Traditional Building Knowledge Systems - A Path to Sustainability

In architecture and planning domain, sustainability has been considered as a core strategy for over three decades now. The modern era of globalisation, led to homogenisation in architecture, thus widening the gap between modern and Traditional Building Knowledge systems (TBKS) worldwide. This gap is widening at an alarming speed and alienating the architectural concepts from the context and its people, by ignoring the sustainability aspects. The TBKS has evolved in line with the environmental, cultural, technological, economic, and historical context within which it exists. The current study provides an overview of the concepts involved in sustainability and TBKS and how TBKS is addressed in the international forums and UN reports, and ancient treatises that formed the basis of TBKS in the Indian context. The four pillars of sustainability i.e., environmental, social, economic, and cultural dimensions were considered as the parameters to measure how far the sustainability has been achieved in the built environment. From the extensive review of literature, a set of design indicators was identified for the TBKS. Further, its applicability was also analysed based on the case examples. The current study reveals that such indicators, mentioned in the TBKS, are context-specific in nature. Hence, it helps in achieving sustainability at the building level. The paper concludes by identifying the co-relation between TBKS and sustainability and calls for more studies upon using the Traditional Building Knowledge Systems as a potential tool to achieve sustainability.