Ar Sharukh Mistry - Inspired to be Green

4.What project challenged you the most andwhy?The letter below might explain5. Can you give us a (short) recipeon how to become a successful greenarchitect?Whatever your stage in life it is never too late tobecome a successful green architect. So starttoday. You just have to turn to nature and yourinner nature…..to your own inmitable way. Thatway you continue to be Yourself and nobody’sshadow. Your uniqueness will automaticallycome to the fore. Remain open and trustyourself and slowly and surely you will receivethe message.At Mistry Architects we follow these steps whenwe start to design.Some of them have already been mentionedearlier. So I shall not repeat.a) Trust your intuition.b) Be a little more right brained than leftc) Become native to the place.d) Don’t miss out on enthusiasm.e) Be playful, don’t forget to have fun.f) Make children the measure of your response.Wake up the child in you.6. What are you doing ifyou are not designing abuilding?I have hit 60 this year. I have grownold but I have not grown up (mychildren tell me to grow up whenI am fooling around and that ismost of the time). At MA we believeas someone said’ You cannot doanything meaningful unless youare having fun doing it, and I keepdreaming of different ways to havefun. I travel to places of naturalbeauty, I dive with my son in theAndaman island and I golf. I am at ahigh when I am outdoors.7. Where do you see the greenbuilding movement in futureand how can India avoidgreen-wash?We cannot avoid green wash. It is part of the process unfortunately. Oncebusiness finds ‘meaning’ in the triple bottom line of people,planet,andprofit, I hope it stops this practice.Having said that, it is important to create awareness about this problem.IGBC has started to “review all the buildings that have receivedaccreditation to see if they are performing to standards”, that they haveagreed to .We are going to be relentless about this follow up. We wanteverybody to understand that it is a continuous process.A lot of people confuse the green building rating system with sustainablegreen design. The rating systems are tools for measuring performance,but meaningful green design goes way beyond the brownie points of arating system. “The soul of the green building” movement can never bein its rating system .It has to be in……. issues of emotion, cultural context,playfulness, empathy,meaning,community, intuitiveness and all theright brained issues. These are integral to any good design. But they areintangible and not easy to measure e.g. we still don’t know the true valueof forests, rivers and oceans.It simply means, that in the natural world the principles of greenare in perpetuity. So in the human green building endeavor itcannot be a one-stop shop. It is an everlasting cycle.Inspired to be GREEN thanks Ar.Sharukh Mistry, for sharing his valuable thoughts with us which wasinspiring and thought provoking.Inspired to be GREEN I Volume 6 I 5