: Mud, Stones, Bamboo: How India’s Traditional Architecture Fights Heat Stress in Homes #IndiaNEWS #Architecture “My family finds it difficult to sleep during summer. Even though we have a fan,

Mud, Stones, Bamboo: How India’s Traditional Architecture Fights Heat Stress in Homes #IndiaNEWS #Architecture
“My family finds it difficult to sleep during summer. Even though we have a fan, it blows hot air from the sheets which gives us a headache. I feel giddy during the summer and my children develop heat boils and rashes,??? shares Ratna from Bengaluru.

Ratna is one of the numerous people battling inhumane heat stress conditions under poorly ventilated, heat-absorbing tin-roofed house structures of India’s marginalised urban settlements. While most of us reading this might not have a first-hand experience of what it feels like to live under a tin-roofed heat-absorbing house, the peril of heat stress might not seem as alien today as it may have once felt. Intense heat episodes are excluding no one, not just locally but also globally in recent times.

Heat waves killed over 20,615 people from 2000 to 2020 and are the second deadliest natural force in India, after lightning.

Temperatures even touched the 40 degrees Celsius (°C) mark in March 2022 across large parts of central and western India. ‘Beating the Heat: A Sustainable Cooling Handbook for Cities’, a guide published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2021, warns that cities worldwide could warm up by 4°C on average by 2100. This is more than double the 1. 5°C goals set under the Paris Agreement — because of the urban heat island effect.

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