‘We weren’t truly paying the full cost’

A young architect in Chennai, India, is revolutionizing what it means to make a house a home. And it involves a lot less concrete than you’d think.

Krithika Venkatesh created the Studio for Earthen Architecture, which allows her to build homes for families with natural resources. According to The Better India, those resources include physical tools like mud, lime, and reclaimed wood. Many years of environmental and cultural knowledge inform her work as well.

Venkatesh wanted to make a change because she noticed how damaging it can be to extract resources for modern home building.

“I realised we weren’t truly paying the full cost of the materials we were using,” Venkatesh told The Better India. “For instance, we might buy a square foot of granite for Rs 300 [$3.38] — but think about the enormous amount of resources that go into extracting and producing that piece of stone.”

Granite isn’t the only problem either. The process of making concrete is harmful in many ways.

FairPlanet reported that 50% of the polluting gases the concrete industry releases come from the calcination of limestone. In this process, limestone is heated up, and its calcium carbonate becomes calcium oxide and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide goes into the air, and the calcium oxide is then used for concrete.

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Making concrete is also very water-intensive, and using concrete to build has harmed plants and animals of all kinds, per FairPlanet. As we lose access to water and keystone species, we risk losing our food supply chains and more of our beautiful environment.

Venkatesh and her organization, however, have found sustainable replacements for modern building materials to help preserve their local environment.

Reclaimed wood from demolished buildings and treated with natural oils can replace new steel and concrete used in structural frames. Even lime, mud, and cow dung plasters (as well as natural lime washes) can replace cement plaster and synthetic paints, per The Better India.

One of the best parts is that some of Venkatesh’s workers’ health has improved while working with these substances.

“A few of my painters who do lime wash and lime plastic have told me that since they started working with natural substances, they did not encounter a problem of sinus,” Venkatesh said.

It’s taken a lot of time for Venkatesh’s studio to grow. But she has faith that it will continue to have a huge positive impact on architecture and our environment.

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