As global emissions continue to rise, many of the world’s major cities are getting hotter — and more polluted. In fast-growing Delhi, the air quality is so poor that it has triggered a massive public health crisis, and the problem is often worse in households that use biomass for cooking, and where proper ventilation is lacking. What role could designers and architects play in providing these communities with much-needed relief?
Redesign Everything Challenge winners Abhimanyu Singhal and Depanshu Gola first started exploring this issue in 2021. Working closely with a group of residents in the south-east of Delhi, they looked into vernacular technology like wind catchers and solar chimneys, to come up with retrofit interventions that could reduce indoor air pollution and improve quality of life. Today the project has moved into the prototyping stage, with pilot tests planned for later this year.
In this interview, Abhimanyu and Depanshu tell us more about their ambitions for the future, the role of adaptation in climate action, and why they see architecture as a public service.
Abhimanyu and Depanshu with a model of the BreatheEasy retrofit solution. Photos: Anisa Xhomaqi.
Could you introduce yourselves and your project?
Abhimanyu: I’m Abhimanyu, I co-lead an experimental spatial practice called Architecture for Dialogue. Our project, called BreatheEasy, tackles air pollution in Delhi, which is pretty omnipresent. You can’t miss it, and I have had a personal history with it — I grew up with bronchitis — so it was a part of my everyday. And when you’re an architect who is practising in the city, you start to think: what is your role in the crisis? So as a studio, we started to look at the linkage. How is the design of spaces linked with the pollution that resides in those spaces? How can we study that pollution further, and maybe do something about it?
Depanshu: I’m Depanshu and I lead design at Architecture for Dialogue. Essentially, our work tries to go beyond predefined briefs and towards asking the questions that nobody is asking. Architecture is a service, and buildings and homes are supposed to keep us safe. However, air pollution is a relatively recent phenomenon, and we don’t have enough knowledge or tools to fight it yet. So as designers we became curious to explore how spaces can help safeguard against air pollution and its impacts.
“Architecture is a service, and buildings and homes are supposed to keep us safe.”
What was the research process like?
A: Eventually, through pursuing this inquiry, we found ourselves working with women in a community called Madanpur Khadar, to understand how they perceive and deal with air pollution on an everyday basis. For them, the pollution crisis is compounded, because they’re using chulhas or traditional stoves in their homes, which have limited access to fresh air. So basically the level of indoor pollution is very high, and the family inhales it day in, day out. This is where we realised that there are multiple layers to air pollution. There’s the city-level crisis, where the source could be coming from industry, construction, or transportation, but there is also the crisis that’s happening in our own homes.
D: So if we wanted to make a change, we felt that homes were the best place to start. It’s such an intimate space, and something everyone can relate to. We thought by focusing on a solution for the home, we could at least help people adapt to the crisis and prepare for a future where the problem might only get worse.
Conducting research on-the-ground in Delhi. Photos: Architecture for Dialogue.
Interesting! Why not focus on tackling the source of the pollution?
A: Mitigating air pollution is a big task — it requires policy intervention, government subsidies, and time, because the reality is that clean fuel is just not affordable to many households at the moment. So we believe that while mitigatory action is ongoing and necessary, it’s also important to think about adaptation. Because there is an urgent need to improve livability, and for solutions which are more tactical and can be implemented today.
“While mitigatory action is ongoing and necessary, it’s also important to think about adaptation. Because there is an urgent need to improve livability.”
D: Yeah. I think when we talk about solving a problem, of course it’s easier to start with a clean slate. And in an ideal world maybe we can take a magic wand and design a solution like that. But personally I believe that we can operate from a level of humility, empathy and awareness of our existing built environment. Working with something which is already there is the sensible approach, especially as we are stepping into a world where climate change is the new reality.
What is something about air pollution that you think more people should know about?
A: One thing that surprised us was the fact that even within a house, the level of pollution from one room to another can be very different. It depends on the microclimate inside the house: how air flows, which window is open, which door is closed, which fan is turning, where the sources of pollution lie. It was eye-opening to learn that we could map this pollution even within very small spaces.
Conducting research on-the-ground in Delhi. Photos: Architecture for Dialogue.
When did you decide to look to vernacular building techniques as a source of inspiration?
D: Throughout this whole project, we have been constantly learning and unlearning our ways. I think as architects, we generally tend to believe that we know everything (laughs), but we made a conscious choice to keep asking questions. We were interested to see if there was anything in traditional knowledge or generational wisdom that could help us to move forward or figure out a solution.
A: Yes, so traditionally, vernacular architecture tells us how we protect ourselves from things like heat and cold or rain and storm. But today, many houses are rather designed for privacy and security. In the city, ventilation and access to daylight is an issue. So we wanted to try and see whether we could retrofit any existing wisdom that improves these parameters.
It started out as a very theoretical hypothesis, which we needed to validate. And we’ve been doing that through tests with scaled models, and that’s when it became evident that chimneys really do help. And right now, we’re working with some engineers to improve the performance from a digital point of view, and see how we can make it more efficient. Because as much as this project has been grounded in the community we’re designing for, it is also a technical design solution.
“In the city, ventilation and access to daylight is an issue. So we wanted to try and see whether we could retrofit any existing wisdom that improves these parameters.”
What’s the next step for the project?
A: Right now we’re at a prototyping stage and we’re on track to build a prototype this year in October. But we still want to refine the product and make it affordable in a way that it actually suits the market. There are pilots to be done, and more research and development. Because ultimately, the solution has the potential to improve livability in a lot of communities, not just the community that we’re working in.
Potential applications for solar chimneys. Image: Architecture for Dialogue.
What do you need to get there?
A: We need some funding, of course, to help us sustain the effort of product research and development. And grants, they really are useful. But there is this other end of also having community connections and looking for partners that can help us on-the-ground.
Is there a message you would like to leave for the next generation of architects in India?
A: There are a lot of things! But ultimately, BreatheEasy is a way for us to think about livability and immediate action. I feel like that kind of an approach to architecture is important, where we’re not just thinking about making new buildings or designing them the way that we want to, but looking at it as a service. Because the context is changing, the climate is changing, the resources we have on this planet are depleting. So, we need to rethink how we perceive and practice architecture as a discipline. It needs to evolve, and we feel that this project is one case study of how that might happen.
D: Yes, and also I think that in the Indian context, we live with many diverse cultures. So one thing which can really help is how we practice care — care about others, care about our cities, our spaces, our environment. If we can really do that as a society, as a collective, I think it can make a difference.
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This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Interview by Natasha Berting and Chieri Higa.