Victor Olgyay is the name few hundreds would have heard of in India and few thousands in the whole world today. Nearly 60 years ago, he started working on his book ‘Design with Climate” which got published in 1963. If he could advise us how do design sensitively and comfortably so long ago, why do we continue to ignore his wisdom? Some of the research topics he wrote about were arrived at much before him too.
Many forewarning kind of books appeared shortly thereafter. ‘Silent Spring’ by Rachel Carson published in 1969 was a path breaking research on how chemicals are negatively impacting nature, mainly focusing at those which were used in agriculture, pest control and related issues. The organic movement now spreading wide has made people aware of all these.
Another early text, ‘Man Climate and Architecture’ by Baruch Givoni, got published in 1969, making the 1960s a decade of awareness building. However, after 50 years, use of construction chemicals both in numbers and quantity is growing in an alarming upward curve.
India should be proud of the fact that it is among the first in the world to have had its own book on designing eco-friendly architecture, albeit written by a German. ‘Manual of Tropical Housing’ by Koenigsberger and others was published in 1973, and for more than 45 years we have an early manual for reference.
We have our own manual on climatology, but how much of it do we follow except as a text book in colleges? How many students who study it for examinations forget it soon after and design architecture against climate? Why and who influences our construction industry decisions?
‘Design with Climate’ by Victor refers not only to all the basics of climate in general, but applies that knowledge to design and construction. It contains topics such as adaptation of shelter to climate; effects of climate on man; solar controls; bioclimatic charts; regional characters; microclimatic effects; basic forms of houses; morphology of town structures; thermal effects of materials; designs for different climatic zones and such others. Even though the book focuses on the U.S., the theory is applicable universally.
As such, more commonly needed data on wind, air flow patterns, heat, solar glare, sky factors, Sun path diagrams, shading devices, light intensities, passive cooling methods, lessons from traditional architecture, implications of massing and such others are all there. It is amazing to see how Victor attempted to cover a wide variety of topics with actual calculations using the early instrumentation available, which is so close to the more realistic ones available today with all software.
In many ways, its subtitle, ‘Bioclimatic approach to regionalism’ was the original contribution of Olgyay. This thought process, directly or indirectly, later led to many terminologies such as Bio-mimicry, Biomorphism, Biophilia, critical regionalism, eco-friendly ideas, local architecture, sustainable designs, green buildings and so on, and we can read shades of bioclimatic approaches in many other related theories like New Urbanism or even in Zero Carbon Cities.
It is easy to say Victor was ahead of his times to thank him, but it is a pity that we pay no attention to his research and advice even now, continuing to design against climate. It is time to realise climate change has already gone beyond our control and merely trying to design with climate will not stop the juggernaut. We have hurt, angered and irritated climate so much that now she is retaliating by warming up and speeding up in the form of cyclones, hurricanes and tsunamis.
Listening to Victor Olgyay and many others could have saved the east coast of India, mainly Bhubaneshwar and Puri, from being devastated by cyclone ‘Fani’. Are we able to see the connection between designing with climate and cyclones like ‘Fani’? If we are not, we as the human race are doomed.