The difficulties of building Auroville

Auroville Today: How did you come to Auroville?

By accident. I had done my first year of architecture studies in Germany and had become quite tired of Germany. I wanted to be an intern somewhere else. I applied all over the world. And the reply was always the same: “you don’t even have a degree in architecture, what do you want here!” Eventually my urban design professor, Louis Féduchi [he later married Auroville architect Anupama and became intimately involved with developing the Detailed Development Plan for Auroville’s Residential Zone, eds.] advised a contact in Bangalore. That worked out. It was June 2008.

I had no idea about India except the usual nonsense such as fakirs sitting on nail beds and peaceful people meditating under palm trees. I hadn’t even heard about Bangalore! I arrived in Mumbai, and then took a train to Bangalore, 2nd class non ac. It was a revelation. I met many people, and one of them said, “my friend, after three months you will either hate India and never come back, or love it and stay.” My love affair with India started after two months.

I began working in Bangalore as an architect at a big company. By coincidence, Aurovilian Fabian had joined the company a month earlier. He became my team leader. The work went well and at the end of two months the company allowed me to continue for a year. I managed to get permission from my German university to take a one year break, worked for a year in Bangalore, went back to Germany and finally got my degree. Then I joined an architecture firm in Hyderabad.

When I was working in Bangalore, Fabian invited me to a weekend in Auroville. As I didn’t have anything better to do I said, “sure, I’ll come along.” That’s how I learned about the place Auroville, but not about what Auroville is about. That came many years later. In 2011, after my stint in Hyderabad, I came to work with Fabian in Auroville. But though I lived here for 1.5 years I had no clue what Auroville was all about. Only when I met Sindhuja did I start getting into touch with the background of Auroville. We started discussing Sri Aurobindo’s and The Mother’s teachings. I was just considering going back to Germany, but thanks to her I stayed, and we eventually got married in October 2013.

What is the work you are involved with in Auroville?

My first job was working with Fabian on a project in Hyderabad. Afterwards, Sindhuja and I started our architect unit Imago. I still had no status in Auroville. I didn’t like the idea of becoming an Aurovilian or a Newcomer before being fully into Auroville, and that took me a good six years. But then I was ready to commit myself totally. Those days I worked for Imago for free. We won a competition for the SAIIER staff quarters, and I started working for SAIIER as architect consultant. Other projects came up: we built a post office in Moratandi, we were asked to work for the Golden Jubilee Hostel, which was later re-baptised ‘The Hive’, and we made the design for the birthing centre. [see AVToday May 2018 No 346]

The Golden Jubilee / Hive didn’t take off as hoped. The 100-bed project was first downsized to a 50-bed hostel, and then to a kind of training centre. But recently the project holders decided to put it on hold. [see AVToday May 2018 No 346]. It is a great project, and we hope that in due time something of it will manifest.

Apart from this work, we often help other architects with what I call “the dirty part of the architect’s work,” e.g. the accounting, the checking of the bills, making the detailed drawings, and making detailed estimates and the Bills of Quantities.

You have also started work as project consultant for the GGG, the Government of India Grant Group.

The GGG was set up by the Working Committee together with the Funds and Assets Management Committee. My role is to assure that government procedures are followed, that the paperwork is in order and that all the beneficiaries follow a system of accountability in the execution of their buildings so that we know where the money is spent on. I am not going into the details of design; that should have happened at an earlier stage.

In that process a certain amount of quality assurance happens by default. I check what exactly has been built, if the steel used is in accordance with the thickness prescribed, if the concrete mix is of good quality by doing slump tests, and so on. This is a very important work; if Auroville would have set up this group earlier, many mistakes, such as have surfaced with the Tamil Heritage Centre building, could have been prevented.

In Auroville we work almost exclusively with Auroville contractors, except for Sunship and Kalpana which have employed a contractor from outside. Do you consider working with non-Auroville contractors an advantage?

