Dear readers,

India’s terrain has an abundance of local and rooted – sometimes called ‘vernacular’ – architecture. From building materials such as mud, bamboo, wood, and clay bricks to construction techniques and the use of culturally contextualised motifs and symbols on buildings, each region in every state has its own unique style of architecture. Resilience and sustainability, and response to the local conditions were built into it. Some of it continues to be relevant only in its context while some can be adapted to modern architecture in cities. But urban construction has rarely paid close attention to local architecture, much less adapted it to buildings in cities. Why is it so, what can be learned from different local architectural approaches, how much of it can be adapted in cities, and how? Question of Cities explores these themes with insightful essays and interviews in the sixth of our series on the built environment for better cities.

Researcher Adina Ara and gender geographer Sabiha Baig observe that Leh faces a dilemma – whether to build in coherence with climate and geography or conform to a standardised vertical development model imported from the plains. Leh developed a precisely calibrated, uniquely vernacular architecture with walls made of rammed earth, and houses oriented to maximise the winter sun. The tourism boom since 2009 meant hundreds of hotels and a thousand home-stays, each a concrete block seen as a unit of investment. Leh’s climate action plan never once mentions rammed earth, vernacular construction, local materials, local masons and engineers, which already have the correction it recommends. Read it here.

Older homes in Hyderabad and Secunderabad tend to be 6-8 degrees Celsius cooler than the outdoors, which can be traced to their thick lime-plastered walls, masonry roofs, louvred teak shutters, courtyards, ventilators, and shaded openings, find architect and climate change researcher Krithika Sridharan and associate professor Dr Aalok Khandekar. Climate-responsiveness was not a property of the building alone but a synergy between the structure and the practices of inhabitation, or thermal memory. The principles and materials are there; the policy and regulatory environment need to change to enforce mandatory passive design criteria and climate-aware revision of development control regulations, they argue. Read it here.

What is celebrated today as Goa’s architecture hardly tells its pre-colonial and colonial history, or is rooted in the local culture, folklore and dynasties which gave it a unique coastal vernacular blend, writes architect Tallulah D’Silva. The recent boom in tourism and second-home culture has meant a rush of hotels and villas, which appropriate convenient or tokenistic elements of Goan architecture but do no justice to their functions. Goa’s old architecture and materials addressed the need to handle extreme heat and rain, but today’s constructions show little care to fuse these elements and features, older materials and techniques, with contemporary demands, she opines. Read it here.

Dehradun’s architectural character was a unique blend of native Garhwali traditions, British colonial interventions, Tibetan Buddhist influences, institutional footprints and post-independence developments. Architect and urban designer Ravjyot Kaur writes that the canals, which once shaped the city’s urban life, have disappeared beneath roads, severing the city’s historic relationship with water. Rajpur Road exemplifies this – from a tree-lined, low-rise corridor with bungalows, gardens and orchards to a commercial and residential road. The challenge is to build without losing Dehradun’s sense of place, which means context-sensitive design, protecting trees and canals, involving local communities, and changing rules to consider buildings as part of neighbourhoods rather than isolated structures, she says. Read it here.

In Ladakh, mud and local techniques kept people warm in winters and cool in summers but people are now replacing the traditional materials with tin sheets and concrete as mud roofs leak and walls are damaged when it rains. Srinagar-based Journalist Athar Parvaiz’s ground report finds that not only are tin sheets and concrete edging out local materials and indigenous knowledge, but they are also proving to be expensive, as cement and iron have to be brought from Srinagar on mountainous highways. Importantly, they are gradually eroding Ladakh’s centuries-old architectural heritage. Read it here.

Local building materials such as mud, brick, bamboo, local tiles, clay, and stone are losing out to steel, concrete, glass, and other materials. Romanticising the old does not help; thoughtful application to the current context does. Question of Cities brings an insight into this by speaking to environmental architect Malak Singh Gill; Dean of the School of Planning and Architecture, Prof Dr PSN Rao; architect and co-founder of ‘Put Your Hands Together’ Areen Attari; and architect and researcher Shilpa Ranade. Read it here.

In our regular section, News Digest, read about the framework developed by IIT Madras to assess climate risks on India’s coast; One of the wettest place of earth, Meghalaya, faces the highest-ever rainfall deficit; Study finds that millions are at risk as melting glaciers form unstable lakes; US erases limits on emissions from coal and gas plants; and Indonesia fires produce emissions as intense as 2015.

If you find our work important and engaging, give us a shout on X, Instagram, and LinkedIn. If you have something to say to us, write to [email protected]. If you haven’t yet subscribed to Question of Cities, India’s only journal on cities-nature-people, do so here.

Thank you,
Smruti
September 18, 2026