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Comment by spaceman_2020 | Hacker News Reader

spaceman_2020

Modern Indian housing in major Indian cities has done a complete 180 from these tried-and-tested architectural practices. The materials used seem to be deliberately chosen to maximize human misery. There's glass everywhere which, besides being impossible to keep clean in India's dusty summers, also retains heat and makes most housing unbearable without AC.

Then there are the designs themselves. Faux wood is everywhere, as are laser-carved patterns that collect dust. Spaces are designed to maximize square footage, ventillation and sunlight be damned.

The "builder floors" that dot cities like Delhi are an exercise in public ugliness and bad design.

Edit: An example of the kind of housing I'm talking about. Superficially "modern", but absolutely the wrong design for Indian weather:

https://newprojects.99acres.com/projects/findahouse/findahou...

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Canada makes similar mistakes. People imitate California designs in a Canadian climate and then find that the building is uncomfortable, and expensive to heat and cool. In many cases, builders will actually reuse complete designs without modification. Just madness.

My parents recently moved to a similar building with huge glass windows (different part of the world). They ended up installing black mesh roller shades, and pretty much need to keep them down half the year, to keep out the heat. For all intents and purposes, they now dwell in darkness. That kind of architecture basically creates new problems, rather than solves them.

I have big black mesh roller shades over a pair of large windows, they are amazingly effective at keeping the room cooler (as long as they're on the outside!) I think it'd be fair to say that they don't make you 'dwell in darkness' as much as a solid wall would...

Yes, they definitely need to be on the outside. Absolutely, they really make an amazing difference wrt keeping the apartment cool.

> I think it'd be fair to say that they don't make you 'dwell in darkness' as much as a solid wall would...

Especially if they are motorized. It's the only home automation thing that I actually find very useful in my home, which has huge glass windows, that I love.

I have a little process that checks the UV index level once an hour. If it's above 6 it closes them and if it's below 6 it opens them. I know UV index doesn't actually track temperature, etc. But it's a good enough proxy for the sun it up and it's bright. And it does a good job of keeping the windows unblocked during mornings and evenings.

In the example you give, there’s no way of knowing if it’s been properly designed for Indian climate per given budget constraints.

There appears to be windows on only 2 sides of the building, 1 of which is far enough inset to create significant shade.

Depending on what direction the building faces, this could in fact be optimal design for staying cool while still having windows.

Now, of course, the best design for staying cool would be an underground cave carved out of rock with no windows—-but is that really how we want to live?

There is no scalable home design that works without AC when temperatures regularly get to 100-120F with high humidity.

I think this facade [1] demonstrates a better way to maximize shade, along with windows that are normal-sized instead of floor-to-ceiling. It doesn't look "modern", but it's a lot more practical

1: https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/1600x900/p0cyz4dz.webp (yes, it's from the article)

>Now, of course, the best design for staying cool would be an underground cave carved out of rock with no windows—-but is that really how we want to live?

Adding light and some ventilation is a lot less energy intensive than cooling

Caves can get unbearably hot and humid here too.

Then you need to dig deeper

Not too deep because you know what's there. I don't mean the balrog, rather infrastructure for water, sewage, etc. Granted that might not be the case on private property, and in India, but still. Where I live people sometimes cut underground power cables, water or nat gas.

not too deep though https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient

> Faux wood is everywhere, as are laser-carved patterns that collect dust

To me this looks like the natural consequence of people not cleaning their own houses. Same thing with 3000sqft/300m^2 houses in the US for that matter.

The house that I grew up in India, has that lattice as part of the building. Used to be great when I was growing up as the house was on a raised foundation compared to surrounding houses, and we would get a nice breeze in the evenings. The neighborhood was not dense and we mostly had single family homes.

Now, because of the absence of zoning regulations, we have 4 story buildings - so there goes any natural light and ventilation and there is an epidemic of dengue because of mosquitoes.

And that lattice annoys me, will probably need to put a mesh there to keep out the mosquitoes.

This is because glass has become the trendy building material for commercial buildings, so building with glass is cheaper than alternatives.

Lol, that architecture is all over Portland, where the weather is hot for 1 month.

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