appliances.

Clearly, the residents of Humanscapes will need to be prepared to make some lifestyle changes. To what extent are these changes facilitated by design? And to what extent will people have to make a conscious shift in themselves?

Suhasini: There are certain changes you can encourage by design. For example, we have put in water points where they are needed but not outside the building; in this way, we discourage wasteful irrigation. Also, we do not have any outlets for individual washing machines. If you have a washing machine within each dwelling unit, you’re going to use it much more often, even running half loads, than if you have to walk some distance to the community laundry. We use the same approach with garbage. We make the garbage collection point a little far from the apartments, obliging people to walk a certain distance to encourage them to use products that generate less waste.

Sonja: But residents of Humanscapes will need to make an effort to live differently. We have a selection committee who will meet everybody and explain this. The residents will also get a one-day workshop where we will tell them that Humanscapes is not like a simple youth hostel. They will have to agree to living in a certain way and there will be a monitoring group to ensure that certain ground rules and guidelines are observed.

Suhasini: But you have to realise that second-generation Aurovilians do not necessarily look upon relative frugality as a sacrifice. Many of them live like this already and the others are very adaptable.

Sonja: There are different groups. The young people from the local area tend to be more aspirational, to want more luxury, so we will definitely have to motivate these people and explain to them why and how they will be living like this.

Will there be certain agreements that people will have to conform to regarding, for example, controlling noise?

Sonja: We have not yet made guidelines regarding noise as we want to do this with the people themselves.

To what extent is noise pollution minimised in the design?

Suhasini: Between the floors we used styrofoam, collected from Eco-Service, which we have shredded and mixed with cement. This reduces noise between the floors.

We have also put the television outlets on walls that face internal walls rather than big windows. There’s not much we can do regarding controlling noise through open windows but on the ground floor, where all the apartments face the central courtyard, we have constructed walls about 5 feet high between the apartments and the central space, so there is some visual privacy and acoustic control. We are also minimising high humidity vegetation in the courtyard because in the evening sound tends to travel at ground level where the humidity is higher.

How do you deal with heat and humidity?

Suhasini: All the rooms are oriented north-south for the prevailing winds, all have cross ventilation, and the bedrooms have big opening doors on to balconies. The walls have high heat insulation and the roof has a thick layer of Styrofoam as well as heat-reflecting tiles. There is no provision for air conditioning, but with fans all this should be sufficient to keep people comfortable.

Another benchmark that you are trying to achieve in this project is very low environmental impact. How do you achieve this?

Suhasini: First of all, we designed Humanscapes in such a way that we minimised the amount of cement and steel used. We also used a lot of recycled materials, like stone from the stone-cutting factories and Styrofoam waste from Eco-Service, and we tried to cut down on sand consumption. We employ energy-efficient appliances, we recycle water, hardly any toxic chemicals have been used on site, and there is near-zero water run-off and erosion.

One of your Terms of Reference for Humanscapes is to have lower capital costs than mainstream construction for civil and shell work. So what is your overall building cost?

Suhasini: Even though we are cutting down on material costs, our overall building cost is only about 10-15% cheaper than places like Citadines. This is because 60% of the cost of construction today is labour and we are more labour-intensive than those projects. The only real resource this country has is its people, most of whom work in the unorganised sector. We wanted Humanscapes to be labour-intensive rather than material-intensive so that we could generate local employment rather than supporting industrialised processes. So I focused on trying to design it in such a way that with low-skilled workers and using low-embodied energy and recycled materials we could produce high-quality living spaces.

How confident are you that Humanscapes can become a model for sustainable construction and living in India?

Suhasini: It would be too much to claim it as a model because this is the first attempt. I’m not completely happy with everything we have done here because, for example, we had to use a certain amount of mechanisation in making the walls. But I think it is a good beginning.

I realise, however, that over the first few years, there will be a lot of reaction from the residents and Housing will come under a lot of pressure to change things.

Sonja: This is already happening. We have people who want to set up a commercial laundry business in Humanscapes. We had to say no, this is the wrong place for this as it would raise the energy and water consumption: we have to hold a certain line. This is why Housing will remain the steward for the project. If these units are stewarded by the residents, the units becomes ‘theirs’ and it is much more difficult to ask the residents to conform to certain standards. So these will be like Auroville staff quarters.

Suhasini: When people move into new housing projects, they need time to adapt. A lot of the initial issues are actually interpersonal, but people blame the hardware and start asking, ‘Can’t we add a door here, change a room there?’

We have to move forward, step by step, but change always takes time. And it’s not necessarily painless in the early stages.