MAIN FEATURE
In your work, you seem deeply interested in the question of social equity in developing countries, an agenda that you pursue through materiality and the craft of making. Why are these ideas so important to where we are today? AH: The two main challenges we have are climate change and social equity. Architecture is a powerful tool to address both. If we add up all the building budgets that run through our hands, by the end of our careers, it could be several millions, maybe even billions of dollars. This is a huge responsibility. Can we design in a way that a big part of this money goes to craftsmen? If I choose concrete or steel, the money is exported to large companies and leaves the community. And so, I use natural materials and human labour, which become a catalyst for development. I am an idealist because the reality isn’t good enough and I want to make a big change. When I’m designing, I multiply every approach and decision by several billion people. If everyone were to take this position, what would the world look like? What kind of material am I using? Will it contribute to social justice? Will it harm the environment? We don’t change the world with a single decision; we change it with many everyday decisions.
During your keynote address, you dedicated a big portion of your presentation to talk about labour at your sites, especially women labourers, and how you created policies and systems to improve their work environment. The discourse around labour is largely absent from the mainstream architecture space that fails to acknowledge the very people who build architecture. BS: The first time I was sensitised towards labour was during the early years of my practice. We were building a swimming pool facility for the Bombay Presidency Golf Club in Mumbai, and I had gone for a site visit, while being nine months pregnant. I had to climb on a roof, and while I was climbing, I saw four women labourers watching me with a lot of empathy in their eyes, because this was what they did too. In those days, children were allowed on construction sites and the women had to take care of their children while working hard on-site. After that experience, I began to question how labour was treated. It was appalling to know that there were no separate toilets for women on-site, no drinking water or day care for their children. What was more shocking was that most of these were big projects commissioned by clients who had all the money and resources. It was inexcusable for such projects to not have proper systems in place for labour. We began by listing requirements for them in our tender documents. Later, we also introduced crèches and schools on our construction sites, wherever they were required.
However, in the recent years, I have seen a smaller number of women on constructions sites. Their numbers are steadily dropping. It might have something to do with the government’s policy of banning children from job sites. Instead of making day care, crèches or schools compulsory, by banning children, women are being alienated from their livelihood. Most of the women in the construction industry are overworked and underpaid, and by banning children, their hardships are only increased now. There is a group in Ahmedabad called SEVA that is working with women to train them to become masons. I have personally been involved with a company that trains women to become painters. So, there are initiatives, but I feel we need a lot more work in this direction. As architects, we need to take more responsibility. I was extremely upset when Zaha Hadid abdicated responsibility over the workers’ deaths on the project site of the Qatar stadium by saying, “I have nothing to do with the workers”. Of course, you have everything to do with it and that is why you are called the architect!
Brinda Somaya Architect & Urban Conservationist
You are one of the very few women from your generation who were able to set up a practice that is now more than three decades old, and have catered to diverse projects from conservation to post-disaster housing. How easy or difficult is it for women to run a practice today? BS: I think it is not easy for anyone, be it a man or a woman. If it comes to challenges of being a woman in a fairly male-dominated profession in the present day, I feel that women are not isolated anymore, [at least not in] the way my contemporaries and I were. We were also a handful of women who were running our own practices. There were also advantages of being in isolated spaces because I only focused on building. We had no computers and media was not omnipresent like it is today. In these times, there is a whole fraternity of women in architecture and other professions who support one another through different platforms like social media. There is constant sharing of knowledge and ideas, which has made things much easier for women, and also men, to practice.
How do you feel about sustainability being the buzzword for the last 20 years? How do you look at the trend of Green ratings? BS: Sustainability is too broad a term for me, and because it is so broad, people can say anything and construe it whichever way they want. Your architectural vocabulary should determine sustainability—from treading the land lightly to designing for proper lighting and ventilation. For instance, we built a school that spreads over 12 acres without any air-conditioning by designing courtyards, using double walls and planting trees strategically. I feel that responding to the context in the most appropriate way possible is more important than getting a rating. I personally feel that the word “appropriate” is more apt for a practice like ours.
FUTURARC 17
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