Lots of love going into the refurbishment
It seems like a no brainer today. We live in a beautiful country, so why ruin it by erecting structures that can only be described as monstrosities? Unfortunately, an aesthetic sense, a respect for the land and its heritage, has often been glaringly absent in the architecture of Goa.
Thankfully, however, a growing number of architects and builders are committed to reversing this trend. Dean D’Cruz is a forerunner of the movement of Goan architects who design with green materials, producing architecture that goes with the Goan flow, rather than grating against it. Dean spent a lot of time building homes for the wealthy, but then changed tack over time.
Swales being dug
In my village of Pilerne, a power couple bought an old run down villa in Moicavaddo and have decided to make it into an art gallery cum home. They employed the said Dean D’Cruz- who is one of Goa’s ‘greenest’ architects and what an amazing place it is going to be.
“ It is going to be a showcase for sustainable living. We need to retrace our steps and go back a few decades when we were more caring of mother nature,” says Leenika Jacob, the power behind the project.
For me it sounds exactly what I want to hear. No pulling down old, heritage structures, instead refurbish and rejig them, making them modern and still holding on to our cultural roots. Like my son has done in the UK, according to their laws.
Just look at how much water will get saved
Talking to the architect he says,“As architects we enjoyed working on rich people’s houses with limitless budgets, using imported sanitary ware, German hardware and Italian marble. But after doing a fair number of these, we felt our learning had stopped. We also began to question ourselves on where this was leading us.”
He recalls battles with clients on the size of staff quarters, which got tinier and tinier while their own living areas were shockingly enormous.
“Over the years I have realized the Raj really never left India, we just got new rulers… the nouveau riche,” Dean says. “The challenge of architecture no longer existed and we needed to get back to it. We stopped doing high-end villas a few years ago, as we find them extremely unsustainable.”
Outsiders like this are welcome
He called many of today’s projects “a drain on resources,and a place to park black money.”
Top architects are increasingly working with sustainable materials and alternative energies, and are committed to collaborating with communities. It’s such a good feeling to see Leenikas home come up, right infront of my eyes, with sustainable permaculture breathed into every step being taken.
The shell of centuries old laterite stones is being maintained but a lot of sustainable ideas are being implemented. Right in front of the property huge trench-like swales are being dug by local labour to rain -water- harvest, every drop of water that falls in the property.
Moicavaddo is in the grip of the greedy tanker mafia as water is a problem. Leenikas capture of all rain in the property will raise the water table which seems to have been drained. She is also redoing the well in her property, into which again the rain water which falls will get funnelled.
All the swales are being dug checking the topography of the land curving along the rises and bends of the soil.She will also plant wetland grasses and reeds to help with the natural filtration of the water.
