Oped»
Power point
- (un)common sense
AUG 09 -
While we have paid a lot of attention to the hunger for power among the political and other elite of Nepali society, we have explored very little how power-hungry our buildings have become. And because we have made hugely power-hungry buildings, we are asking our politicians to deliver on their promises to produce more power—through electricity, diesel plants, solar or other sources. Because the production of power has become such a huge national priority and it involves such a huge amount of resources, the same politicians and public officials, whom we have no qualms about hating everyday, are becoming more and more powerful. But have we asked why we are needing more and more power in the first place?
In the last two weeks, I devoted my two essays to the potentially large scale destruction of life and places in the aftermath of any major earthquake in Kathmandu and other parts of Nepal. This risk, I aimed to show, was
not going to be the result of an earthquake per se. Earthquakes most often are not the major cause of the destruction. It is the way our homes and other infrastructure are built which leads to the intensity of damage—both to the place and the people. Why is Haiti still fresh in our minds but not Chile? Many don’t remember that the earthquake that hit Chile early this year was of a far greater intensity than the one that hit Haiti not long before it.
However, we know that the death toll and damage to infrastructure, though regrettable, was minuscule in Chile compared to Haiti. Chile saw the deaths of less than a thousand people, whereas 300,000 perished in Haiti, with several millions made homeless and most of the buildings in major cities destroyed. The challenge in Nepal is definitely to promote earthquake-resistant building practices with a sense of urgency. This means rethinking the way buildings are designed. But the issue is not only about earthquake resistance, it is about energy consumption too.
There are three major aspects of energy use involved in any building activity: the energy content of the building materials, the transportation of those materials to the building sites, and, finally, the energy that the buildings use for their daily operation and maintenance. On every count, we have opted for a situation that has led to colossal use of energy.
The materials they use require injection of a lot of energy. The manufacture of cement, steel, concrete, roofing materials and fired bricks, to name a few, all are highly energy intensive. The mining of minerals for cement production, mining of iron ore and extraction of coal, that has become crucial for processing minerals into steel and cement besides firing bricks, have directly led to widespread ecological destruction. This has led to clearing of forests. Large areas of land have been poisoned and degraded. In these areas, confrontations, at times violent, between local people and mining companies
have become routine since the last several decades. The mainstream media does not tell us this, but the growing Maoist insurgency in some of India’s mineral belts is directly related to the way the livelihoods of the people who live in those mining areas have been uprooted. As homeowners who are opting for high-energy buildings, we have become direct culprits in this destructive saga.
These building materials are then hauled long distances to the building sites. Our major transport roads have become clogged by ever increasing vehicular traffic. There are major reasons for this. There has been a growth of private vehicles. More people have become more mobile over the last several decades for a variety of reasons. It is also true that trucks heavily-laden with cement, iron, bricks and other building materials have become very significant parts of traffic flows towards Kathmandu and other major urban centres. These heavily-laden trucks routinely break down along
the highways. Very often the
breakdowns of these trucks result in tedious and costly traffic stoppages, further leading to increased use of energy.
And, homes use energy to make them functional. They need lights. They need to be cooled and heated. In all these aspects, our buildings have become huge energy-guzzling machines. The high energy use in buildings often results from both their design as well as the use of materials. The cement-concrete-iron buildings require a lot of energy to cool their interior spaces when it’s hot outside. They also require energy for heating in the cold months.
When I was a child, I never saw a fan in Kathmandu. Those who have grown up in Kathmandu might be able to testify to this. These days, fans have become routine in most homes. The same goes for heating. The rented house I spent several years of my early childhood in was mud-mortared brick wall almost two feet thick.
These traditional houses did not have good ventilation, but they kept the interior temperature in balance—cool when it was hot outside and warm when it was cold outside. Those houses have become a rarity in most of the places across Nepal these days. In my present hometown, Chitwan, the Tharus used to build their homes with reeds and adobe. Almost all of those buildings have virtually disappeared. The hill migrants in the early days had built houses with at least mud as mortar for brick walls. They have also disappeared almost totally.
Building with cement, concrete and steel has become so widespread that to ask anybody why they have opted for these materials often is to invite puzzled looks. Many have erroneously believed that these structures are strong. Perhaps, the commercials about cement and steel we see daily on television have produced this notion. Many don’t know that, with good design, buildings with dirt-cheap dirt or locally available bamboo could be far stronger while become far more energy-efficient than cement structures. More importantly, we also do not realise that the ugliness we have created around us has mostly to do with our own buildings.
Search on the internet and you will find amazing possibilities for constructing aesthetically pleasing and ecologically non-destructive homes. In the next two weeks, I will explore some of those practices. I will plan to specifically focus on the use of mud and bamboo to create beautiful, long-lasting and earthquake-resistant buildings. In the meantime, don’t forget to explore yourself how Abari (www.abari.org), an amazing group of young architects, is exploring the use of bamboo as a way designing buildings in Nepal. Enjoy.
Anil Bhattarai
anilbhattarai@gmail.com
Posted on: 2010-08-10 09:03
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