No. Because I’ve experienced that the outside contractor is always trying to maximize his profits. For Sunship, I was given the function of quality checker. The discrepancies I found between work done and the contractor’s bills were staggering. The building of Sunship was tendered. When we received the bills we checked what was actually built. For example, the contractor submits a bill for a floor slab of 6 x 6 metres and we found it measured 5 x 5 metres. That makes a lot of difference in the costs of steel, concrete and shuttering. The first time we thought it was an honest mistake; the second time we started doubting it, and the third time we reported it to the Auroville authorities as a case of deliberate cheating. Excuses were made, but there was a distinct feeling that they simply tried to get away with it. We must have saved a crore for the Sunship project simply by correcting bills.

In my experience, Auroville contractors are not so blunt. But construction, world-wide, is one of the most corrupt businesses. And that’s why the ‘third eye’ approach initiated by the GGG is so important. And this work will need to be expanded to include all constructions in Auroville, not only buildings constructed with Government of India grants.

Rumor has it that buildings in Auroville are much more expensive than outside. What’s your experience?

The main difference is that in Auroville we are not compromising on quality and the higher costs are a natural consequence. Take the Humanscapes project. Before starting the project, a detailed material research was done and this has been meticulously followed in the execution of the project. Compare that to a large project outside, where the client wishes to build as cheap as possible and the contractor obliges by cutting costs at every corner; the walls are not 220 cm thick as prescribed, but just 100 cm, the steel thickness is less than approved and so on. But that compromises the quality of the building. Also, Auroville has not set-up a system to benefit from large scale discounts, and that also makes outside projects cheaper.

Can you explain?

In all material procurement there are big margins. We have done some research and noticed that material suppliers are willing to support Auroville by giving large discounts on first-quality materials and even more on materials with small imperfections which don’t affect the quality of the construction. If Auroville could set up a central purchasing department, which would be responsible for the bulk purchasing of the construction materials of all new buildings, huge discounts could be earned. For example, we had a project where we had to purchase plumbing materials and bathroom and kitchen fittings for 50 small bungalows. We managed to get a 50-60% discount. For the SAIIER staff quarters, I tried to purchase super fans from an Auroville unit; they were unwilling to give a discount, so we bought them straight from the manufacturer and we got a 20% discount. If, moreover, the architects could unify their designs and coordinate their efforts, another 5% extra could be earned. The lakhs saved could be used for those design aspects for which there is never any money available, such as for the landscaping around the project.

The Governing Board, in its meeting in August 2014, observed that all buildings in Auroville need to be environment friendly and be built with sustainable materials and technology. The Board also directed the Town Development Council to finalize Guidelines for Auroville construction activities reflecting these concerns. The TDC tried but never finalized. What exactly is the problem?

It is a big challenge. The list of permissible construction materials specified by the Public Works Department for buildings built with grants from the Government of India is very limited: concrete, bricks, mortar – the standard. The system allows for the use of alternative building materials, but it requires a lot of extra work. The compressed earth block technology which has been used to build the Visitors’ Centre and communities such as Vikas is now accepted. But that’s just one alternative option.

Take, for example, the steel capsule that was built for The Learning Community. We hired a structural engineer, but he calculated that the steel was so much heavier than we had anticipated that the building became almost too expensive and unsustainable.

For the Hive project, we proposed a cross-laminated timber structure, even for the structural elements, which is new to India. Cross-laminated timber is engineered wood made from small wood pieces, which comes with a 25-year guarantee and is said to be termite proof. These products are imported from New Zealand or Canada, and are made from so-called agricultural wood, trees planted for construction purposes. I met a New Zealand supplier who is setting up shop in India and who is super interested to do something in Auroville. He is willing to give a large discount, as this would be a reference project for him.

Another construction material is bamboo. In countries such as Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia, beautiful structures have been made using bamboo; but not in India. Auroville’s Bamboo Research Centre is also not yet geared to using bamboo in construction projects.

For projects using alternative building materials, we need a structural engineer who is willing to sit down and spend a month or so calculating the structure and figure out how to do maintenance and replace materials when required. There is a tremendous amount of beautiful work done using these materials, but we do not have the architects and engineers with the required skills.

