T his essay is not a text in parody, spoof or satire, but a serious way to relook at what COVID-19 is doing to our construction industry – an industry which causes one-third of greenhouse gases, encourages building more than we need and leaves behind large built areas unused or underused while millions go homeless in an unjust and unequal world.
Every material ultimately comes from natural resources which we are simply wasting with disregard to the needs of hungry millions and the bleak predictions of extinction. Unfortunately, nearly everyone in the construction industry - administration, architects, engineers, institutions, builders - are all following this mindless approach to wasteful construction, all against nature. Today it is a virus affecting health, tomorrow it can be a virus affecting construction.
The above references to buildings could be factual, but any connection to the killer virus? One interesting parallel could be that COVID-19 is a killer of humans while construction is a killer of nature – both are killers.
Anyway, keeping the pun apart, the spread of the virus should not have happened to our civilisation. Whatever be the cause, it is a curse to the ever enterprising free spirit of our society, always striving towards a growth economy. Irrespective of its varied impacts, the major implication of loss of human lives is a civilisational tragedy, which should never repeat in future.
Having said that, let’s look at what the virus has caused to us and made us do. While the actual construction at sites might not have stopped yet, it has reduced the manufacture of products, and sales of goods.
Flights, star hotels, national seminars, fine-dine restaurants, holiday resorts, car drives across regions, air conditioned spaces and such others which are among the major consumers of earth energy are going lean. Images of the nearly empty shopping malls from abroad are simply unbelievable. At this rate, the need for more built floors will also reduce.
Social distancing has reduced public events, while closure of offices and institutions has minimised both local and global travel. Large number of people would see a dip in their monthly incomes, a worrisome fact. However, economists well know how reducing incomes also mean reduced expenses and reduced choices. Majority of the pricey, branded, personal goods are not need based, but are aimed at the rich to spend their surplus income. After the initial jolt, the market economy ensures that expenses will adjust to meet the income level, creating the necessary equilibrium, possibly encouraging a simpler lifestyle rooted in lower-cost products and services.
Less use of energy
If global transport gets affected, local manufacturing gets a boost, lowering the embodied energy – a major criteria in sustainable buildings. A few rich nations such as Japan may be living in crammed office and house spaces, but most rich owners in cities build too much with thousands of building materials, especially to showcase the wealth in the facades and the interiors. Hopefully, frugality may step in.
Those who are tracking the global warming are recording a small decrease in temperatures, while the carbon emission during the virus days has already been less. The internet is already reporting the reduced pollution, cleaner air and reduced solid waste generation across the cities with virus breakout. We can wait for validation, yet by intuition we now know that the climate change created by humans is being challenged by the virus!
COVID-19 appears to be achieving what the decade-long climate campaigns have not yet achieved, for the given short period. However deadly it is, we need to be grateful to the lessons it is teaching us. Our ever growing, GDP-based, market-led, manufactured luxury lifestyle with no concern for cost, climate and culture cannot continue for ever.
Of course, shortly we would learn to control the virus and we may return to our bad old ways. Or, we may remember the lessons it has taught us, and thankfully, may not return to the wasteful buying and throwing.
It is time we change our lifestyle forever, with eco-friendly architecture and lower carbon footprint living.
(The author is an architect working on eco-friendly designs and can be contacted at varanashi@gmail.com)