Yet, Auroville attracts a lot of architects.

Yes, Auroville has been experimenting with brands of architecture that are so different from the main frame that many students are attracted to come to Auroville. But are we really all that different? Take the Prarthna, Maitreye II and III and the Sanjana communities: they aren’t very different from the standard architecture elsewhere in India. Sacred Groves was a valiant attempt, but it hasn’t been able to live up to its hopes. At an estimated cost of Rs 4 crores and the construction going on for 5 years this project is not cost-effective, certainly not if you consider that community members participated in the construction for free. These types of buildings do not help Auroville in its current need.

There is a criticism that Auroville architects do not work together ...

True. The sad thing is that we have architects who are really good at designing buildings, but who are not good at the implementation of projects, and vice versa. Not many architects are willing to take a design from another architect and implement it. To be honest, most Auroville architects have big egos and find it very difficult to accept and integrate feedback, or accept professional criticism and advice from other architects. There are quite a few buildings in Auroville which have serious design mistakes, which could have been avoided with some cooperation.

In the past, the idea of having a so-called ‘charette’ has been mooted. A charette requires all parties involved or to be involved in a project to sit together and finalize the best design. It’s a good idea, but only if all those involved would get paid for the work they do.

So architects cannot be expected to work for free?

No. Running an architect office is expensive, and the 3% on the estimated building costs an architect earns is not sufficient. Contrary to rumours, Auroville architects do not earn a lot of money on Auroville projects; in fact, most of them barely break even. Designing the Golden Jubilee project, for example, has cost us a lot of money, and nobody will pay for that. The downscaled project doesn’t cover the costs of the initial work we have done. Ideally, architects should also receive compensation for work done if a building doesn’t materialize. For how can they otherwise sustain themselves? They have no option but to work outside Auroville.

There is another aspect, which is less obvious. In Auroville, the architect of a new community is not only the designer, but also the person who needs to find the clients, meet all their individual demands and secure the financing. Most architects are out of their league if they have to deal with the entirety of a project. This is no longer acceptable. The responsibility for a project needs to be taken up by a group of people, including specialists in project management and financing. Then the architect can step in and do the work. And such a group should also define the limitations in the freedom of the individual client to make design changes, as they increase the costs.

A particular challenge for collective housing projects is the privacy requirement.

Yes. The problems are those of sound pollution – you don’t want to hear your neighbour – and how to manifest the need for cross ventilation. We are designing a community building named ‘Vibrance’, which is at a 30 meters distance from the Invocation community. They were concerned about the loss of ventilation, and we therefore positioned our building in such a way that there would still be a flow of air.

But that doesn’t solve the problem of noise. If you want to block noise, you have to design buildings with closed windows that use air-conditioning. And that is unsustainable.

This problem will also come up for the proposed Line of Goodwill [see AVToday September 2017 # 338]. Its 18 floors high main building will put much of the neighbouring Aurodam community in its shadow, and if they use open windows, the sound pollution will be tremendous. I am curious how they plan to resolve those issues, and also, if they could build not a concrete box but use alternative construction materials. It is possible: Yemen has high rise buildings made with earth architecture; and in many parts of the world wooden skyscrapers have been designed and built. Of course, this will be an issue for the entire community, not only for the architects.

You have expressed some concerns about the way Auroville is going ...

I am concerned that Auroville will become over-bureaucratic. We have about 200 people in the governance of Auroville which seems a bit much for a community of barely 2000 adults. Another concern is the low level of the Aurovilians’ maintenance. I sometimes wonder if we need so many people, or if we could do with less people who then can earn a bit more than the pittance of Rs 15,000 / month which is today’s average maintenance. Do working groups or units require so many people? Could they do with fewer people which then would have a better income and perhaps enjoy the higher lifestyle they feel they need, without having to look for an additional income elsewhere? These are questions the community has never looked into, but I think it’s time they get addressed.